INTERSTELLAR literally blew my mind back when I saw it in November. Like I couldn't believe anything I was seeing, it was just so good. The credits rolled and I just sat there. Where was I? In a theater, I reminded myself and when the lights came on they were like dim suns putting me into a daze and in a daze I left that theater, an acned boy and fat girl in crimson vests sweeping up the detritus the others in the theaters had left behind—they had to have left behind that trash, hadn't they? Half drunk large sodas and large popcorn, stale-smelling as I passed, empty candy boxes, Bunch'a'crunch, raisinets. Who likes raisinets?, I remember thinking. The two kids stared at me angrily and I was out the door. I made it to my car and placed my hand on the handle. At this moment, and for the first time, I really felt the car. I understood why a handle was called that. It made perfect sense. Curling my fingers I pulled the handle towards me but to no avail and I stepped back, afraid that the car I'd wondered to wasn't mine. It was the one I remembered driving here in. Pale blue truck, my dad's, he was letting me borrow it, I said I had had a date. This was the one. I closed my eyes and against my eyelids, floating like camera flash leftovers, were blue and red swirls, the same pattern, I knew, of the carpeted walls of the theater I had just left (I had just left it, hadn't I?), it having been borne in the early 2000s, when the city had cut specific taxes to invite malls, and malls had sprung up, hadn't they? But I didn't come to this theater until 2008 with you know who. We didn't meet online but we did grow there, and I asked her why don't we meet at the theater? That's where we met. Afterwards we made out in my dad's truck. I said let's park somewhere and we can get in the back but she said maybe next time. When was next time? Not then. I parked down the ways a bit from where I stood then, after INTERSTELLAR. I opened my eyes and realized: I had locked the door. Then I remembered: I had never called her back. Well I got out my phone in that moment and like the handle etc. it was the first time I really felt like I was holding the phone. The plastic felt cold in my hand. But before I could dial I decided to give it a minute. I drove home, somehow: the world was in different colors now, though of course I recognized them. Call me crazy but cars were driving over rain and the sun come out and it was that perfect green yellow, and the rain became mist floating right above the road. I got home and checked her on Facebook: sure enough she was In A Relationship. But I thought, I'll see what happens, and I liked her most recent status.
Do you know two days later she sent me a message? I had been liking her statuses on a regular basis, and she asked how I was. Well I explained everything I just told you. I told her about how Matthew had loved his family so much he saved the human race through time. I explained to her how the mother figure was absent and never brought up at all but you could truly feel her absence. I explained to her about the incredibly original water and ice planets, about Hugh Mann. I wanted to tell her about the drive home afterward but couldn't think of how to describe it. I wanted to tell her about how I had remembered her, about how I had remembered the date. I just told her about Nolan.
She said it sounds good, and I asked her, swallowing my heart because it had just jumped to the front of my throat, if she wanted to see it sometime.
And you know what?
She did.
So I'm meeting her a few hours after I post this. We're going to see it in iMAX: I told her the people there know me by name, and they even have my popcorn and drink waiting.
So thank you Matthew. And thank you Murph. And thank you Jon. And thank you Chris.
And wish me luck, Nolanites.