It gets a lot of likes.
No comments.
One new friend.
There are approximately 150 people in the theater.
I cannot see all the seats; it’s too dark.
I try to focus on the screen, on the movie trailer, but it all looks like images and by the time I focus on one image it’s already gone, replaced by another. The ground shakes, screen goes black.
Then another green screen, another trailer.
I place my arms on the armrests but it doesn’t feel right.
I try folding them but no.
I try letting them rest in my lap.
Still no.
Veronica whispers something in my ear. I don’t hear it.
I don’t bother asking.
Finally the previews are over.
Then it gets really soft, quiet in the theater.
All I can hear is my breath.
Rising and falling. I’m breathing heavily.
I can’t focus on anything but my breathing. It sounds too loud.
I take out my phone, confused for a moment by what I see.
It’s an icon that shows up when the phone is turned to silent.
I want to be as silent as the phone.
People can hear my breathing in this theater. This is troublesome.
Lots of likes.
But monitoring Meurks’s activity doesn’t work for this.
The breaths keep coming, one after the other. I hold my breath but then I choke. The man sitting next to me turns and looks.
I look away.
Veronica whispers something, rests her hand on my forearm.
I stand up, holding my breath again, and I squeeze my way back into the aisle. I keep thinking about how Veronica should have listened to me and sat on the end of the aisle. I tiptoe out of the dark theater.
I start coughing the moment I get into the men’s room.
Only 1 person in the men’s room and he’s in one of the stalls.
I find the handicapped stall in the very back and it isn’t until I hear the sound of the door lock sliding that I can stop focusing on my breath.
I sit down and begin typing.
I don’t recall what I type but everything that I feel, everything in mind, the weight that I feel on my chest, the pressure on my forehead, the dizzy blur that constitutes for eyesight, all gestates into one long blog rant.
And as Meurks, it makes more sense to everyone else.
It makes very little sense to me.
The man in the stall leaves and for nearly the entire proposed duration of the movie, I am alone in the men’s room.
The handicapped stall is big enough to feel open, different from the rest of the men’s room.
I receive a text.
It’s her.
I don’t read it.
I reply, “Not feeling well is all. Enjoy the film. Space is awesome. So much empty space, it’s like you can breathe, really exhale.”
Then I send another text, “But there’s no oxygen in space so exhaling would mean dying and dying is a thing. I think.”
Approximately a minute passes before she replies, “Okay, I’m worried is all. But I understand. LOL.”
The last part, the “LOL,” I gather is due to my followup text.
I think I hear one of the urinals flushing …
But it’s just my imagination.
I look at my phone. Down to 35 % battery power.
I pocket the phone.
The color of the toilet paper isn’t quite white. Not quite off-white.
The tiles on the floor have small puddles of maybe-water forming.
I take out my phone and type.
Considering livetweeting not watching that space movie. Anyone interested?
There are likes. There are positive comments. I begin, and in brief succession, the endeavor becomes my one and only focus.
By the time the battery drains, I have two dozen tweets about the various notices, nuances, and graffiti of the handicapped stall.
I gain a few followers.
A few friends.
I hear Veronica’s voice.
The movie is over.
We walked home. Veronica understands me. Her words not mine. On the way home we stopped at the bodega. She paid for the wine and the food while I walked to the back, where the freezers full of beer, milk, and other dairy products are stored. I stare at the area of space closest to the front entrance of the bodega. I can’t look at anything else. When I see Veronica pass by, that is my cue to leave. This is the bodega: They know me here. I am Zachary the customer. Everything I have understood about the owners has been true. They are simple people that treat me equally; they treat everyone the same.
A thought, at once clear, blurs as it registers:
I don’t fit in here.
I think this is weird. What I’m doing is weird. How I’m acting has been weird all day. But then I say aloud, “This isn’t routine.”
And it’s true. This is not routine.
I feel … I cannot describe it.
It’s like I can almost interpret what I have been doing and all the different possibilities, variations at which I could complete the action, but I end up choosing the last one. If a multiple choice question, I would be choosing “d” for every action.
My level of comfort, my relative ease, did not wake up with me.
My ability to understand has been fractured, split in half.
Where did my week go? How did I do? Was I a good employee?
Moreover, what am I today?
Zachary the boyfriend?
What is that?
I catch myself tapping my fingers against the side of my belt.
Stop that but then I begin tapping my toes.
When I see Veronica, I pass by.
I hear one of the bodega owners greet me.
I think it was “Hey Zack, happy birthday!”
But something about right now is beyond my control. I move and act in the only way I am used to … which isn’t enough.
There is a part of what happens that functions as resistance while another part functions as a problem.
Veronica tells me I’m strange.
I no longer know what she means by that.
Back at my apartment, Ben, the super, greets me, “Happy B-day Zack!”
Veronica thanks him. I nod, glance down at the ring of keys in his left hand and, without realizing, I begin talking to Ben.
“Any word on the robbery?”
“Naw, unfortunately. It’s been bothering me, bothering everyone in the building.”
“That’s a real shame …”
“Yeah,” Ben raises an eyebrow, “yeah it is.”
Veronica and him exchange a glance.
She says, “Were the tenants insured?”
Ben relays the details, which, for the most part, I am surprised to have already been largely aware.
After we talk, he greets me again.
This time I say thank you.
Veronica tells me again, “You’re strange.”
After dinner we drink the second bottle of wine. The couch isn’t big enough for what we want to do so we move to the bedroom.
I spill wine on the bedsheets.
“I don’t care.”
Veronica laughs.
I feel different.
But that sentence doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
So I say it aloud, “I feel different.”
She nods, “You’re acting different.”
“How so?”
She shrugs, “Dunno. More … jovial?”
Jovial? What kind of word is that?
Another laugh. “No, not jovial, just more subdued. Not so tense. I was worried about you earlier at the theater. I couldn’t sit still. I don’t think I paid attention to a single frame of the movie I was so nervous.”