The trailer is for a movie about two little girls who go missing and what happens to their families in their desperate search to find them. People hold candlelight vigils and Viola Davis asks the detective, Jake Gyllenhaal, if he has any children of his own. It looks like a painful experience. “Not me,” I say. “If I wanted to be depressed and stressed out for two hours, I’d spend time with my grandparents.”
Soon, the movie will begin, but right now, I’m funneling Reece’s Pieces down my throat and bouncing my bare feet on the seat in front of me. I am wearing eight-year-old breakaway sweatpants, a backwards hat, and a t-shirt from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s African American Culture Committee 2009 Fashion Show. “I think I want a hot dog,” says Joey. “What?!” I say. “We already have nachos and candy.” Joey stands and asks me if I want anything. “Yeah,” I sigh. “Surprise me.” He leaves and I’m alone.
In the next trailer, Sandra Bullock plays an astronaut who gets detached from her space station tether and spins out into space. She gets smaller and smaller on the screen and the theatre gets darker and darker until room is the same pitch as it was when the lights first went down. In the interior nightscape, the only thing I can see is a pair of disembodied arms bobbing up the stadium steps to my left. They glow and I stare, moth-to-flame. But then, a burst of light shoots out of the screen and illuminates the theatre in digital sunshine. The title of the movie is emblazoned across the screen and shining out over the audience. It's like coming up to the surface for air. I quickly turn back to look at the arms, which are now attached to a full person; a man in cuffed jean shorts and a black tank top. He is standing still, mid-step, and looking back over his shoulder to catch the title of the film before ascending to his seat and settling in with the rest of us. In that moment, his face, lit up by the words of some designer who labored over the stroke and kerning of each letter, is a mosaic of black and white. And as quickly as it came, the luster is gone and he is reduced to a pair of arms again that float to a seat in the row behind me. And even though the trailer is over, and Sandra Bullock is lost in space, and a new trailer featuring home invaders wearing animal masks will begin shortly, my heart is in my throat. Because the person sitting behind me, the one's whose handsome face was illuminated by roaring light, used to be my boyfriend.
I don't see him very often, which makes seeing him now even stranger, because I ran into him a week ago in New Orleans. He was standing with a group of guys near a bar on top of which a middle-aged man in a thong danced. Alone, I marched up to him, pinched the fatty underside of his bicep, and shook it. I don't know why I did this. Maybe because it seemed like a smart balance of intimacy and aggression — like giving your younger brother a noogie or slapping your best friend on the back. But when I shook his arm, I didn't notice he was holding a drink, and vodka and cranberry splashed onto everyone around us. We stared at each other, too stunned to speak. Then, he made a loud glottal sound and stormed off to the bathroom without saying a word. I was left with his friends and began stammering. "I am. So sorry," I said. "I didn't see his. Ugh. Drink and I. Um. Wanted to. I'm Ryan. We used to. Um. Date a while back. But I'll see you later bye." I scampered away and didn't see him again that night. Now, a week later, he is here — in the same theatre as me, seeing the same movie as me, but not wearing breakaway sweatpants and funneling Reece’s Pieces like me. Everything about me is amazingly unflattering and somehow, he just managed to accidentally catch a ray of God's glory all over his face. Nothing is fair about this or anything that’s ever happened.
Throughout the movie, I’m mostly unaware he’s there. But every now and then, I’m haunted by the memory of the last time we saw a movie together. We were in this exact theatre more than two years ago, both of us dressed in button-down shirts and long pants. I don’t exactly remember if we were dating other people at the time, but I do remember that we weren't together anymore. Actually, we'd been broken up for nearly a year and we were trying to develop a friendship. A movie sounded like a good idea for a friendship outing. I’d wanted to see Inception, anyway, and I figured maybe we could just see it together. So I ironed an outfit and picked him up at his apartment. He was dressed up, too, but I wouldn’t expect anything less of him. He could always dress himself, even if the outfit included something I hated like vinyl drawstring capri pants. In the movie, he held my hand. And when it was over, we went home and had sex. And it would be the last time, except for once in February 2012 when we were drunk and angry with our boyfriends.
On my twenty-first birthday, when we were dating, he recreated a campsite in his living room with bungee cords, tarps, and handmade signs. He even lit a fire in the fireplace and fried catfish because he knew that fried catfish was my favorite food. We nestled into sleeping bags and watched What Dreams May Come; his favorite movie, not mine. But I didn’t mind. I’d never seen it before, but I thought it was beautiful and eerily complimentary to my favorite movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. We fell asleep in front of the fire, and in the morning, I collected all of the signs that were taped to the walls, one of which said “Beware of Badgers,” and placed them into the break-up box I kept under my bed. A few months later, I would feed each piece of paper into a fire while my new boyfriend stared at me and tried to figure out how to make me feel better.
A few weeks ago, I was throwing a party at my house when someone asked me how I felt about my ex’s new boyfriend. “Should I feel anything?” I asked. “I haven’t really talked to him in a long time, so I don’t know what kind of person he is, now. But if he’s anything like he used to be, I hope the new guy has the sense to bail sooner than later.” I thought about adding, “But I hope he’s happy,” but I didn’t. Because I don’t care either way. You reach a point when you stop wishing certain people well, and you feel ambivalent about their well-being. Wishing takes effort. And I’d rather focus that effort elsewhere. The truth is, we never got a happy ending. From the beginning, our love was furious and toxic, peppered with a few happy memories that still break my heart. I loved him with one eye open — always afraid things would fall apart and never sure how to hold it together. And now, he is sitting behind me. Close enough for me throw a fistful of candy at him. And if I did, maybe he would make a loud glottal sound and storm off to the bathroom without saying a word. Or maybe not.
When the movie is over, Joey and I go outside where the climate is warmer and the views are less cinematic. We’re halfway home before I realize I forgot to look behind me when the movie ended. But if I had seen him, I probably wouldn’t have said anything. I probably would've made eye contact and looked away before I could feel angry, or frustrated, or optimistic, or disgusted, or in love because none of this was supposed to happen this way, and he is a living symbol of my past that went on to have a future. He is the choose-your-own-adventure that went unread.
He is Chris Nielsen if he would've just stayed in heaven.
He is Joel Barish if he would've just met someone else after Clementine erased him.
He is Cobb's dead wife's totem that just keeps spinning. Spinning. Spinning. And then black.
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