The other woman lunged at her. Her man was barely able to hold her back.
“Bitch,” she shouted. “Don't be telling me what the fuck I can and cannot do.”
The first girl responded by picking up her extra-large-sized soda and throwing it into the second girl's face. The women simultaneously broke free from the men who had been attempting to hold them back and went at each other. Rather than trying to reestablish control, both men reacted by brutally fist-fighting each other right there in the seats. The position they were standing in was perfect for projecting the silhouettes of the tops of their heads onto the screen, providing all in attendance the rare pleasure of watching hair-pulling, punch-throwing shadows share the screen with the charming and talented Mr. Taye Diggs.
One of the men bellowed, “Bitch, that's why you're wearing my soda,” and the entire theater erupted in applause for the insult. The roar of the crowd only fueled the fighting spirit of the two couples, and eventually they tumbled down the aisle and out the emergency exit beneath the screen.
At that point, I went back to watching the movie.
On Monday my manager approached me, baffled.
“Chris,” he said, “is it true you were in that theater the other night when a fight broke out?”
“Yeah . . . ,” I answered, not sure what he was getting at. It was rare for a manager to talk to a lowly floor worker. Usually that was left to the assistant managers. Besides, I was busy trying to restack Goobers during another shiftlong stint of being treated like a leper.
“Why didn't you do anything?” he asked, raising his arms up in disbelief.
“I wasn't working that night,” I said. “I was just there watching.”
“But you couldn't do anything?” he asked, truly unable to fathom my reaction. “You couldn't even come get someone who was working?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I guess I didn't think of it.”
“Chris,” he said, shaking his head with genuine sadness in his eyes. “They went out in the parking lot and fought with knives.”
The sad truth of the matter is that I neglected stopping a knife fight mostly because I was happy to get back to watching the movie. This was in spite of the fact that I wasn't too into the movie. It was the principle of the thing. I'd like to think that I'm the type of guy who steps up to the plate and intervenes in such situations. But I also know that I spend a majority of my time in my own world, and when I was nineteen years old it never would have occurred to me that preventing a fistfight is just a good thing to do whether you're on the clock or not. Still, that incident qualifies as only the third-lowest moment that happened to me during my tenure at Loews.
For all the downsides, the one perk of working at Loews was the gracious opportunity to see movies for free. During the summer of 1999 that single perk nearly made up for everything. Because when it came to movies, that summer was a nerd's
dream. It was the summer
The Sixth Sense
,
The Blair Witch Project
, and a number of other hot movies came out. But above all else, it was the summer of
Star Wars: Episode IâThe Phantom Menace
.
I was nineteen, so I wasn't old enough to go to bars. I had no money and very few friends. Seeing movies for free was a saving grace that gave me something to do at night.
That was how I wound up seeing
The Phantom Menace
thirteen times in the theater.
My entire summer was spent watching that deplorable relaunch of the Star Wars franchise over and over again. I stopped after viewing thirteen only because my behavior that day has led to emotional scars that cut deeper than most people's hatred of Jar Jar Binks.
At some point during the movie, I realized that I was hungry. Unfortunately, while the theater offered free tickets to employees, it did not offer food or drink. Considering that I was broke, I was shit out of luck. By this point
The Phantom Menace
had been out for a few weeks, and word had spread that it was unwatchable. I was there for an afternoon showing, and was entirely alone.
As I sat in the theater, my hunger continued to grow and my mind began to wander. I knew who was on duty, and realized there was a good chance the theater hadn't been cleaned all day. I scoured the aisles until I found a half-full bag of popcorn, which then, without much hesitation, I ate. In other words, I put someone else's garbage into my mouth. Their grubby, greasy fingers had likely picked up and dropped a large percentage of the popcorn I was now eating. It probably would have been healthier to place the unwashed fingers of a homeless man directly into my mouth.
But for some reason, not only did I eat a bag of filthy garbage I picked up off a Cineplex floor, I didn't even feel bad about it. My summer had gone so terribly and I had been pushed to such a point of social isolation that my descent into becoming a scavenger for another human being's trash didn't even depress me at the time. Not even while watching
The Phantom Menace
. This job had pushed me as close to subhuman as I have ever been.
Sadly, the slope was a slippery one and the popcorn had made me thirsty. I went to the garbage can and picked out an old cup. I went to the soda fountain and discretely refilled it when none of my coworkers were watching. I placed my lips onto the rim of the cardboard cup, where a stranger's teeth marks still remained, and washed it all down with Cherry Coke.
And yet, eating and drinking garbage while watching
The Phantom Menace
for the thirteenth time wasn't even my lowest point that summer.
That sad day came when I rebelled against the internal politics of Loews Cineplex in an ill-conceived act of defiance that came back to haunt me in multiple ways.
Have you ever wondered what happens to all those cool-ass posters, banners, and cardboard cutouts you see in movie theaters ? At Loews, there was a particularly spiteful assistant manager named Bassie whose job it was to dole them out as prizes for the employees. He would choose, based purely on his will and his personal feelings, who would get what. That summer, between
Star Wars
,
Eyes Wide Shut
, and
The Blair Witch Project
, there were a lot of cool, valuable promotional items the staff was jockeying to get their hands on.
I received exactly two posters. One was for a Claire Danes movie called
Brokedown Palace
, where Ms. Danes gets locked in a Thai prison. I gave the poster to my Thai friend Jan. The other
was for a Ted Danson vehicle called
Mumford
, which, to this day, I'm not even sure was ever released.
The poster distribution was the most definitive way in which status was shown at the theater. The higher-ups certified whom they accepted as part of the in-crowd by giving them cool stuff. I got the message. I was the Mumford of the staff.
One day, after a particularly miserable daytime shift, Bassie and a few of his cronies were behind the service desk. I walked by on my way out, staring at the floor.
“Hey, Chris,” Bassie said with a sneer. “Want that?” The employees standing with him snickered, and a cocky grin inched across his face.
Bassie pointed across the lobby to a stand-up cardboard contraption promoting
Inspector Gadget
starring Matthew Broderick. It was a 3-D display and had all sorts of gears and gizmos popping out at different depths, all anchored to a heavy cardboard base.
Everyone chuckled and something inside me clicked. I'd officially had enough. Instead of shrugging off his offer, which was only meant to make fun of me, I looked him dead in the eye.
“Sure,” I said. “I'll take it.”
They all looked confused. The display was about twelve feet high and three feet thick. There was no way it was going to fit into a car, and no clear way to take it apart without destroying it.
Still, something inside my brain had snapped back into place and my pride returned, if only for a brief moment. I remembered what my life was like before I was eating garbage. I got mad that I wasn't being invited to parties with Lynne the sex addict. I became furious that my only friend was a Christian hell-bent on converting me to a cultlike sect of born-agains. All of the emotions I had managed to turn off in order to work at this
demeaning job came flooding back all at once, overwhelming me. I hated that I'd taken so much shit for so long. And here I was, being laughed at by the very authorities who had created and fostered this environment. I figured it was time to call their bluff.
I walked across the theater, grabbed the display, tipped it onto its side, and dragged it out the door. As I walked past the desk where Bassie and the others sat, straining to pull the heavy cube behind me, they all seemed confused. I took this as a sign of victory. I had beaten them by baffling them.
When I got to my car, I quickly confirmed that there was no way to fit the behemoth into my back seat. Nonetheless, I had proven my point. I wasn't going to let the powers that be at the Loews Cineplex laugh at me ever again. Instead, I would destroy them by making them think I was weird, if not borderline crazy. Mission accomplished. If nothing else, I was certain that now they would at least leave me the fuck alone.
I decided to drag the cutout to the dumpster out back and call it a day. But when I got there, Rhoderick was throwing cardboard into the thresher.
“Hey, man!” he said, with a level of joy that can be attained only by a man who has escaped his Hutu tormentors. “What are you doing?”
“I'm just gonna throw this thing out, Rhoderick,” I said, sheepishly.
“What?” He seemed so sad. “But it's beautiful!”
“I really don'tâ” I began, but he cut me off before I could finish my sentence.
“You MUST keep it!”
His voice was deep with conviction. His eyes locked into mine, and the burning intensity within them let me know that
the ability to own a twelve-foot-tall
Inspector Gadget
promotional cutout defined to this man everything beautiful about America.
“Okay,” I said. There was nothing else to say. I had taken the display because I was willing to look crazy as long as it pissed off the management at a shitty multiplex on the side of a New Jersey highway. But I wasn't willing to look wasteful and ungrateful in front of someone who had been through so much. I was being defiant, fighting back against the powers that be, but Rhoderick was an instant reminder that my reality remained a very privileged one despite any issues I had. I was willing to look crazy to piss off and confuse the snobs I worked with. I wasn't willing to follow through so hard that I broke the heart of a man who I assumed had been through enough already.
Rhoderick told me to drag the cutout back to my car. He would find some rope. He seemed not just enthusiastic but driven. He took off running and met me at my car a few minutes later, holding piles of shredded clear plastic in his hand.
“I couldn't find any rope,” he said, grinning, “so I made some!”
Rhoderick had torn apart a handful of clear garbage bags and braided them together. The effort he put in only further reiterated to me that I had made my bed and now I had to lie in it. He hoisted the cardboard cutout onto the top of my car and told me to get inside. While he passed his homemade rope through the windows and lashed it above the cutout I sat in the car, listening to him grunt as he strained to tighten the knots. After a few minutes, I heard him muttering in satisfaction. Covered in sweat, he walked to the window and tenderly put his hand on my shoulder.
“Go home,” he said, “and enjoy this.”
His eyes wandered off toward the Raritan River, where the setting sun was reflecting off of the muddy brown water. Rhoderick
smiled, and a soft chuckle escaped his lips. His mind was clearly elsewhere.
I hit the gas and drove about ten feet before the wind caught underneath the cutout, lifting it up against the “rope” and slamming it down onto the roof with a thud. I screeched to a halt.
“Rhoderick,” I said, leaning out the window. “This isn't a good idea. I'm just gonna throw it away.”
“No!” he scolded me. “It is yours. You
must
take it home. If it starts to fly off, just reach up and grab it with your hand. You will be fine.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That sounds good.”
I sat in the car, hoping Rhoderick would make his way inside so I could drive over to the dumpster and throw out both the cutout and the piles of plastic tied to my car. Instead, he stood with his hands on his hips and grinned at me. After a few very awkward moments, I was left with no choice but to drive home, using two major highways, with a giant
Inspector Gadget
display strapped to the top of my 1986 Chevy Celebrity.
I made my way out onto Route 1, and had to go only 150 yards before merging onto Route 18. But in this short span, the cutout caught the wind and began bouncing off the top of my car. Taking Rhoderick's advice, I reached up and grabbed at it with my left hand. It lifted me off my seat. If I hadn't been wearing my seat belt, I would have been sucked out of the window and tossed onto the busy highway.
Panicking, I threw my hazard lights on and merged onto Route 18. Cars whipped past me, their drivers leaning on their horns. I was going only about forty miles per hour, but the cutout was bouncing up and down with a frightening amount of force.
Then I heard a “thwap” noise. One, two, three times. It wasn't the sound of the heavy cardboard violently hitting the car. It
was a strange whipping noise, and every time it happened, I felt the cutout offer up a little less wind resistance.
I looked in the rearview and realized that pieces of the cutout were tearing off from their 3-D perches and flying through the air behind my car. An evil cartoon cat tore loose and went whizzing to my left. Moments later, an iron glove peeled away and flew off to my right.