It was the first time in a long time, perhaps ever, that I felt a deep connection with someone. A rush of endorphins, like the come on of a strong psychedelic, was coursing through my veins while I casually walked down the dark aisle. I was so unaccustomed to feelings like that. They were so foreign that I could only just hold myself together until they passed. Not that they ever really did.
God, was she beautiful? There was no question. Like Charlton Heston as Moses, coming down from Mt. Sinai, she glowed. The pale light from the rickety projector in back cast an otherworldly hue on her face and clothes. It was really like a moment captured in time. One of those you can just think back on at any time, like a photograph your brain takes for you.
She had the most gorgeous profile. I think that really says a lot about a girl’s beauty. When you can become so immediately enamored by the shape of someone’s head, that’s really something. They say your senses become more acute when you’re looking at a person you’re attracted to. In fact, it’s really a huge understatement. Maybe that’s why time seemed stop, because there were so many things to process. Her frazzled and wavy blonde hair was immediately apparent. While it seemed unkempt, a natural product of the gloomy damp evening, I could tell that she had probably spent a lot of time on it that morning. It was thick and looked like a chore to maintain, but it was parted perfectly in the center of her head, with a clip to the side, keeping the hair out of her face, I saw as I turned out of the corridor and into the theater.
She lowered her hand, which she had been absent-mindedly hovering near her face while she gazed up at the screen, and reached into the large bowl of popcorn nestled in her other arm. Expecting to see her daintily pull out one or two pieces, I was pleasantly surprised to watch the way she clawed repeatedly into the popcorn, her hand searching methodically for a handful that would maximize the efficiency of its trip to her well-rounded lips. One of the first things I noticed about her was the way the tip of her nose wiggled just slightly whenever she ate. Something about that, it was just so goddamn sexy, it literally took my breath away.
While my legs were naturally guiding me to my usual seat, I started to become increasingly more aware that they were also guiding me right in her direction. In a brief panic, I did a quick one-eighty and let the lights guide me up the dimly lit theater steps while I silently criticized myself on being such a dork. I must’ve got about halfway up before I realized I needed to pick a new seat. Luckily for me it was a pretty dead place, not counting Miss Oh-So-Lovely sitting up close to the front there were only a couple of other people present. That wasn’t unusual, either.
Vine Theater never exactly drew a crowd. It had always been a dilapidated pile of shit, which is really a shame because Bill and Gloria, the owners, couldn’t afford a maintenance staff. It was dimly lit and oily, and seemed like the type of place where upsetting things happen to unsuspecting people. Mainly though, people just didn’t like to see old movies, but for whatever reason that was Vine’s great niche in an otherwise distasteful society. You know what I mean, when you have that one thing you like to do so much it just makes everything else seem inadequate. It may be weird, but that’s the way I feel about classic movies. I’m not really sure why, I just always have.
I picked a seat in the middle of some row near the top. The seats in that place weren’t much to look at, but they were comfortable. I nestled in, stealing glances when I could down at the hot number in the front. If you asked me what movie was playing that night, I couldn’t tell you. The back of her head held most of my attention at the time, and I was still kicking myself for my awkward acrobatic coming in. If she noticed me, I had just made a terrible first impression. I didn’t believe she had, but that didn’t stop me from thinking about the possibility obsessively. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m nothing if not obsessive.
At age eleven, my parents took me to a shrink because they were getting worried about my little quirks and hiccups. Well, they started as little stuff, like tapping on door handles three times before entering or leaving a room, rearranging the spice cabinet or silverware drawer, and during my morning and nightly showers, I would do my best to imitate Gene Kelly’s “Singin’ in the Rain,” in both key and volume. I guess my singing was bad enough that it brought me some serious attention, because within two weeks of moving into a house with a shower right next to my parents’ bedroom, I found myself sitting on an unforgiving leather sofa in a smoky, rustically adorned office in Indianapolis Indiana. It took a few sessions, but eventually the guy got with the program and gave me the official diagnosis of OCD. And that was just fine with me, I knew I was different, and now I had a name for it.
Common traits of those with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder are implicative within the name itself. They act obsessively and compulsively in a semi-uncontrollable manner, which in many cases results in some strange habits. Mine started to progress steadily throughout my teenage years. I was never a social butterfly to begin with, but as time went on I began to become reclusive, refusing even to go to school, to the chagrin of my parents, who were more than adept at writing off my problems as being due to my condition. It wasn’t until high school that I was diagnosed with Autism, but when I was, I decided that I didn’t really like labels. I’m not a dumb person. I’m pretty normal, actually, as far as intelligence goes. By normal, of course I think that I have above average intelligence and everyone else, especially truckers and referees, are complete idiots, so being grouped with this type of people who are known for being mentally handicapped was pretty devastating, especially at that time in my life, when the angst flowed like a fiery shit. That was the worst time in my life, really the worst of 2 worlds. I was used to having a somewhat normal social life, but then I gradually decided I didn’t like people that much, that they fuck me up, and that I am better to do things alone. You can still miss something even though you don’t want it anymore, is what I’m saying. That’s when I started to get heavy into movies. I say it like it’s a drug, because looking back, I think it’s a pretty good comparison. It started to consume my life. By that time, I had dropped out of high school and became a burden on my mother and father, who I did my best to stay away from whenever possible. I wasn’t angry or upset at anybody, I just didn’t like the idea of mingling with other people. Poopy Koontz was a slight exception, but just because we shared an obsession of movies, and he did most of the talking. But anyway, I digress.
From the middle section I head a phone ring. Some unfortunate individual saw the need to set their ring tone to some vanilla flavored rap song about a gangster counting his money in a private club. I found it funny that anyone into that kind of thing would be spending their time watching old black and whites on a Friday evening. The heavy man silenced his phone. His chair made a gasping creak as he struggled to stand and excuse himself from the room to take the call. I’m telling you, those seats really suck you in! I saw the girl turn to pass him a frown as he exited stage right.
With no more unwanted distractions, I was free to enjoy the one distraction I was happy to have. I wanted so badly to go sit next to her, but what the hell would I say? I had already made such a stunning performance already, it was pretty obvious how my attempt would go down. I would walk up to her and say hello. Then what? Then, a series of embarrassing events would occur which would ultimately lead to me sitting in the front row by myself, with a nearly full tub of popcorn and a lifetime’s worth of regret. But that wasn’t the only way it could happen, was it? Poopy Koontz would have said that it’s better that I see the glass as half empty, because eventually everyone finds out the glass is actually filled with piss, and the government taxes every drop. Poop had a way with words like that. Give him some obscure, touchy feely subject, and he could find a way to relate it to you so you could understand. We used to sit for hours in The Vine, watching the screen flicker to life as another pocket-sized and well-distanced drama unfolded before our eyes. Not that any of them were new to us, we were seasoned watchers, and between us, we could quote every line.
“I don’t have to show you any stinking badges!”
“Here’s looking at you, kid.”
“Alright, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my closeup.”
Poopy may have had a line for everything, but I knew deep down he would want me to break out of my comfort zone and say hello, which is what I really wanted to do, anyway. That in itself was weird, because it’s the last thing I would usually want to do. After an extended period of inner turmoil, I saw the girl turn around in her seat, one hand above her head, shading her eyes from the light of the harsh projector. At that time I became intensely aware of myself, of my body and its stiff, awkward positioning in my seat, and reactively started to squirm backwards, letting myself sink deeply into the greasy warm foam of the seat cushion. I scanned the screen, as if it had suddenly become very the most interesting thing in the room, while she gazed upward. I risked a glance at her. Very quick, not even enough time to process what I had seen before my eyes had darted back to the silver screen, absently gazing, giving the glance a chance to resonate in my mind.
Her cheeks were soft and colorful, I could see, even in the unflattering light. Her cheekbones were fairly prominent, and blended nicely into her slender, feminine nose, adorned below with a salacious set of bright red lips. Her equally womanly jawline and chin flexed subtly up and down, chewing on a delicious morsel, the moviegoers’ manna, or fruit from the tree of empty carbs. There was a strong shadow over her eyes, but it seemed like she was looking at me. Not just towards me, but at me. I proceeded to perform the world’s slowest double take, which must have looked pretty ridiculous, because I saw her smile, which filled me with a peculiar sense of relief I can best describe as embarrassed accomplishment.
She turned back around in her seat, and her head disappeared below the headrest. Her feet emerged seconds later, bare, one of them adorned with an ankle bracelet. She rested them on the railing in front of her, as coolly as a cucumber. I pretty much knew at that point that I had to go to her. So against all reasoning, against my nerves screaming, demanding that I cease and desist, overcome with the all-too-familiar tenacity of automatic action, I stood up, edging my way out of my comfort zone and into the aisle. I gave no pause or moment to change my mind as I walked awkwardly down the slightly-curved staircase, which was at the same time too shallow and too long. My hand brushed the railing, and stuck for a moment, my clammy hands providing too much friction on the metal bar, letting off a faint, high-pitched squeal before I wiped both my hands on my jeans.
When I got to her row and still didn’t have anything to say, I began to panic. I considered what Poopy would do. Simple enough, Poopy was an advocate of blunt honesty. He was the type of guy who really liked to ‘keep it real.’ He would even say so himself. So with this in mind, I began to speak.
“You’re in my seat.”
The girl turned sharply towards me, seeming alarmed. Inside, I was again cursing myself, this time for scaring her. I quickly thought of something better to say.
“Sorry. Can I have some popcorn?”
Her concerned forehead wrinkles slackened a bit, and a controlled smile appeared briefly. “Do I know you?” she asked, already knowing the answer.
I had to come up with something quickly, something that wouldn’t end up with me alone in the front row with her popcorn, which was looking more and more likely each second. As I leaned over onto the chair next to the aisle, I thought again of Poopy. What would Poopy do? Honesty. Ok. Just tell the truth.
“No. I saw you on the way in, you were in my seat. So I sat up there for awhile, until I decided to come say hi. I mean, I don’t care that you’re in my seat, but I wanted to say hi anyway. I don’t usually do this sort of thing.”
Listening to myself say that made me want to run out of the theater and straight into oncoming traffic. I sounded like a lunatic, rambling on about my seat. After I shut my mouth I decided not to open it again until I had something good to say. So I continued to look at her, while she regarded me inquisitively.
I believe everyone has their own spirit animal. In that, I mean everyone has a particular animal that they most resemble. I, for instance, am a giraffe. Being tall, skinny, and awkward, it’s not a hard stretch to look at me and see a giraffe. My mother’s spirit animal was also a giraffe, for the same reasons, although she was self-conscious, and would always wear wide-fitting clothes and dresses, which just made her look disproportionate. My father had the spirit of a bulldog. That was mostly in the face, although he was shorter than my mother. It was often comical to see the 2 going about their daily lives, the bulldog and the giraffe making a life together. Not that any of this is too important, it’s just that when I saw the girl in the theater up close, looking at her streamlined face, which seemed to culminate at the tip of her cute nose, with that cute wiggle I had seen earlier, I immediately recognized her spirit animal. She made about the cutest mouse I had ever seen.
She gave another of those heart-winning smiles, flashing her teeth, while I seemed to be able to taste the intoxication coming from the air around her.
“Are you a water sign?” she asked, after an infinite second. I didn’t know how to respond. I didn’t know what a water sign was. But honesty hadn’t necessarily failed me so far.
“I’m not sure, are you?” I said.
She smiled again. This wasn’t going so badly after all. “No, I’m a Leo… Did you want some popcorn?”
She raised the popcorn box and shook it slightly and rapidly, as if to emphasize the exact popcorn container I would be eating from, or to draw my gaze onto something besides her blue eyes. These eyes weren’t a seductive sort of blue, which I would have expected on such a temptress, but an striking shade of pale, wind washed blue that can burn a hole right through your train of thought.
“No,” I said, and then hesitated for a few moments before she finally asked my name. When I told her it was Enoch, she looked doubtful, but said nothing against it.
“Well I’m Penelope. If you’re going to sit with me, get over here. I hate loud whispering.”
The tone of our conversation had started out quietly enough, but as the movie progressed, we had to raise our voices until our whispers were becoming ragged and overblown. I gladly accepted her invitation, but I had also exhausted my stock of things to say. She had slid a veil around my mind, and so we sat in silence, watching the movie for a time before she turned to me, excited.
“Have you ever had your palm read?” she asked.
I hadn’t. I had never been interested in that sort of thing. Now it seemed like a good idea, anything seemed like a good idea if it meant holding the attention of this singularly beautiful woman.
“No,” I said frankly, “can you read it?”
“Give me your hand.”
Willingly enough, I reached my hand over and placed it in hers, palm out. As she took it, I felt that initial skin-to-skin reaction people talk about, like a jolt of electricity. I have to say, as bad puns go, I was positively charged. She used both hands to read my fortune, and for the most part it was pretty accurate. She held my hand in one of hers, letting our fingers intertwine into a vineyard of implied intimacy. With her other, she gently traced the creases along my hand, sending a bright buzz of tactile bliss up and down my spine, the inexorable reaction of one who some would say “has it bad.”
“This is your life line,” she whispered, drawing the pad of her middle finger from the bottom of my palm to where the crease ended above my thumb. “See how it goes down sort of straight? That means you’re cautious with relationships. Is that right?”
I nodded slowly. “I don’t know, I’ve never really been in one.”
“If you’ve never been in one, that means you’re extra cautious!” she whispered enthusiastically, smiling again. “Palms don’t lie.”
I smiled too. “That is a good point. What else?”
She continued. “Here is your heart line,” she said, tracing a line at the top of my palm at a maddeningly slow rate. “Yours begins right over this finger, meaning you’re selfish when it comes to love. It’s also short, which means you have troubles with romance.”
“I guess that would make sense. You’re probably right.”
“But you haven’t had any romance, so your trouble is in finding it!” Her voice got considerably louder towards the end, and she scanned the virtually empty theater behind us, as if to make sure she had not caused any disturbance. “See, this stuff really works,” she said more quietly. “Do you want to hear your fortune?”
“Yeah, tell me,” I urged. Not that I would have said no to anything she wanted to do at that point.
“Today, you will take a risk, and it will pay off greatly,” she prophesied, as if it wasn’t a fortune at all, but a fact. And how could I deny that she was right? Had I not already taken a considerable risk in talking to her, and had it not paid off? In fact, the only fortunes she was giving me were things that, on some level, she already knew. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that she wasn’t trying to amaze me with her gift of quick logical reasoning. She was daring me.
For the longest time, I sat there with her in relative silence. The sound from the movie came through the speakers, and nothing else. One thing I find interesting is how a theater is really a timeless place. With no windows, no connections to the outside world, or circadian rhythms, or deadlines, it’s just you and a story, and until that story has finished, you’re stuck in this frozen sliver of existence between your past and future. For me, the best times of my life were had during those periods. First, it was getting lost in the stories, then watching with Poopy and laughing as he gave his witty two cents whenever a scene came around that would set up his joke. But those days were gone, and sitting there with my clammy hand in hers, I realized that my light experiences with Poopy had paled in comparison to that heaviness I felt in that moment, the tension and suspense, like everyone in the world held their breath at the same time, or like Earth descended into a state of free-fall.
I decided enough was enough. Throwing that “cautious relationships” nonsense to the wind, I decided to go for it. No automatic action this time, it had to be wrested by my rallying resolve, from some thick mire of vulnerability and insecurity somewhere in my mind. As I leaned in, eyes closed, I sensed her draw in a quick breath. What had I gotten myself into? Since when did I know how to kiss a girl? I hoped she would make some effort to meet me halfway, however I could only anticipate the connection of my lips with hers, or else my eyes would open and she would be gone, unceremoniously replaced by her partially-eaten bucket of over-salted popcorn.
She wasn’t gone.
After that night, things finally started coming together for me. I had a chance to debrief – and not in the sense Poopy would use, meaning roughly “to shed one’s undergarments.” I just mean a period of intense reflection which helped me put the whole experience into perspective. Some part of me, most of me really, knew that I was in love with her, but being the pessimist that I am, I can’t handle idealism too well. Of course a girl like that would never end up with a guy like me, and so the question became where did that leave me. A pessimist might say that I ended up right back where I started, but I don’t think so. In fact, I might not be a pessimist at all, now that I think about it. I don’t know why I ever said I was. She claimed to read my palm and see my future, which anyone would tell you was just a means to an end. Maybe I’m over-analyzing it too much, like I do with most other things, but I think she really showed me a new way of life that night, one where social interaction isn’t based out of caution or practicality, but out of a very elementary interest and openness towards other people.
I didn’t eat popcorn that night, but as I stood later in the shower picking kernels from my teeth, I have to say, I felt pretty full.