Movie Anyone?

Last Thursday I went to dinner with my friend Joan at this little place on Main Street in Seal Beach called Cafe Lafayette. We both ordered the grilled cheese and tomato bisque soup combo. Is what we ate relevant to this post? Not in the least. Was the tomato bisque and grilled cheese so good I’m going back for this meal again? Um…yeah. I’ll definitely be adding this place and that bisque to my eating out rotation!

Anyway, over dinner Joan and I were discussing the best meals we’ve had, the best movies we’ve seen, etc., and, because of my recent post about dining for one, this led me to ask Joan if she’d eaten many meals alone or seen many movies on her own. Joan has, of course, done both. Her being in her 50s, and a widow, she’s as independent as I am. But, she confirmed that there were certain places and certain days and times she wouldn’t eat alone because of how she felt she was being perceived as a woman sitting alone. I liked that she understood that feeling, as I do, which made me feel validated. (Everyone likes a parking pass.)

I always love to see my friend Joan, and love her company, but because last night started out with Joan validating other notions of mine, I was feel’n purdy good and was big lov’n Joan last night. “Are you kidding me? I’d go nuts in a place as dark as this,” Joan said, when she saw that my new place gets no natural light. “Right? I have been feeling a little nutty every morning when I wake up and I know the sun is shining but it’s not getting inside to greet me,” I said. I told Joan that turning a light on, no matter what time a day it is, to do anything in the bedroom, kitchen, or the bathroom, was making me a little batty, too.

(Did you really think I could hold back some of the other reasons I’ll be moving again soon?)

Later, Joan told me, “I moved into this one house, and from the beginning it never felt like it was my place.” Joan had owned and lived in that house right before she moved into the home she’s been living in, and wouldn’t move from, now. She told me when she put that other house on the market, it sold in one day. Hmmm. There’s validation.

But this post is not about knowing, instantly, that some living space is a hop on the way and not a home. I want to share what I shared with Joan last night, that we both laughed about, but which was, at the time, not funny at all for me. It was the experience of going to my first movie alone.

I was 18 years old, living in South Lake Tahoe, which is where I’d moved to with Jen’s older sister (my high school best friend) about 3 weeks after graduating high school. It was October 31st, Halloween. Jen’s sister (we’ll call her JS from now on, as I can’t remember if I’ve called her by another name in a previous post) and her boyfriend had plans to go to a Halloween costume party and didn’t think to invite me to come along. I was too proud to ask if I could join. That’s probably because JS and I were headed for the ‘outs’ as friends pretty soon after we’d moved to Tahoe together. We were young and we were growing apart.

So this girl, me, totally pissed off and depressed that she’s going to spend Halloween alone, decides that she’s going to make a bold move in becoming the independent woman she sees herself as and she’s going to go to a movie alone. The problem? When we are young, somewhere down deep we often know who we are meant to be, who we really are and have always been, but this recognition sometimes comes before we have actually become that person. See, in youth we don’t quite get that everything in life, every step up or fall down, is designed to grow us into our skin.

So, my first movie alone, that was one of the first steps I actively took in being the independent girl and it SUCKED. I wasn’t actually that independent yet, so of course it blew. Plus, before I got to the movie theater, it all sounded good in theory: Buy the ticket, get some popcorn, slip into the dark and into a seat, mostly undetected, and do it. Just do it. Be the person who can sit there watching a movie alone in a public theater and be comfortable enough to laugh and cry at the movie without the consolation of a movie companion to share in those tears and giggles.

And it all would have been great, really, except I was alone at this movie. I wasn’t just feeling alone, really alone. I was actually alone. I was the only person who was attended the movie, Married to the Mob with Alec Baldwin and Michelle Pfeiffer. They only ran the reel for me, the sole ticket holder. I was also probably the only patron in the entire small, neighborhood theater that night, as I never saw another soul except the concessions guy.

When I bought my popcorn from this concessions guy, this pimple faced teenager looked at me like he was trying to figure out who was the more pathetic. Him, for having to work when all his friends were probably all running around in Star Trek costumes, or me, who obviously didn’t have a friend in the world else I’d not be at a movie alone on Halloween night.

There may have been one other person at the theater aside from me and the Trek-tastic teenager who asked, “Would you like butter on your popcorn?” I almost saw the guy running the reel. But I didn’t. Instead, I heard him. His voice broke into the silent darkness through the small, square, dimly-lit window, the one at the back of the theater where the movie projector peeks through to light the screen up with the evening’s entertainment delight. Projector guy asked, “Is anyone there?” He was probably just double checking, didn’t believe the rumor that Trek-tastic spread that some chick was sitting ALL by herself waiting for the movie to start.

I was there. I had been there for about eight minutes, eating my popcorn, sulking in the dark silence, and feeling silly and stupid for thinking I’d need to get to the theater early enough to get a good seat. I’d also been arguing with myself. Are you really going to stay, like an asshole alone? If I leave, who is going to think I am a wimp? I can’t ask that pimple-faced popcorn guy for my money back. No. You have to stay. You have to prove you can do this. You never have to go to a movie alone again if you don’t want to, but you have to do it this time. You have to get through this. You can’t cry. Just do this.

At the time, I couldn’t understand why I thought I had something to prove to myself. Now, I understand that whatever I had to prove then would eventually become the thing that I could just do—without thought, without reservation, without fear. It took showing myself that I could go to the movies alone many more times before I wasn’t proving it anymore. Finally, I got to where I wanted to be. I was going to see a movie because I wanted to see the movie and I didn’t want to wait around to see it until someone could see it with me.

I think that’s how I have been trying to live my life, jumping in a little more and not waiting for the life guard. Most things are wonderful when shared with others, but they don’t stop being wonderful just because they’re being enjoyed alone. Everyone wants someone who can laugh at the same movie with them, but not everyone remembers to keep laughing regardless.

Right now, I'm trying to find as many laughs as I can find in the Now. That way, whoever is going to join me will know how to find me; They can follow the sound of my laughter.