How I met this girclass="underline" A couple of days ago I pre-bought two tickets to a movie, one was for this other girl I was seeing—I guess she was my girlfriend, whatever—but then she texted me that she couldn’t make it, and I was like that’s cool. I figured I could sell her ticket, no problem. Some days in March are warm and some are cold, and it was cold that day, but I waited outside the theatre to catch someone who was otherwise going to pay full price at the box office. A guy showed up first, so I didn’t offer. Next was another guy. Then several more guys, and guys with girls, so I just looked upwards. Near the top of a building, there was a square electronic billboard, like it was floating in the sky, playing through a loop of ads over and over and over. Then, finally, a girl came by. That was her. I might have been pickier, but I guess I was worried that she was my last chance. She was pretty chunky, like she snacked all the time or something, and the way she walked was like sad and apologetic. But I said hi anyway. She came over, and she bought the ticket, and we were standing there, and I started regretting the whole thing right then. We went down the stairs together, and she started asking questions: Do you go to the movies a lot? What kind of movies do you like? Why do you like that kind of movie? Do you go to a movie because who’s in it or who directed it? I was hoping to escape and went and took a seat in the middle of a row, but she hustled after me, fast for someone her size—I swear, I felt the air shake with her mass—and she dropped herself into the seat next to me. The questioning didn’t stop: So when you like a movie, they release the soundtrack, right, are you the type who buys the soundtrack? She would have kept going with the interrogation, but the lights began to dim. Commercials and trailers, one after the next after the next, taking forever like usual. Finally the movie started. It was a Canadian movie, about four teenage girls, and they each go through stereotypical teenage experiences. The plot didn’t make a big deal of itself, but there didn’t seem to be anything like structure either, everything just happened randomly. I got bored partway through and pretty much gave up on watching it. Instead I just sat there listening to the English that I didn’t understand and telling myself what a fool I was, waiting to sell my extra ticket to some girl and getting what I deserved. I played the whole scene over and over again in my head—spotting her and, for some crazy reason, saying hi—and actually it felt way more real than anything happening on the movie screen. Then the movie ended.
As soon as the lights came on, she started talking again. Umm, what did you think of it? It was pretty good, right? Maybe not so good? If you ask me, I guess I think it was like great. You know there was that one black actress? And the guy who played her older brother? I heard he’s like in a theatre group, like it’s his theatre group, or a performance group, one of those, you know? I’m not just telling you to show that I know stuff, I’m more like, wow, he really knows what he’s doing as an actor, that’s what I meant. What did you think about him? Don’t you think he’s good? And like, oh right, I heard a rumour he’s going to be in a performance, the day after tomorrow or something, at a place in Roppongi, I mean it’s not a rumour, it’s like true, I just for some reason said it was a rumour, and like they never perform in theatres, they always do it in like clubs or bars and stuff, their show, or I guess their performance, they’re like performers, but they don’t use a stage set or anything, they just like get a mic and improvise, something like that, yeah.
When I told the guy about this performance, he said, maybe I’ll go. I know he was just saying that, but I forced myself, I went out of my way to believe him, so I just came out and said, oh really, then why don’t we go together. I did it because I didn’t want to think he was just saying he’d go, and because if he wasn’t just saying it, I wanted to see if things could go farther, and because some small part of me really thought he wanted to go. I knew exactly what would happen if I said, why don’t we go together, but I said it anyway, because like if I had a positive attitude and gave it a shot, it would happen, so I came out and said it as sincerely as I could. I said it all brightly, to cheer myself on. Even if he saw right through to my trembling little ulterior motive—though I don’t think it was anything sinister like ulterior, I think it was sweet and kind of innocent—even if he saw through me, I told myself I didn’t care. Which of course was a lie, if he saw through me I’d just want to die. When I was about to say, why don’t we go together, I thought that as soon as I finished saying it, I should stare into his eyes as hard as I could. So I did. I knew that he might get put off by me giving him that kind of look, but I did it anyway. Then when I was staring into his eyes, I knew that I had to really plead with my eyes or it wouldn’t work, and I didn’t let myself think it wouldn’t work because it was my eyes, in my face. If I looked away quickly because I knew it was putting him off, that would be even worse, and I mean I knew right away that even if I stared into his eyes, nothing was going to happen, but I forced myself to stare into his eyes for a while—a really short while, maybe just a few seconds. But it wasn’t working, like I knew it wouldn’t, and I gave up. For a moment I didn’t know where I should look next, which was how I ended up looking hard at the wall. It was like throwing a lump of clay against the wall as hard as I could and it was just sticking there. A light grey spot, hardly noticeable, but it leaves a stain that never comes out, and even though it’s basically totally meaningless, there it is forever, so that’s what I decided to stare at. I tried to make it mean something by looking at it, even though it didn’t want to be given any meaning.
To be honest, by that point in time I was totally sick of myself. But I was telling myself that I always get sick of myself too quickly. The lobby of the movie theatre had posted these magazine articles about the movies they were showing. The two of us were standing there, me kind of leaning against the wall, kind of like talking. Maybe fifty centimetres above my right shoulder there was on the wall this cut-out little article from a magazine I know the name of but have never read. From where he was standing, my head was in the way of him seeing the article, not that he was trying to see it, he was probably just thinking about getting out of there. I leant against the wall all heavy, like I couldn’t move if I wanted to, so he felt like he couldn’t just leave me there. I made him feel that way. Of course he knew I was just putting it on. But all he could do was stand there. He didn’t lean against the wall like I did, he just stood there. He stood there for a whole hour, until his feet ached.
The two of us were talking about something, but there was suddenly a break in the conversation, like a gap between us. I remembered that before the movie started we were talking about soundtracks, but the movie started and the conversation got cut off, so I thought I would bring that back up again, and I did. Umm, I’ve actually been wondering something this whole time, so, before the movie started, we were talking about this, right? I mean I just wanted to go back to that, you know? So like are you the type who buys soundtracks of movies you like? That’s what I asked before, remember, and you said you’re not a soundtrack buyer, right? And then I was like, why not? And that’s when the movie started, I mean it was just the trailers, but we couldn’t really talk any more, so that’s where the conversation ended, right? You remember all that, right? So can we pick up where we left off? And when I asked that, he said sure. So I did. So when you say you don’t buy soundtracks, why is that? To be honest, I am really curious, like do you have a reason? When I was asking him this, I leant even more of my body weight against the wall. I wanted him to lean on the wall too, so we could be leaning the same way on the same wall, except that he was going to be facing me and talking to me, so I was like inviting him to join me. But not surprisingly, he didn’t lean. Though I have to say it was a pretty subtle invitation. I knew it probably didn’t even get through to him.