Happy in the Dark

(An excerpt from "My Life in Movies," a work-in-progress)

I take my seat in the mostly empty theater. Outside, it is a bright windy day, but I am happy to have had the brightness and wind eclipsed when I walked through the doors of the movie-house. There is something perversely satisfying about the disappearance of the daybright world, particularly when it is a movie-house or bar that is responsible for the hijacking.

This is my third visit to the movie-house this week. The movie-house, located in the Mission District, San Francisco, is one of those classic movie-houses on the verge of becoming an endangered species. There is no stadium seating in this theater, no obnoxiously amped sound system, no franchise-tendered popcorn shrimp or breaded chicken strips available at the concession stand.

The screen, like the theater itself, is of modest dimensions. The concession booth offerings, modest as well: a half-dozen different candies, popcorn served with real butter, soft drinks, coffee and tea. When I entered the movie-house I ordered a coffee and small popcorn with extra butter. The young man behind the counter served me and said—Enjoy your movie—and I could tell he really meant it. The young man struck me as a movie buff who was absolutely thrilled to be working a concession booth at a classic movie-house.

Young man, you are snug inside your dream, stay there as long as you can—I wanted to say to the young man, but only said thanks and went into the theater.

It is a Tuesday and I should be out looking for a job. That’s the reason I am here, in San Francisco. My wife and three-year-old daughter are presently living with my wife’s mother in Baton Rouge, waiting for me to find a job, then send for them, so we can start our new life in San Francisco. Until I found a job, one that would support all three of us, our new life, together, would be on hold.

I am staying with friends, who live five blocks away from the movie-house. I have been in San Francisco three weeks, and the first week I looked for a job with determination and enthusiasm, and by the second week my determination and enthusiasm had waned, or rather had been redirected to other areas of interest: mostly bars, and the classic movie-house.

When I talked to my wife on the phone to report my progress, I made sure to omit the frequency of my visits to the bars and the movie-house. Mt wife had lived in San Francisco once before, as had I, and she said: San Francisco can be a tough place to find work. I had her sympathy, for a while anyway, which was good.

On this day, the movie showing was Prozac Nation. Christina Ricci was playing the pill-addicted, suicide-fringed writer, Elizabeth Wurtzel. I hadn’t read the book, but I enjoyed the photo of Wurtzel on the cover. She reminded me of a lost waif, , a Sylvia Plath pin-up girl, and this photo of hers had inspired a number of fantasies, always set off by the line—I want to fuck Elizabeth Wurtzel—as if the green-light cue voiced from off-stage. The sad girls, the ones with the gummy insides and rainy mirrors always got to me. This may or may not have been Elizabeth Wurtzel, but the fantasy surrogate I had spawned from the “idea” of Elizabeth Wurtzel was the one with whom I conducted my shadow-play affair.

The lights in the theater go down. I notice that the young man from the concession booth has taken a seat in the back row. I am tempted to ask him if he’s read Prozac Nation, and what he thought of the cover photo of Elizabeth Wurtzel, but the urge flits past and I remain seated, munching my popcorn.

The movie begins, and with it arrives my temporary pardon from the daybright reality outside the movie-house.

I’ll look for work as soon as I leave the movie-house, I think, then remember it will be happy hour at Jelly Roll’s, the bar across the street, when the movie lets out.

Tomorrow. I’ll definitely look for work tomorrow.