"EXHIBITIONIST AT THE PICTURE SHOW"-PART FOUR

"EXHIBITIONIST AT THE PICTURE SHOW" (part four)

“You gave her a ride home?!?!”

Theresa was understandably dumbfounded when I gave that bit of information. Yet, she decided not to kill me when I reminded her that up was down and it was completely innocent. I explained to her that Lauren caught me as I was leaving the Barrymore and asked for a ride home because it was raining and it was after 2:00 a.m. I suppose it was against better judgment but I didn’t want some girl walking alone in the dark down Willy Street. So, I took her home.

“She could’ve been a serial killer, Sean!”

As I put her into Theresa’s car, that was indeed my very thought. Yet, I didn’t have to fight for my life and it was a short ride. Lauren told me how much fun she had and that if I was ever poking around the Union, that I should look for her because she worked in the Travel Center, to which Theresa exclaimed, “Well, I have got to see who this woman is!”

The next day Theresa was in full “secret agent” mode with her mirrored sunglasses and black beret and there I was, grudgingly following her throughout the entire Union, her hoping, myself not hoping, to catch a glimpse of Lauren. Fortunately, after two hours of this, Theresa tired of the pursuit and we shared some popcorn in the ‘Rat.

“I just don’t get it,” I started, “I mean—I know these things happen but she looked so…normal. She could’ve been anybody.”

“You know what they say about the ‘normal’ ones.”

“Theresa, it just doesn’t make sense. She said she had a girlfriend. Why would she do that to me?!”

“That has nothing to do with it, Sean. It could just be something she does. A way to get her kicks. To find some unsuspecting guy in a dark place and freak them out. You still don’t even know if she ever really did anything.”

“But, that’s not the point. I was just trying to watch my movie. That’s all I wanted.”

It struck me later how much that night disturbed me. I have this friend, a Com Arts major named Edye. She always likes to go on and on about the nature of art and how art is never a finished thing. How as we connect with a painting, or book, or song or, in this case, a movie, it changes every time we see it because we, as people, are constantly evolving and each re-introduction is a fresh experience. It didn’t really make much sense all those times she said that but now, I understood. “Tommy” had changed for me. It changed for me every time I saw it. Now, I couldn’t even watch it anymore without thinking of that night and Lauren’s proposition. I became angry and then hurt that someone could take something that was so purely mine and stain it. And for some reason, it made me think of some forgotten (or repressed) details of when I saw “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” most notably, the behavior of my Dad.

For much of that night, my Dad had left me in the theater alone. I remember that he complained of stomach trouble due to something he ate at the family reunion. He always told me how much he liked the movie, whenever I asked him. But, he saw barely half of it and now, I wonder if that movie was truly as bad as everyone said. That my Dad hated it so much that his absence had nothing to do with being in a bathroom but everything to do with the movie being so painfully unwatchable that he had to wait it out in the lobby. Maybe he did hate it that much and never had the heart to tell me that just because I loved it so much. Maybe the audience applauded at the end because the damn thing was over!  Without any hyperbole, real or imagined, part of me felt a tad violated. Something was missing that I could never get back and it crushed me.

Believe it or not, you would not believe what I happened to catch on TV late one night, while sitting in my dorm’s lounge. “Sgt. Pepper”!! Its’ flaws were shockingly apparent. The re-makes of treasured Beatles’ songs were, at times, ghastly. The humor was cheap and cartoonish and the spectacle was filled to the brim with relentless and downright inexcusable 1970’s excess.

And I still loved it.
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