Barbara and I lasted about four weeks ... and all through 1984 and 1985, romance was lean. There were dates with girls, but not with women, and by the summer of '85, I'd grown weary. That summer was strange, and deserves its own story; it ended with the sort of drama that makes teenage television, a drama that I wasn't part of except that I seemed to be the person that both sides turned to in torment. By September, the dust had settled and amidst all the heartache and misery of others, I found myself quite alone as others licked their wounds.
Wanting a relationship for myself, one that was mature and meaningful, I was at my wits end for how to make that happen ... and that led me down the road to doing something that was surely reckless and a bad, bad idea — except that it turned out exactly as I'd hoped.
I apologise for this. It sounds now, as I piece it together, that the plan was monstrous. It was, I should say, an act of desperation ... and here I beg the reader to remember, as I go through this, that apart from the plan itself, I acted with decency. As shall be seen. Moreover, please remember, she married me, she loved me, she had a daughter with me and we were together for ten years.
In late '85, there was a movie theatre downtown that showed films after doing their main run at the theatre for $2 a show on Tuesdays only. The rest of the week it was $5 a film. Movies ran from 12:30 p.m. to midnight, in 5 different theatres, so there were plenty of choices. My plan was to be there when the theatre opened, buy tickets for movies all day, then hit on women before the shows started, hoping that I could endear myself to someone in the 20 minutes or so that we might be sitting near each other.
Now, I should explain. In that era, before a film started, the theatre was brightly lit. No advertisements played, not even piped music. People actually believed that a film should be shown to an audience after they'd sat bored, waiting for as much as half an hour, because the "film experience" was a greater contrast upon the senses. Moreover, it was possible to comfortable find one's way to a seat, or find others already sitting in the theatre, under the full lights.
We need not comment on whether or not this was a better system.
It did mean that, sitting in a bright, quiet theatre, if one wanted to talk to someone else nearby, to strike up a conversation, it was possible to see who one was talking to and hear what they said. As such, conversations with strangers used to happen all the time in movie theatres; so my plan wasn't quite as odd sounding as it would be if I tried it in a modern movie theatre.
This was Tuesday, October 22nd, still 1985. I decided I'd go ahead and buy a day's worth of tickets, expecting my plan to fail. So I bought tickets to see Back to the Future, St. Elmo's Fire, Creator (with Peter O'Toole), Witness (with Harrison Ford) and Teen Wolf. I went in, casually waited on the first film and casually tried to start a conversation with two women that were sitting together. It didn't go well. Kind of a splash of cold water, to be honest. Left a bitter taste in my mouth. I let myself watch the Doc and Marty do their thing, not the first time I'd seen the film, and had trouble shaking off my stupidity.
But I'd already paid for the tickets ... and I'd seen St. Elmo's Fire before as well, and decided not to make any further attempts, at least not right away.
The remaining three films were all new to me, so I was good to give them a chance. I'd sat waiting for the Peter O'Toole movie about fifteen minutes when a girl came in alone, stamped rather roughly along the row behind me and sat down. I looked, saw she was cute, noted the book bag beside her and said, "You look happy."
She didn't hear me and asked, "What?"
And cool as a cucumber, I said, "I'm sorry. But if I'm not obnoxious, I never meet anyone."
She grinned at bit; agreed that was probably true, and before she had time to think much about it, I pointed at the seat next to her and said, "Would you mind if I sat there?"
She said "Yes," sounding pretty sure of herself, so I stood up ... and because I didn't want her to give her too much time to think about the situation unfolding, I didn't walk down the aisle away from her and then back up her aisle. No, I climbed over the seat and sat down next to her. In those days, the way theatres were built, this wasn't hard.
As I climbed over the seat, I was thinking fast, I've got to convince her that I'm not a neanderthal. And so, by the time I sat down beside her, knowing I needed to say something smart and strange, I had the line in my head. At once I asked, "Who's your favourite Renaissance painter?"
Here's the thing about that. I'd learned, the way to convince a woman that you're not just another run of the mill moron is to catch her off guard, confuse her, make her wonder about the entity she's suddenly faced with. This isn't done by saying some rote line, however clever; it's done by saying something so completely off the wall that it breaks the woman's initial expectation.
She, as it happened, was a very smart woman. Without missing a beat, she answered, "Raphael." Now here's the second part — we've got to be able to talk about the thing we've just brought up, and where it comes to Renaissance art, I can. I love Renaissance art, have since my early teens. I knew Raphael quite well and thus, with both of us knowing much about the subject, the conversation was soon moving fast. I really like Botticelli; it's his self-portrait that's there on my profile, painted by Botticelli. We talked about Titian and El Greco, and agreed that these don't get as much attention as Michaelangelo ... and we began talking about liking smart people, and agreed we were both there to see Peter O'Toole, whom we both liked a lot, especially since he had a very high forehead which was something the girl liked. As it happens, I have a high forehead.
We'd started talking about Laurence of Arabia when the lights darkened and the film started. We settled in to watch the film ... and she was thinking the whole time, "If he puts his arm around me, he's toast!"
And I did no such thing. I just don't do that. I explained in the previous post. I'm prepared to wait ... until it's either plain she will, or she won't. So we sat and watched the film together. Wasn't great. Wasn't memorable. Peter O'Toole was good. But I never saw the film again.
There was a food court near the theatre in a downtown mall. If anyone here has seen the third season of Fargo, Ewan McGregor's office looks out on that mall. She agreed, and only then did I learn that her name was Michelle. We got some fast food and sat in the dining area sometime about 5:30. We talked, and talked, and talked. We talked about everything; her schooling, music, science fiction, books, travel, quite a lot ... but not about family and in those days, I didn't tell people right off that I played D&D.
Three hours went by and we were still sitting there. The court stayed open until way after the last film at the theatre started, which I think was 11 p.m., so no one bothered us. I remember I looked at my watch and said mildly, "I guess I've missed my last film." She asked and learned that I'd ignored the tickets I'd had to Witness and Teen Wolf, and that seemed to mean a lot to her. I laughed and told it was only four dollars, but it still seemed to mean a lot to her.
Past ten, she explained she had to start home. I suggested a taxi but she insisted on the bus, so I walked her to the bus. Then talked as we waited for the bus. I had a monthly bus pass, which meant I could ride as much as I wanted, so I offered to get on the bus with her and she said yes.
We went up to her apartment in Bankview, where she asked me inside. She had a one-room flat with a futon couch and a rattan chair, the sort that were like a big throne. She made tea, which I drank by the bucket in those days, and we settled in, still talking. Midnight, one a.m., two a.m. when by and we were still talking. She edged the conversation around to sex somewhere about then and so we talked about sex for awhile ... all the usual stuff for the time, g-spots and the importance of clothing and things that seemed to matter then, which are awfully dull-talk nowadays. She folded down the futon into a bed and we sat corner to corner, cross-legged, drinking tea and talking about sex. Three o'clock went by. I didn't know it, but by this time, Michelle was convinced that I was gay.
But the way I talked about sex didn't seem to add that way in her head, as she would tell me later. So, at 3:30 a.m., by which time we'd known each other about ten hours, in frustration she asked point blank, "Are you going to make a pass at me?"
And I said, carefully, "Do you want me to make a pass at you?"
She nodded ... and we had sex until 6:30.
Then we laid peacefully in each other's arms for another hour, still talking, until she admitted she had a class and nine o'clock that she couldn't miss. I gave her my number, got hers, gave her a hug goodbye and then I walked home. On clouds, all the way.
We saw each other the next night again, and the night after that, and most nights for about three weeks, when we agreed that we did love each other and that we wanted to let things move forward without worrying about them. And we didn't. I asked her to marry me in July of 1986 and we were married on November 15 that year.
Strange things indeed.
P.S.,
When the movie The Pick-up Artist came out in 1987, we saw it together. Watching the trailer on television, when Robert Downey Jr. says, "Has anyone ever told you that you have the face of a Botticelli and the body of a Degas," we laughed ourselves fit to kill. No need to guess why.
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