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Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Razbliuto: Chapter 3
Here are the previous two chapters to our tale. I've set a schedule for this story. I'll post a new chapter every week, late on Wednesday. Most of you will read it Thursday morning (well, most of you will probably skip over it but you know what I mean).
It was an historic day in my life when Lola came to my house to watch Citizen Kane. It marked the first time I had ever cooked for someone I wasn't related to (and even when I did cook for my family it was a one time only disastrous attempt at macaroni and cheese). Lola has asked me in an e-mail a few days earlier "will you feed me?" How could I refuse to nourish a cherub? I needed something easy to go with my barely existent culinary skills. I found a recipe for a marinade that I could use on chicken breasts that I could then grill. It was easy enough to pour orange juice and honey into a plastic bag, throw some chicken in there and throw it in the refrigerator for a few hours. This would be our meal for the night.
The main dish wasn't a challenge. What was difficult was trying to pass off my living situation as anything other than the Bachelor Hell it was. Shared with four male roommates, the kitchen was a sparse and depressing collection of unmatched colors and sticky surfaces. I had no time nor the resources to redecorate it. I was too busy transforming my room from the wasteland of post-adolescent masculinity it usually is into something a bit more presentable. The dirty clothes on the floor were concealed in a laundry hamper (actually an old suitcase but it will do). All the comics that occupied the rest of the floorspace were collected into a few cardboard boxes. Looking at my bookshelves I faced the question: is having various literary classics (most of them actually read!) still impressive if they are tattered used copies bought for a few dollars, if not a few cents, at dusty old bookstores? I wondered if my collection of sci-fi paperbacks from the '60s and '70s would be impressive or seen as a grating affectation. While vacuuming lint and old popcorn kernels from the carpet I decided that one look at the covers of The Texas-Israeli War: 1999 or Mutiny in Space (the cover of which promises us "Castaways of the universe - marooned on a lost planet of war-crazed females!") and there would be no need to explain the inherit genius of these works.
I surprised myself with how inoffensive my room actually appeared as Lola's entrance drew near. The floor was spotless, good news as would be sitting on it as we crowded around the small TV set my Dad and I purchased from Radioshack for $99 on the day I moved into the dorms of San Francisco State University.
"Wow, the '70s are alive and well in this house," she said as she looked around.
That was true. There was nothing I could do about the encroaching "brownness" of the carpet and walls that were older than the both of us. I laughed it off with the first of any number of stammering, exasperated sounding apologizes. Most of those left my mouth during my embarrassing attempt to open a wine bottle with a corkscrew I bought for a dollar. As I wrestled with the glass her head cocked to the right, just as it always did whenever she was confused by the behavior of us silly humans. I should have found that insulting. Instead I was completely smitten by it every single time. Even with the help of a roommate I was hardly close to the victory of an open bottle. Lola herself stepped in and managed open the damn thing. As she took a sip from one of two mismatched glasses (actually her was a mug) she declared the wine corked but good. I was certain she had a similar half-enthused appraisal of my entire self.
I try to watch Kane about twice a year. It was good to watch it with someone who had never experienced it before. I tried my best to rein in my utterances of Orson Welles trivia (a subject which I have become a minor scholar of) and just let her watch the film. It was wonderful see the life brimming within the film grab a hold of her. With Kane you never have to explain to someone "okay, we're going to watch an old film now so adjust your expectations." It's a singualr performance that either hits you or it doesn't. When Welles tells George Coulouris "You're right, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll have to close this place in... 60 years," Lola laughed. It was the first time I heard the unconscious reaction of laughter from her. How could I tell her that melted when I saw her mouth open wide and the sound of approval came out of her?
Occasionally during the film and before it she would call her Dad about picking her up. I wanted to talk to her after the film but she had to get up early the next day. I thought it adorable listening to her speak Russian over the phone. Standing outside my house waiting for her Dad's car I revealed how thinking about Welles's life story makes me insecure. I'd compared myself to someone who was the toast of Broadway at 22, had made the greatest film of all time at 25. Then I remembered Welles's perceived decline after Kane and wondered if I hit it big would the same happen to me. She sent skeptical barbs my way, even saying "yes dear" once. I knew what other might see in her as careless I saw as a refreshing bit of uncompromising tough love. Tough like, maybe. Her Dad drove up, she and I hugged tightly like the last time and she was off.Labels: razbliuto
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