Movie Trauma

Life has just been very difficult lately, so I don't feel like writing about books I've read (lots of different kinds of vampires from historical to noir), science fiction (Jack McDevitt and Honor Harrington) and a fantastic book about the FBI-No Left Turns, which deserves it's own post. Nor do I feel like writing about Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which I thought was very good but ended on a very depressing note, or Man on a Wire, which, thankfully had a fairly upbeat ending. 

Instead I'm going to tell a story. I was reading today the AV Club-the movie section of The Onion-and the writers were asked to tell their worst experiences at the movies-and it got me thinking. There was the time D and I saw the remake of Breathless (with Richard Gere) and ran into my brother's best friend and his girlfriend who sat next to us. When they showed Richard Gere's penis (brief though it was), I was mortified. There was the time M and I went to see an horrible Steven King related movie that he hated so much we had to leave, or the time we went to Miami Vice and he left not once, but twice. Actually that shows wisdom on his part because it was a TERRIBLE movie. I wanted to see how it ended and I was sorry I stayed. 

But my most traumatic movie experience happened when I was 12 or 13. D and I were friends with J-a girl our age who had (to our suburban lives) and odd family. 

Her father was a professional hypnotist-he would hypnotize musicians and they would play while hypnotized. Her mother made candles, but soon branched out to real estate (buying a very prominent building in the area and naming it after she and her husband-we knew this because there was a BIG sign out front with their names on it) . She had six brothers and sisters-and all of them had the same initials. When we first met J, she lived in a not-great house not far my own house, but it was clear no one ever took care of it-my mother would have had a fit if she had seen it. Not too long after though, they moved to a nice house in the really nice part of town. The house had an indoor swimming pool (very nice) and a screening room in the basement. But it still looked like no one ever took crew of it-they had a famous opera singer there was once for a recital and they must have cleaned up for her, but I never saw it that way. 

The screening room...it had nice chairs in it but it also had enough room for us to lay down sleeping bags and pillows, so that was where we decided to sleep-we would watch movies and then go to sleep. I should have known it would be scary because these were the same people who asked me to go see The Exorcist when I was 10, but I thought it would be fun. 

Did I mention the screening room had a suit of armor and a (fake, I think) guillotine? That should tell you everything you need to know about them. 

I'm sure we watched other movies that night but the only one I remember was Psycho. And that's because it scared me to death. When it was over, we left some lights on to sleep but eventually turned the off-I know this because I did not sleep a wink all night. If I wasn't staring at the guillotine, I was staring at the suit of armor, thinking it was moving. Not long before dawn, as I lay there, wishing it would be light, D, lying not far away from me, whispered to me, asking if I was awake. "No", I said. I can't sleep". Me neither, she said. I have to go do my paper route, do you want to come? We had our bikes with us, we packed up our stuff and were out of there in a flash. We told J that D HAD to deliver her papers and we would call her later. It was probably the first time I ever voluntarily got up at 4:30 to deliver papers-and I remember watching the sunrise over a beautiful day and being so grateful I was out of the house with the suit of armor and the guillotine, where 12 year-olds are allowed to watch Psycho. My parents were difficult and our house was not as nice (although it was much cleaner) but at least I was not petrified to go to sleep there.