Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Walk Home From `Zack and Miri,' Flashes of Doom, More Luke: Summer of Sam

I was bopping along the street earlier this evening (well, now, yesterday), walking back from the screening of “Zack and Miri” (hmm.). Mama Grice hadn’t picked up the phone yet – I’d gotten off at a wrong subway stop and had to walk home, so I called for some company. No answer: how infuriating a feeling, it’s so unfair, given my horrible call-screening tendencies, but … play it as it lays.

So, I’m bopping along, one of the best friends (who answered) tells me she’s at a Hanson concert in Times Sq. (weep, weep for humanity), when I turn down my street.

As I’ve mentioned before, I live in a good little neighborhood. Lots of fashionable young gay men making me feel disdain for myself and my unwashed hair, and even more-obscenely unwashed clothes.

I was probably dreaming of Lucas and how I was going to kill him.

Suddenly, this man on a bike comes soaring past.

“Oh, hey, Mr. Bicyclist, maybe I’ll look and greet your eye,” I think.

He greets it and gives me a snarly, terrible smile. One that says, “Oh, hello, my sweet, I’d like to skin you and wear you as a body suit.” I have been brutally putting on pounds, of late.

It was jarring. I swept my brain away from Story Luke and started getting nervous. Me, a seemingly strong girl of Brute sensibility, I started to panic. Ooohh, I’m walking through subsidized housing. It sure is dark out here. Quite dark.

I start to eye every waking, walking person within vicinity of eye’s reach.

Paranoia. Looking behind one’s back. The whole nine.

I call my mom repeatedly, getting more frustrated (she’d been making dinner for Little Morgan, god, what’s wrong with me?)

But, oh, what a sense of horror and flashes of doom.

Sure, I should be aware that walking home alone is not ideal (ahem, Grice, it was about 8:30pm), but acting out the terrors of movies you lull yourself to sleep with? Not ideal. Oy, vey.

Reminded me of Summer of Sam with John Leguizamo. I’ve only seen parts of it (man, the more I think about it, the more I realize I should be checked for narcolepsy. I saw that many moons ago, and by “saw” means I was in my teens and never saw the end—because it was dark, I was comfortable, and zonked out. Sigh. Netflix!).