Diary Friday

This is actually a repeat. I posted this a year and a half ago, but I decided to unearth it. It is the story of my first date in college with this boy. Heh heh. Now a couple things before it begins, and it’s kind of long, so only die-hard Diary Friday fans will be into it. But here’s one thing that strikes me as I re-read this:

— Not to be vain, but let me talk about the writing. It’s rough, it’s emotional, it’s unaware of itself – but I can sense that a writer’s sensibility is starting to come out. It’s the story of a date, that’s it. A date I had with this guy I really liked, and who eventually became my boyfriend for a while. But the way I wrote about the date makes me believe that I was starting to see things in terms of story-telling potential.

— Secondly, and this is only in the retrospect of many many years: This boy and I were both 18 years old here. This was our first date, and it has such a tone of innocence, sweetness … We were still teenagers. A date is a date. BUT, underneath all of that runs an ominous energy. It’s a very very weird entry to me, because of that. It’s writerly, in a strange way. Like – the surface events are this: we meet, we have dinner, we go to a movie. But underneath that surges a darkness. Not between US, no … we’re fine. But something else. It’s like there’s a sense that innocence itself is threatened by something, innocence’s very existence is threatened – What lies out there in the darkness, waiting to pounce? Something does, that’s for sure. I could not have been aware of all that at the time, because I was innocent and unaware. I was a young girl, not even bloomed yet. But there are details in the story, this story of an innocent first date, that strike a menacing tone. (The “condescending” line of fir trees comes to mind. The water tower that reminds me of “Ozymandius”. How I started thinking, when I took off my shoes, about Sylvia Plath’s recurring shoe-as-death symbolism. The fact that the beginning of the date takes place in a secluded garden. Like Adam and Eve. And that he and I characterized the end of the date as “hell”. I mean, you can’t make this stuff up. It really happened that way. Something occurred at the end of the date which was “Hell” with a capital “H” for both of us, and it left us both shaken up.) I mean, it all really happened just as I described it, but there’s something else going on there. Something archetypal, maybe. I’m tapping into something universal. At least in the way I wrote about it. I don’t mean to discuss my own life in this literary way, but there you have it, I am. My friend David always says that my life is a “literary conceit”, and in this one journal entry I can see what he means. I wrote this entry spontaneously, pouring out the experience onto the page unthinkingly. I wasn’t trying to engineer some kind of effect, I wasn’t thinking: “Oooh, let me mention Ozymandius … that would be a good touch.” I just blabbed it out. It is only now that I can look back and think that maybe I was onto something back then, without even knowing it.

My innocence WAS threatened then, as all innocence is. Innocence like that cannot last forever. And so there were signs and portents all around me … but I didn’t put them together into anything cohesive. I couldn’t see what was coming. Of course not.

But there it is in the writing – I read it now, and it’s like the Silhouettes (Part 1 and Part 2) I keep an eye out for silhouettes, as superstitious as that might seem. I feel that they might mean something, they might go deeper than surfaces.. I find it strangely moving, and also – well. I guess I’m glad I wrote it all down in the way that I did. I always think of this entry in particular as the birth of me as a writer, as a chronicler – not only of surface events, but of the dark unconscious beneath all events.

December

It was the Monday night before the massive blizzard but it was spring-warm, misty, mild. Not like November at all. We had plans to meet for dinner. The two of us.

He was in Julius’ lab, and I knew they were all in J Studio so I sat in the Actor’s Lobby waiting for him, listening to The Manhattan Transfer in a state of pretty-near-perfect content. (Ed: Manhattan Transfer!! Ha! We LOVED Manhattan Transfer in college.) Life contains so many interesting twists and surprises – little subtle things. I was engrossed in the music, reading something, and singing “Barkely Square” outloud to the empty lobby, choosing a harmony line to follow: “The moon that lingered over London T—” I stopped the song in mid-word, cause I looked up and saw Jack coming in, catching me in my private moment. He started laughing at me immediately, and we still laugh about it. He recreates the moment, pretending to be – but the way he does it is, he sings absolutely unintelligible words, in a supersonically high disconnected voice – which is probably what he heard – and stops it very short too. “T—-” As though someone stabbed me with an axe in the middle of the word “Town”.

We started off. We had no definite plans. Just dinner.

We decided to go to Del Mor’s. (Ed: This is absolutely hysterical. Del Mor’s no longer exists, but it was THE restaurant on campus – basically a cavernous dark place, where you could have bottomless cups of coffee, and big sandwiches. Sandwiches which cost 2 dollars. I love that we went on a date to Del Mor’s – a place we ate in every single day anyway. Ah, college. Also, I’m sure we were broke. We were teenagers.) Talk for some reason was rather stilted. I didn’t know why I felt awkward and uncomfortable but I did. He looked so nice. He had a tie on!!

He made an observation about how I always look away whenever I take a bite. “What’s over there? Why do you always avert your eyes when you take a bite?”

“Uh … I never realized I did.”

And once he made me conscious of it, it completely shocked me. Every single time I took a bite, I looked over to the right. And every single time I did that, we’d both start laughing.

Oh, and we had a lot of trouble with our food that night. Spitting, dropping things in our lap, spills. I took a sip of Coke and it dribbled down my chin. It was a chronic situation, for both of us. And by the end of the night, when one of us would spill something, or drop cole slaw on ourselves, we would start to laugh absolutely uproariously. I am sure we seemed very obnoxious to nearby tables, since none of our food would stay in our mouths and all we did was guffaw with laughter. He kept trying to shove French fries in my mouth and I would say, “No, I don’t want any” which he would ignore. “Jack, please … no thank you.”

He kept this blank inquisitive look on his face like, “You want this? You don’t want a fry? You sure? You want a fry?” He acted deaf.

Finally, I opened my mouth wide to say, “NO” and he popped the fry into my mouth.

We were howling.

I began to get itchy. Restless. I wasn’t sure why. I felt like I needed to be active. He commented on my jiggling leg. “Are you nervous?”

“Yeah. I don’t know why. I’m really antsy for some reason.”

So we decided to go. We took a walk around campus. It was a perfect night for a walk. Not chilly at all, no wind, a light mist. We walked across the Quad. Surrounded by huge stone buildings, a few windows lit, orange lamplight fuzzed by the mist, the sky a velvety musty black with an orange tint from the lamps.

It struck me as we meandered along, not talking, “This is how I always thought college would be. This is exactly what I pictured.” The deserted campus. The light mist.

I wanted to hug the whole big beautiful world.

We were walking by the biological science building, which is all underground, like Bilbo Baggins’ house – The top of it is like this mound of grass with a big space on top of it, with a cinder-block ground – doorways leading down into the depths. It’s like a future world – or another world. Especially at night. We climbed up the mound of grass to get the top of this strange alien world – cinder-blocks stretching to the horizon, strange cement formations popping up with lights on them – like a martian world – or like a futuristic Stone Henge. We discussed all of this as we explored. There was no sound. It was dead quiet. Mist getting a little thicker. We skulked around. We lay down on our backs for a while, and talked about how much it looked like a deserted planet. A deserted martian world.

A stray person, nondescript in shadow, strolled by the two of us, laying spreadeagled on the cement ground like lunatics, and didn’t say a word.

We found an open door leading down into the underworld (or: the biological science building). Feeling more and more like imposters, we tiptoed down the stairs, went through the door at the bottom, and found ourselves in this deserted courtyard, surrounded by glassed-in hallways. From the top, you could peek down over the railing into the enclosed space. We felt like we were in a terrarium, or an aquarium.

I said, “What would we do if the door had locked behind us? Also – what would we do if the door had locked, and out from behind that corner over there came a huge hungry lion?”

On such a misty deserted night, I almost believed that such a thing could happen.

But he suddenly didn’t like that thought, and he felt confined, and he suddenly got this ominous feeling. “Let’s get out of here.”

So we left, and went back up to above-ground. We left the biological science area, off the opposite side, down a long sloping grassy hill. He ran down the hill. So did I. I felt like we were Anne and Gilbert (our two roles in the musical).

We walked along the main road, up towards Fine Arts, talking. I talked about my Moliere monologue that I was going to do for class that night. I recited some of it for him.

We both were still in an exploring frame of mind. And as we passed the dark form of the Fine Arts building, I felt so much revulsion for it. All I wanted to do was stay outside, stay away from it, stay free. I didn’t feel the sucking draw of it at all, like I usually do. He and I stalked defiantly past it, and decided to go explore the water tower in the woods across the street from the building.

Once again, we were plunged into a world other than our own.

We stumbled down a rocky rutted path, through the forest. There was no light now, and everything looked very different. And towering way way over us was this massive ballooning water tower. It looked like a huge satellite, or so massive that it just couldn’t be man-made. It had an ominous quality too, standing alone in the dark woods. Like Ozymandius or something – a structure left behind on earth long long after man had left it. There was a lone red light shining way at the top. We circled around it looking for a ladder.

And I am telling you, as scared as I am of heights, and as overwhelmed as I was by that tower – if we had found a ladder I would have climbed it. It was that kind of night.

What a spectacular adventure that would have been – to be so high up – to see the whole campus below us.

But there wasn’t a ladder accessible to us. We made our way through the brush under the tower, to the column that we knew contained the stairway, but we saw with the glow of Jack’s cigarette lighter that it was quite locked.

So we made our way back out to the main road. We still had some time to kill before class. I said, “Where to next?”

He thought a minute as we walked. Then suggested, “How about the botanical gardens?”

Sounded good to me.

The whole night had a charged anticipatory feeling – superaware – we were comfortable with each other, but the whole night had this feeling that something else should be happening – we were looking for an adventure of some kind. Whatever it was we were currently up to was not enough, and we had to go seek out more. Even if it was just looking at a water-tower.

We headed for the gardens. The gardens were black and shadowy and hidden from the main road.

This entire time I had been lugging around my cumbersome duffel bag, and I was very tired of it so I dumped it in a bush, making a mental note of where it was for later. The garden is surrounded by a tall thick stone wall, about as tall as me, and to get into the garden, you walk through an opening in the gate, with two thick pine trees making it almost necessary to go single file. And in this way, we entered the garden.

It was tres symbolic. The evening was so innocent. Of course, he and I would hang out in a garden.

Some digging had obviously been going on, there were these long black furrows in the ground. Jack said, “They look like graves.”

“Cheery.”

From inside the garden you can’t see anything else outside. There is a row of huge tall pine trees skirting the whole space. It is a separate world in there.

Between two of the dug rows was a strip of clear grass. Jack leaned down to pat it with his hand. “It’s dry!”

He flung himself face down on the grass, and I followed. We are silly together. We are impractical. As I got settled in, I kicked my legs out, and one of my loosely tied shoes flew spontaneously off my foot, flew over my head, and landed in the grass, facing us.

“Look at that shoe pointing at us.” Jack said.

We stared at it. It looked like it was coming to get us. I got a little weird feeling then. Because of Sylvia Plath and her whole shoes-as-death theme. Any time in her poems or in The Bell Jar a shoe shows up – it is an omen of death, a whiff of mortality. Especially if they are pointing AT you.

But I suppose that is just me being silly and superstitious. But still it was weird. I got up and went and retrieved the shoe to put it back on. I didn’t want it staring at me like that.

The grass was lusciously thick, it was like a cushion. Hypnotic. I wanted to fall asleep.

He said after a while, “Don’t those trees look like a row of people watching us?”

They sure did. An immovable row of tall towering black forms, some leaning into others as though they were whispering about us, some just standing stiff and tall in righteous judgment of us.

“What do they remind me of?” mused Jack, trying to figure it out.

They reminded me of people from Whoville. I said, “They look like Whovilles to me.”

“What?”

“You know. The Grinch. The people from Whoville.” I sang a little bit of the “Whoville” song, and it was exactly what Jack had been trying to remember.

“That’s it! Yes! That is so perfect!!”

For a while, we didn’t talk, and just looked up at those surrounding trees, all the silently watching pine trees.

Finally Jack murmured, “They’re so fucking condescending.”

Behind us, keeping their eye on us, was the Mommy and Daddy – two huge fat pine trees, practically merged into one, and their two pointed heads leaning into each other.

I was deep in thought. I remember feeling for the first time in a long time like all my pores were OPEN. The beginning of the first semester was not unhappy, in fact it was pretty positive, and I was extremely busy, and juggling 6 classes and homework and a job – I only had one breakdown in that whole time. But still – during that time, I don’t remember feeling particularly aware or alive or sensitive – the way I remember being all the time in high school, when EVERYTHING affected me. It’s been a long time, come to think of it, since I’ve been that aware.

Like – seeing the trees as sentinels of some kind … and seeing the biological science building as a deserted martian planet … It seemed like I was seeing things in this new way because of Jack.

He looks like James Dean. He was smoking there, in the garden, not caring that the trees judged him, blowing smoke up into the air.

And eventually – we started talking. I don’t remember most of what we talked about, but it was special. It was our first real conversation. It felt like communion.

We discussed our thoughts, our dreams, we discussed acting. We discussed each other, our first impressions of each other.

He said to me, “How would you describe me to someone who didn’t know me?”

I thought for a while. I wanted to make sure that my thoughts came out precisely the way I wanted them to so I took my time. Finally I said, “He is very very psyched about being intelligent.”

I was aware of a little to-himself laugh beside me. I knew I had gotten him, right where it counted. Zap!

I said, “He is trustworthy. I do trust him, although I am not sure why I do. He is honest, and although he wants everyone to think that he is the most serious person who has ever lived, underneath it all, he’s really just a goofball.”

I’m only guessing. I really don’t know him at all, so I said, “Is that right?”

He was looking at me, kind of surprised. (He thinks he is so deep, so DEEP, but he’s really not.) “Yeah, that’s right.”

“Okay, so how about me? How would you describe me?”

He thought for a minute and said, “She’s very talented. She has great cheekbones. She’s intelligent. She’s funny. She’s cautious. She’s cautious but at the same time carefree.” He waited. “Is that right?”

I nodded. “Except about the cheekbones.”

He burst out laughing. “I knew you were gonna say that!! I knew it!”

He said, “What was your first impression of me? Before you knew me?”

I said, “I saw you that first day and thought, ‘Oh, what a jackass.'” (Jack snorted with laughter beside me – I went on:)”‘He wants everyone to buy his image – this deep tortured image – with the trenchcoat and the walkman and the scarf and the cigarette – and I don’t buy it at all. He’s also unbelievably antisocial.'”

He roared with laughter.

Anyway, during all of this, this conversation that went on for some time, I just could not, for the life of me, imagine getting up in 10 minutes, and going off to class to do my stupid Moliere monologue. I just could not see it happening. I had never in my life not wanted to do something as badly as I didn’t want to go to that class. All I wanted to do was stay put, and see where the night took us. the time was right for a major breakthrough in our friendship, and I knew it, I could feel it in the air, and I just did not want to ruin it.

So I groaned, and began to verbalize my inner torment. Rationalizing everything.

“I have gone to every class this semester! For Christ’s sake! I haven’t missed ONE class! Other people cut class on occasion – why can’t I?” Then I launched into a major defensive monologue about how the faculty seemed to be harder on me than on others, other people get breaks, other people are forgiven – but I never get a break. I cut a class, and the entire department goes into an uproar as though it is the approach of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Also, other students don’t get huge guilt pangs when they skip ONE CLASS – how come I do? I am always so hard on myself. I wanted to blow my whole night off and spend it playing with Jack – this feeling was so strong that it was a driving beat in my brain. But I was scared to skip class. What would everyone think? They all KNEW I had a date with Jack earlier – what would they say?

God, I can be so dramatic. Just chill out.

Jack quietly listened to my raving monologue, and didn’t say a word. It seemed he knew I had to talk myself through the whole thing, but he also seemed to know that eventually I would decide to blow everything off.

Finally, I felt this wild breath of freedom and irresponsibility, happiness rushed in my lungs, and I turned to him and said, “Let’s go to a movie!!”

He stared at me flatly, and then said, “You’re not gonna spend the entire night talking about class and how guilty you feel, are you?”

“No! Let’s go! Come on!”

The excitement I felt about merely going to a movie is embarrassing. I felt like I was 5 years old and it was Christmas Eve. It was the thrill of being irresponsible, and suddenly not GIVING A SHIT what everybody thinks.

We decided to use my parents car. We went back to the bush to retrieve my duffel bag, now in full view of the staff parking lot at Fine Arts. I felt like an escaped felon. Jack was a little surprised at how scared I was to skip one class. He skips class constantly. It got to be a joke.

“Haven’t you ever skipped a class before?”

“Never Judith’s. [Ed: Judith was the brilliant and rather terrifying chairman of the department] I have never skipped an ACTING class in my life.”

I stood at a pay phone and called Mum – Mum came to pick us up. we sat on the curb waiting for her. it was very pathetic. She had never met Jack before. I got in front, he in back. I introduced them. He initiated shaking her hand – it was cute. I wanted to kiss him. But we hadn’t kissed yet at all, so I couldn’t. I took Jack in our house, he met Dad, there was some casual banter about his last name – which was a last name in our family too – Jack said, “I bet you don’t acknowledge that side of the family” and Dad roared.

It’s so easy to get along with Dad. If he likes you, you know right away.

Then we were off to see a movie. Listening to Depeche Mode. And having a hell of a time. Free free free.

We decided to go see Fatal Attraction, but it was too late to catch the 7 pm show, so we decided to go up to the malls and look around for an hour or so.

I did have quite a few moments of guilty conscience, thinking about everyone else in acting class, but I would check my tongue, and not mention it to him.

We went to the Midland Malls. We went into the kitchen appliance section. We wandered through acres of fake kitchens, and we became a newlywed couple. An absolutely obnoxious newlywed couple.

“I am partial to the rustic look, you know that. Nothing too modern,” he said at one point, with a completely straight face.

Did we want an island in our kitchen? We had a very important discussion about that. We become 8 years old together. Playing pretend games.

“There are two more things I want to look at today, honey,” I said. “Beds and leather whips.”

(This was a 9 ½ Weeks reference – a movie we had had a conversation about – and he got it immediately and howled with laughter.)

We spent a good 15 minutes playing in the cassio section. We practically caused a scene. I blasted my cassio – rhumba beat, big band – disco – heavy metal – cha cha. We both were quite busy creating things on our own, going from cassio to cassio, engrossed. I messed with the song book, experimenting. Other people who had been browsing stopped after 5 minutes of close contact with us. We took over the area, and all around us was the ruckus of 5 or 6 cassios all doggedly pursuing their own contrasting beats at the same time.

At one point, as we meandered around, he looked at me and said, “Promise me you will never cut your hair.”

I thought it was still part of our newlywed-game, so I laughed at him, and he said, “No, I’m serious, Sheila. Don’t ever cut it.”

Hmmm.

We made a beeline for the bookstore, and plopped down with a TV trivia book to find out the name of Genie’s evil twin – something that had tormented us earlier. We crouched on the floor, heads bent over this one book – and I still had this reckless feeling inside from missing class.

We went to Newport Creamery. I bought him a shake, I had some ice cream. We ate, and made cynical comments about everyone around us. We also kept (in accordance with the theme of the night) dribbling stuff onto the table, or onto our clothes, by accident. We were behaving in an extremely immature way, and it was fun. We had a very unfriendly waitress, and we couldn’t stop laughing about her. Everything he said about her would come at an inopportune time, so I would spit stuff out of my mouth.

We browsed in Midland Records for quite some time. I also showed him the store where I had bought my prom shoes.

He said, “Who’d you go to the prom with?”

“Oh, some asshole.”

He burst out laughing. And then he squeezed my shoulders roughly and said, in a Dean Martin kind of tone, “Who loves ya, baby…”

We rode in the glass elevator, which was extremely exciting for us, seeing as we were EIGHT YEARS OLD.

The malls had become this enormous sparkling playground. Constructed strictly to keep us amused.

We went to the pet shop and looked at sleeping puppies. We kissed our lips up against the glass of the fish tank and watched all the little glowing fish flutter away or kiss us back.

The two of us sat on the floor in the mall, and he had a cigarette. [Ed: Woah, now that’s a time-travel moment.] There were benches nearby, I am sure, but the two of us were on the floor, quite content. I became aware of two people who appeared to be staring at us. The woman seemed to be smiling right at me. I had no idea who they were. Jack noticed them too. I said, ” Jack, do you know those people?” “No.” We looked around us to see if they were looking at someone near us. Nope. We glanced at each other, and then back at them, the two of them smiling straight at us. We both said, “Us? You mean us?” They gestured at us. We were in a sea of confusion. “Jack – is she waving at me?” “I have no idea – what do they want?” Of course, as it turns out, (you dipshits) they were store managers telling us to please not sit on the floor.

Finally, we got the picture. “Oh! They want us—” “Oh! Okay – I get it…”

Jack said, “Let us leave this place if we can not sit on the floor in peace.”

As we left, Jack stated, “We are the best-dressed couple in this mall. Hands down.”

Outside in the parking lot – it was still warm and misty. It felt like it might rain. There was a dampness, and the sky looked heavier with clouds. We walked to my car, and Jack stopped me before I could put in my keys and said, “Look! Let’s go rock-climbing!”

The mall parking lots are at the bottom of a hill, the highway runs along the top, and if one was inclined to climb from the lot up to the highway, one would have to literally go rock-climbing up a vertical way in order to get to the grassy side of the highway. He took off running towards the wall. So did I.

And what the hell, we went rock-climbing. In the parking lot of the Midland Mall.

Jack said, later, “See? Now – when you look back on this night – will you be sorry you skipped class? If you had gone to class, you would not have cared 10 years from now, but 10 years from now you will be glad you did this.”

[Ed: Well, this is now more than 10 years ago, and I have to say, in retrospect, he was right!]

Eventually we both reached the grassy top of the wall, even though neither of us had one proper rock-climbing gear. We turned to look victoriously at the mall and the wide parking lot below us. We both flopped down on the grass, it was a gentle accommodating slope. And we looked down over the view. At one point he took an entire handful of cut grass and tried to put it in my mouth, and then put on this totally perplexed expression when I wouldn’t let him – as though he were shocked. “You don’t want this? Why?”

At one point, when I was on my back, I felt a raindrop hit my face.

At the same moment, Jack said, “Oh, I felt a raindrop.”

“Me too. Let’s go.”

We climbed back down, which was much more difficult. I suddenly became terrified – because of the show. “What if I fall and totally sprain my ankle? I can’t get hurt, I can’t get hurt.”

The mixture of caution and carefree – which he pointed out.

The drizzle began and we booked it for the car. We cranked the tunes, and peeled out. [Ed: Sheila – who are you? “cranked the tunes”?? “peeled out”??]

The movie was really crowded – it’s a huge hit right now. We sat down together, bounced around in the fun seats for a while … He was like a little boy when he discovered the fun seats.

“Look! Look at me!” bouncing madly.

Yes, Jack. I know about the seats.

The theatre filled up around us, we munched on popcorn, and finally the lights dimmed. We grinned at each other, excited, eyes glimmering, popcorn balanced between us.

Then the movie.

It was one of the scariest things I have ever seen in my life. We were totally riveted. We both absolutely fell in LOVE with the little girl who played the daughter. And throughout the whole thing – we basically lost our minds. We totally lost our minds. The movie grabs you by the neck and does not let you go. Does not let you breathe. Glenn Close was horrifying.

We forgot the popcorn, we forgot our surroundings, we were on a roller-coaster ride. The movie was like having your picture taken with the flash too close.

During one of the crazy sex scenes (which made us both so uncomfortable to watch, it was hysterical) – they were screwing on the kitchen counter. We watched the scene in silence for a while, and then Jack leaned over and murmured to me, “This is rated R?”

We DIED of embarrassment during all of the sex scenes. I told Mitchell about this later and he laughed so hard. “Oh my God, I wish I could have a film of you two then … of the body language … it must have been hilarious.”

At one point, Jack murmured again, trying to break up our embarrassment, “I really do think that some of these camera angles are unnecessary.”

So cute.

By the end of the movie, I had actually stood up at one point and screamed at the top of my lungs. Jack had become a human pretzel, everyone was FREAKED. The audience was a quivering mass of shrieking exclaiming people. It was raw. He and I just grabbed for each other when we saw the bubbling pot on the stove.

Later, while madly discussing the movie, we found that we had both had the same experience – the thought of the rabbit never crossed our minds, as obvious as it now seems. The first thing I thought (and he thought, too, which was weird) was that it was a massive spaghetti dinner. Like she had shared with him during their weekend of sordid lust filled with unnecessary camera angles. Neither of us anticipated the rabbit. So when we finally made the connection, simultaneously, we grabbed for each other, and exclaimed, “NO!”

And, like I said before, the two of us were absolutely slain by that poor little girl. At one point, she started to cry – this little girl is like 5 or 6 years old – and those tears looked real. It was awful. Jack saw her start to cry, and put his hand over his eyes – I thought he was gonna have to leave. He said to me later, “Either she is the most amazing actress in the world, or she has a really terrible home life.”

When the lights came up at the end, he and I were in twisted mangled positions of horror. You feel a little ashamed of yourself walking out of that movie. We could not calm down. All the credits were done, the theatre was empty. Finally I put on my coat and said, “Wow, that really SUCKED.”

“Yeah,” Jack said, disengaging himself from the pretzel twist, “I’m really disappointed.”

We drove home, the rain was coming down hard, and we talked and talked and talked about it.

We kept exploding:

“SHIT! What a MOVIE!”

“That little girl – I literally thought I was going to die when she was in the doorway. I couldn’t take it.”

Then – on the way home, we experienced something that we now call “Can Hell“.

I don’t even know if I am going to be able to describe it, but it was a significantly frightening experience, and I was not equipped to deal with it. I almost had a nervous breakdown at the wheel, calling out his name, “Jack! Jack!” It was scary. NOW, it’s funny to remember – but it was terrifying – and I was already jumpy after that movie.

So we came to the rotary after the Sunoco station – (This was directly before “Can Hell”) – and as we swerved around the rain-wet rotary, Jack said, “Want to hit the beach?”

I wish I could take things calmly. It’s just an invitation. You are 19 years old. You are not being asked to transport illegal drugs across international borders. It’s a walk on the beach.

But I kind of lost my head. I realized in that moment how much fun we had had that night, and also how much I really like him. And my heart slip-slid down into my toes. I looked at him and said, “Are you serious?” Clutching the wheel, trying to drive (having no idea that “Can Hell” was approaching.) I was behaving like a cliché in a John Hughes movie. I am a movie cliché! But those clichés exist for a reason! I nodded that sure, let’s go ‘hit the beach’.

And then – “Can Hell” began. And from then on, we were otherwise occupied with trying not to get killed – and trying to drive on whatever the right side of the road was – (the street was filled with trash cans, zigzagging us through different lanes, but nothing was marked, nothing was clear, we feared we would drive between two of the wrong “cans” and end up in a head-on collision – It was an obstacle course – it was pouring rain – and none of it was funny at the time. I was terrified – and he was trying to be calm – it was awful. “Can Hell“.)

Finally everything straightened out and the highway looked like itself again.

We were both pretty freaked out.

I know it’s superstitious and all, but I thought of that shoe, in the botanical garden, pointing at us. I got this chill of fear, like – something bad was going to happen. Okay. I need to get off the road. NOW.

We drove to the beach. By then, we were calming down a bit, letting the horror of “Can Hell” fade into memory. We got out of the car, there was a drizzle in the air, not really a rain. It was a very black night, not really misty anymore, and the ocean was turbulent. And loud.

It reminded me of the end of my junior year when Betsy ran into the water fully-clothed. There was really foamy turbulent waves that night too.

He and I walked down the stairs onto the sand, and started to walk the beach. We were quiet, though. It was like … I don’t know. We were both lost in thought, no longer finishing each other’s sentences.

“Can Hell” had broken the intimate spell between us.