One of my favorite directors is Woody Allen, and of course, I am therefore obligated to love, unconditionally, Annie Hall. It’s the Woody Allen movie that everyone loves, after all, a bitter sweet and hilarious love story for all…over the age of eighteen. For those unfamiliar with it, or who don’t watch it frequently, the film begins with Alvey Singer (Woody Allen) telling two jokes, which relate the way he feels about life and his relationships with women. Ironically, the “key joke” to my relationships with women is derived from this movie and goes as follows:
“You know, even as a kid I always went for the wrong women, I think that’s my problem. When my mother took me to see Snow White, everyone fell in love with Snow White, I immediately fell for the wicked queen”.
Alright, so this quote might seem weird. Is weird. And it doesn’t help that the next segment of the film is an animated spoof with Diane Keaton as the wicked queen, which makes no sense at all. But I feel like the quote fits. Although, when we’re defining ourselves, isn’t everything correct to us. You could (and likely do) have a wholly different idea of me than I do. This then is the inherent difficulty in describing oneself. I may believe what I am saying to be true, but lacking any empirical way to test it, it’s no one man’s word against another’s perception or lack thereof.
But just for argument’s sake, let’s say the quote applies quite well to me. To prove it, I will give my own experience of falling in love with the wrong person. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, while everyone else was crying about Aslan, I was excited about the white witch’s impending victory. And everything would have been perfect, and it would have always been winter and never Christmas, but no Edmund had to break her wand and ruin everything. Oh, and did anyone else find it weird that there’s Christmas in a world without Jesus? I guess, magic makes everything possible. But back to the point though, I think liking the White Witch, is really enough to put me in the reverse Bonnie and Clyde hall of fame. Well, infamy, but tomatoes, potatoes.
I would go into my actual relationships here, if I were one of those professional writers, with credentials and quality control, and a I don’t care attitude, but I am timid, meek, and fairly certain that the interest here is roughly zero. “Oh, you like bad girls, that’s really…really interesting. Would you mind holding off on this until I finish literally everything else in the world I can think of? That’d be great.”
But coming to his point without anything to show for it is a little disappointing. It would be like cutting off the last episode of a show in mid-sentence. Luckily, I am not creating a mob-themed drama, so I will not be doing that. Instead, I shall induce a sense of numbing oblivion in the minds of people reading this. It’s a fictional story, I wrote for a class, which means that it’s absolutely terrible, and only vaguely related to this topic. But, I have nothing else to offer, and I feel no obligation to do so. Indeed, this is probably worse than ending it right here. Ha! I won.
“I have never been very courageous, and that goes double where girls are concerned. The first time I asked out a girl, I could barely make it around a corner before screaming “YES!” (capitol and exclamation mark required) which is, I can attest, not the coolest thing to do after you ask someone out.
And all the creepy, weird, and downright awkward moments that I’ve had with girls race through my mind as I frantically wring my hands, my feet beating a tattoo on the pavement outside of the Solomon Pond theatre, looking out to the street every few minutes in desperate quest for a muted maroon van. My fingers lock and unlock. My hair begins to spike from the prodigious sweat. My legs are starting to lock up, and I wish I’d brought a book, because waiting is agony. Which is when I make bonehead move #1: Moving from the theatre and into the mall, so as to find a book store, and (bonehead move #2) I forgot to turn my cell phone off of silent.
So I miss them, and am at the checkout-line with a cheap copy of Fight Club, when I check my phone and see that Becca has called twice, X. once and Y. thrice, and all of a sudden I feel the proverbial hand smacking me in the face with all the force of idiocy. And I rush down the stairs, abandoning the un-bought book on the nearest shelf, hurtling down the stairs and rushing headlong out the double glass doors into the dark oppression of a March afternoon and then-
It’s broken by sunshine.
She is biting her lower, plump and waxy pink against her pale skin. Beside her, X. and Y. are practically cuddling, with G. standing off to one side. We meet awkwardly in between the two spots, and hug in the awkward way that only freshmen can, and walk silently in the wake of X., Y., and G. as they make their way into the theatre.
And now let me interject and say that I believe the only reason for horror films not based on Stephen King books, is for the purpose of dates. It’s not that…well actually yes, they are god-awful. Even the sick “torture porn” Saw films of recent years are used primarily to get girls to cling to guys. And it doesn’t work well when the whole film is as nonsensical and…well…un-frightening as an episode of Barney. And so, Y. decided that we should see…The Eye.
Clumsily, my fingers worm their way into hers and in the darkness I slide my other hand over her shoulder, the classic American pose for dating, sans the back seat and drive through atmosphere.
And let’s consider for just a moment how truly strange this position is. It’s not comfortable for one, over extending your arm, constantly worrying about whether or not you’re putting too much weight on her, and the girl never seems to enjoy having a lump of practically dead flesh hanging off them (and yeah that’s the same romantic soul I bring to any endeavor). But it’s expected, an American tradition that would feel more at home in a drive-in then a claustrophobic theatre, wedged at the end of the back row, with X and Y predicting their relationship with worrying vigor, and Becca whispers in my ear “Isn’t she dating T.?”
I shrug, which is quite an awkward gesture with one arm wrapped around her shoulder and the other one clasping her hand.
It is at this point that I have a flashback, to…the same theater, the previous year, when I was going out with a different girl; on a first date destined to be our last. We took photos that I still had in some book I never read, so I’d never have to look at them and be reminded of that disastrous date. But that doesn’t help and my hand goes all sweaty inside Becca’s. Slowly I run my tongue over my lips which I am sure are far too dry just as my hands become lakes of clamminess.
X, looking at me with Great Significance, asks Becca to go to the restroom with her. Clumsily we disentangle ourselves, and I rise to let them pass, slumping down low as they leave, without catching a glimpse of the sunshine that had previously lit up the day.
Y leans over to me and begins to instruct me in his own methods of dating, and I look numbly forward. Glumly, I take a brief look at my relationships in theaters. They are less then stellar.
The first was just an embarrassingly poor choice of film, an ill constructed Bruce Willis action film which I went to see with a girl whom I had met because of drama and the fact we had both read 1984. Disappointments all around.
A second date at the movies ended quiet and forgettable, overshadowed by waking up to find an IM from the girl dumping me like a plague victim. A third, the photo date, had a relationship life of about a month.
So, slumped in my seat, barely listening to anything Y was saying, wondering why going on a date to the movies, such a quintessential and pleasurable thing, always ended up being, for me, the harbinger of a relationship’s end…thoughts which, might themselves, have been at the root of these unfortunate memories.
My discomfiture grows as Y continues talking, with G occasionally jumping in, and I start to squire in my seat, stopping only when I hear Y shift back into his seat and I look down to see X and Becca winding their way up the stairs towards us in the back. I straightened up and gulped then, looking at Becca’s now hesitant expression as she sat down next to me. We entwined ourselves around one another again and quietly settled in to previews.
I ask what took them so long and Becca rolls her eyes at X and whispers that it was “girl’s stuff”.
She asks what Y and G had been talking to me about. I look over at X, Y, and G, who now seemed to be entranced by the various images that now splash across the screen, where once Fred Astir and Ginger Roberts danced and Humphrey Bogart talked about being a tough man in a tough town (not really of course, but romanticism is a massive part of the movies anyway), and is now lit up by random violence dancing in a nonsensical fashion. They are enraptured and I feel safe enough to lean over and whisper directly in Becca’s ear “It was just weird.” She laughs and turns to face me, her nose less then a finger’s span from mine.
In light of the silver screen, I saw her biting the right half of her lower lip, making the left half jut out and bestowing an expression that is both pouting and incredibly cute upon her. It was one of the first expressions I’d come to know, even before we went out, and it had always melted something inside me. Which is when I get the single most inspired and yet idiotic idea I ever had: Why don’t I kiss her?
Almost instantly, I can come up with about a hundred reasons I should not kiss her, a hundred reasons why it would be the absolutely worst idea I couldn’t do, but all ready I was moving towards her mouth and my lips were connecting with hers and I could almost taste something sweet and lovely, but it was more like the memory of a taste. I closed my eyes. And for three seconds I was happy.
And in those three seconds, I was already formulating an apology, an excuse for kissing her, if she hits me and I break away to begin this litany. In my mind it went something like: “I’m really sorry I kissed you, it’s just that X told me to and Y told me to and I think G did, but really I couldn’t tell what he was saying. And X told me before this you wanted me to, but I never really trust X and I’m sorry I’m really sorry. But it also had to do with the fact you look so beautiful tonight with you strawberry blonde hair and that pouting expression that makes me just want to hold you forever. And I’m sorry for sounding so corny but this really is what I think, and I’m sorry again for everything.”
Or something similar.
Before I could get through any of that though, she smiled at me. And she was radiance. She kissed me back and I thought I love you.
It is one of only three memories that are crystal clear even today, but there is one thing about that night I cannot remember at all. I have no idea in hell anything that happened in that movie.”
I’m afraid I must apologize. This post started out like the last one with such a clear purpose and, yet, I just can’t seem to get it right. I begin with a theme, and I end with complete banality and inconsistency. Although to be fair, yesterday was Thursday, and as the great Douglas Adams said, “I could never get the hand of Thursday”. And today is Friday, I day I got the hang of, but where I often miss the mark. Now, some these statements might seem to contradict one another. They do not. But I’m a little too tired to explain or to think of why that is, so let’s just say its magic and pretend that all of this makes sense. By the way, the tenth person who reads this gets a prize. The prize will be of your own making, so that I won't spend any money.
No comments:
Post a Comment