Death Race 9:50

I'm sitting at the computer. The screen is the only light in the room and it dusts my face, arms, and chest with fluorescent power. I'm here trying to remember the events that led me here.

I worked later than usual, went to my sister's and changed the oil in both cars, watched some TV, and listened to jazz on the radio as I went home to help Alicia put the kids in bed. And with six quarters in my hand I hopped in the car and drove the 5 minutes to the theater.

I'm wearing my tight jeans, the ones whose seams—if I put more than a cellphone and my wallet in the pocket—make permanent indentations in the skin of my legs. I have to hold the quarters in my hand, which makes it hard to drive, so I put them on the passenger seat, on top of my jacket.

When I pull up the the theater and park, I grab my jacket and I hear the jingle of quarters as they ricochet off the passenger door, seat belt, and dash board. I'd like to curse, but no words come. Instead I fumble through the dark car feeling for six quarters. When those have been gathered up, I spill out of the car like a drunken man with a broken leg. I have no idea why, but the quarters incident has affected my equilibrium.

After I get my ticket, I wander into the theater checking my watch to make sure I'm still on time. An usher stands a good 20 feet in front of the ticket-taking podium. He's a short Asian teen, with long stringy hair. As I pass him he walks with me, and I hand him my ticket. He tears it without looking at it and hands it back to me, and there is this strange moment when we are walking in-sync toward the velvety ropes that divide those with untorn tickets from those with torn tickets. And for a moment we look as if we could be having a friendly conversation.

The theater is mostly empty, as it is most nights, but I prefer it that way. I think about the way that we can all sit in a mostly-empty theater and watch the same movie and have the same experience without out knowing each other and not wanting to know each other, but craving that shared experience. And the lights dim, the trailers start, and we all share together, alone.

Pineapple Express 10:20

Nate and I just helped Stew move and we’re over at his place eating the soup Steph made for a dinner that nobody ate. It’s thick with ingredients, like a pasta salad went to a hot tub party and drowned. There are huge chunks of sausage that bring a spiciness to it, and it fills me. We watch the season finale of Project Runway as we eat, and find myself being sucked in to a show that I’ve never really paid any attention to. I’m making comments like, “her line looks really cohesive” and “those designs show a maturity lacking in the previous contestant.” And I’m saying these things, and I’m wondering who is making such ridiculous comments. Then I shut up and eat my soup.

As the show cuts to a commercial before the final decision, I turn to Nate and tell him it’s time to leave. I say this because I want to make the movie on time, but I also do it because I don’t want to know who wins. That way I can display plausible deniability if any one ever asks me if I watch Project Runway. I’ve seen bits and pieces, here and there, but to watch the end of the season finale seems to cross a line that I don’t want to cross. To declare myself a part of the Project Runway community.

As we drive to the theater, Nate tells me about his new van, and we discuss the relative benefits of captain’s chairs versus a bench seat. I think about calling Steph and asking who won, and I hate myself for thinking about it.

As we approach the ticket booth Nate says he’s offended that I went to Hancock without him, and Hellboy II and the new Narnia movie. I give the verbal equivalent of shrugging my shoulders, and we buy our tickets. I want to promise him that I’ll always consult him whenever I go to a late-night dollar movie, but I can’t because I won’t. Sometimes the draw of the solitary movie experience is too much to ignore, and I don’t call him because the intimacy of that experience is what I crave. Like an alcoholic who craves to drink alone, away from the prying eyes of society, so is my lust for the desolate land of lonely movie-going.

But tonight, I want company. I want to share my drug.

There is no usher standing at the ticket-taking podium tonight. Instead an overweight teenage girl with badly kempt hair leans over the counter of the concession stand and calls us over, taking our tickets, and motioning around the corner to our theater.

The theater is packed and I think Nate and I are the only ones there over the age of eighteen. The other theater patrons are like nervous birds. They congregate, move seats, flirt, and hold hands in a flurry of excess hormones and Clearasil. They laugh riotously at even the most remotely funny parts of the movie.

Their spirit is exciting and infectious, and I laugh with them all as if we were one entity, all sharing the same experience—because we are.