according to a general
Steal This
Book
–ish anticapitalist imperative for taking freebies in my parents’ circle in the seventies. Of course somebody—my mother?—had also figured out a convenient way to get the kids out of the house for long stretches.
I hate arriving late for movies now and would never watch one in this broken fashion. (It seems to me, though, that I probably learned something about the construction of narratives from the practice.) The lifelong moviegoing habit which does originate for me with
Star Wars
is that of sitting in movie theaters alone. I probably only had company in the Loew’s Astor Plaza four or five times. The rest of my visits were solitary, which is certainly central to any guesses I’d make about the emotional meaning of the ritual viewings.
I still go to the movies alone, all the time. In the absenting of self which results—so different from the quality of solitude at my writing desk—this seems to me as near as I come in my life to any reverent or worshipful or meditational practice. That’s not to say it isn’t also indulgent, with a frisson of guilt, of stolen privilege, every time. I’m acutely conscious of this joyous guilt in the fact that when as a solitary moviegoer I take a break to go to the bathroom
I can return to another part of
the theater and watch from a different seat
. I first discovered this thrill during my
Star Wars
summer, and it’s one which never diminishes. The rupture of the spectator’s contract with perspective feels as transgressive as wife-swapping.
The function or dysfunction of my
Star Wars
obsession was paradoxical. I was using the movie as a place to hide, sure. That’s obvious. At the same time, this activity of hiding inside the Loew’s Astor Plaza, and inside my private,
deeper-than-yours
,
deeper-than-anyone’s
communion with the film itself, was something I boasted widely about. By building my lamebrain World Record for screenings (fat chance, I learned later) I was teaching myself to package my own craving for solitude, and my own obsessive tendencies, as something to be admired.
You can’t join me inside
this box where I hide
, I was saying,
but you sure can praise the box. You’re
permitted to marvel at me for going inside.
What I was hiding from is easy, though. My parents had separated a couple of years earlier. Then my mother had begun having seizures, been diagnosed with a brain tumor, and had had the first of two surgeries. The summer of
Star Wars
she was five or six months from the second, unsuccessful surgery, and a year from dying.
I took my brother, and he stayed through it twice. We may have done that together more than once—neither of us clearly remembers. I took a girl, on a quasi-date: Alissa, the sister of my best friend, Joel. I took my mother. I tried to take my grandmother.
That same summer I once followed Alissa to a ballet class at Carnegie Hall and hung around the studio, expressing a polite curiosity which was cover for another, less polite curiosity. The instructor was misled or chose to misunderstand—a thirteen-year-old boy willing to set foot inside a ballet studio was a commodity, a raw material. I was offered free classes, and the teacher called my house and strong-armed my parents. I remember vividly my mother’s pleasure in refusing on my behalf—I was too much of a coward—and how strongly she fastened on the fact that my visit had had nothing to do with any interest in ballet. For years this seemed to me an inexplicable cruelty in my mother toward the ballet teacher. Later I understood that in those first years of adolescence I was giving off a lot of signals to my parents that I might be gay. I was a delicate, obedient, and bookish kid, a constant teacher’s pet. Earlier that year my father had questioned me regarding a series of distended cartoon noses I’d drawn in ballpoint on my loose-leaf binder—they had come out looking a lot like penises. And my proclaimed favorite
Star
Steal This
Book
–ish anticapitalist imperative for taking freebies in my parents’ circle in the seventies. Of course somebody—my mother?—had also figured out a convenient way to get the kids out of the house for long stretches.
I hate arriving late for movies now and would never watch one in this broken fashion. (It seems to me, though, that I probably learned something about the construction of narratives from the practice.) The lifelong moviegoing habit which does originate for me with
Star Wars
is that of sitting in movie theaters alone. I probably only had company in the Loew’s Astor Plaza four or five times. The rest of my visits were solitary, which is certainly central to any guesses I’d make about the emotional meaning of the ritual viewings.
I still go to the movies alone, all the time. In the absenting of self which results—so different from the quality of solitude at my writing desk—this seems to me as near as I come in my life to any reverent or worshipful or meditational practice. That’s not to say it isn’t also indulgent, with a frisson of guilt, of stolen privilege, every time. I’m acutely conscious of this joyous guilt in the fact that when as a solitary moviegoer I take a break to go to the bathroom
I can return to another part of
the theater and watch from a different seat
. I first discovered this thrill during my
Star Wars
summer, and it’s one which never diminishes. The rupture of the spectator’s contract with perspective feels as transgressive as wife-swapping.
The function or dysfunction of my
Star Wars
obsession was paradoxical. I was using the movie as a place to hide, sure. That’s obvious. At the same time, this activity of hiding inside the Loew’s Astor Plaza, and inside my private,
deeper-than-yours
,
deeper-than-anyone’s
communion with the film itself, was something I boasted widely about. By building my lamebrain World Record for screenings (fat chance, I learned later) I was teaching myself to package my own craving for solitude, and my own obsessive tendencies, as something to be admired.
You can’t join me inside
this box where I hide
, I was saying,
but you sure can praise the box. You’re
permitted to marvel at me for going inside.
What I was hiding from is easy, though. My parents had separated a couple of years earlier. Then my mother had begun having seizures, been diagnosed with a brain tumor, and had had the first of two surgeries. The summer of
Star Wars
she was five or six months from the second, unsuccessful surgery, and a year from dying.
I took my brother, and he stayed through it twice. We may have done that together more than once—neither of us clearly remembers. I took a girl, on a quasi-date: Alissa, the sister of my best friend, Joel. I took my mother. I tried to take my grandmother.
That same summer I once followed Alissa to a ballet class at Carnegie Hall and hung around the studio, expressing a polite curiosity which was cover for another, less polite curiosity. The instructor was misled or chose to misunderstand—a thirteen-year-old boy willing to set foot inside a ballet studio was a commodity, a raw material. I was offered free classes, and the teacher called my house and strong-armed my parents. I remember vividly my mother’s pleasure in refusing on my behalf—I was too much of a coward—and how strongly she fastened on the fact that my visit had had nothing to do with any interest in ballet. For years this seemed to me an inexplicable cruelty in my mother toward the ballet teacher. Later I understood that in those first years of adolescence I was giving off a lot of signals to my parents that I might be gay. I was a delicate, obedient, and bookish kid, a constant teacher’s pet. Earlier that year my father had questioned me regarding a series of distended cartoon noses I’d drawn in ballpoint on my loose-leaf binder—they had come out looking a lot like penises. And my proclaimed favorite
Star
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