Signs You’re About To Be In A Sinister Homoerotic Subplot In A Midcentury Drama

Your hair is immaculately slicked back, except for a single curl that falls over an eyebrow. Your left eyebrow.

You have an unusually attractive cigarette lighter you cannot stop fingering. It is mother-of-pearl.

You offer a crying woman your handkerchief, but there is no sympathy in your voice.

Why, you’d do anything for your friends.

A whimsical little piccolo note plays whenever you enter the room.

You think blackmail is such an ugly word.

You have a suggestion you think may prove mutually beneficial to the two of you.

Jimmy Stewart looks faintly disgusted with you.

You met the protagonist in Monte Carlo, although they don’t remember it until you remind them.

When you cross your legs to lean back in your chair, you do so deliberately.

You answer the door in a silk kimono. It is not the only Orientalist note in your wardrobe.

You are removing a pair of gloves very slowly.

You’re afraid they would all find you terribly boring. Why would anyone ever want to talk to you? Plain, unassuming, tongue-tied, unambitious old you. Why, you wouldn’t even know the first thing to say.

You are nobody’s fool and you never take your coat off indoors.

You can barely conceal your dislike for dogs; it is the only crack in your exceedingly pleasant facade.

You are perfectly polite and accommodating, and yet people still dislike you.

You are nothing like the rest of them. How dare you suggest it. How dare you!

You have two emotional settings: unshakeable calm and hysterical fury. You cycle through them at an increasingly rapid rate.

You think murder is such an ugly word.

Perhaps you can be of some assistance in this delicate matter.

Whenever possible, the cinematographer makes sure there is a shadow falling halfway across your face.

You begin to lose your famous composure when a social rival mentions your humble upbringing…on a farm.

You wear your unremarkable-colored hair in a set of neat crown braids or in a close, almost boyish, crop. The necklines on your dresses are always too high and the hemlines always crooked.

In almost every shot, you are framed within a doorway.

The camera lingers on your receding silhouette as you disappear into an unlit side street.

You think bribe is such an ugly word.

There is no joy in your eyes when you water-ski.

You are both impeccably and yet somehow also unwholesomely dressed.

[Image via]