It is 2017 and he has preferences. Arrive twenty-five minutes early. First showing on a Tuesday. Back row. Centered. No crowds. No kids. Quiet.
Preferences. The way life is supposed to go.
Popcorn. Sprite. No phones, no talking. A clean seat. An unobstructed view of an unmarked screen. No waiters walking hunchbacked up and down the strained glow of the aisles. No wafts of fried foods. No edamame hummus or hot wings with blue cheese dressing. Peanut butter banana cookies or kale and manchego salads. No flatbreads, tacos, or riesling milkshakes.
Preferences. Life cares nothing for them.
Every few seconds he glances at the dual entrances concealed by towering partitions—carpet on the walls, grooved and frayed, one on either side of the auditorium—at the talkative shadows entering the theater, assessing just how much aggravation they were going to cause. His teeth clench as the moviegoers search for a seat, necks craning up in his direction, fingers pointing indecisively toward various sections. The longer they take, the more he sweats, and the higher they climb the more he feels his heart race, the little red muscle greased well by anxiety. He raises his sneakers atop the seats in front of him, his rebellious youth fitting him awkwardly in middle age. He coughs obnoxiously. Like most, this group gravitates toward the middle. Middle of the middle row. Middling lives, he thinks. Like most, they scroll through their phones for some time, chatter for some time. He prefers they stop once the movie starts, but he isn’t confident. He’s prepared to say something. He always is and he always does—in the anonymity of shadow—and it locks him out of the movie for at least several minutes after, though it’s nothing like the torment he endures internally as he debates whether or not to speak up, when to do it, and what exactly to say. It’s the confrontation that does it to him, however one sided it might be. The thought alone paralyzes him with a claustrophobic terror, and if an altercation of some kind actually ensues the psychological effects could last years. He’d beat himself up mentally far more than anyone ever could physically, the ordeal replaying over and over and over, a miserable loop, often with things he could have said or done differently—he is never creative enough in the moment, always lacking, always late on the draw. And if he backs down completely, if he doesn’t say a thing, it’s even worse. He has always questioned what kind of a man he was and this only amplified such doubts. Like the time he was pushing his daughter in a swing in a public park and a man took her picture. Greg had seen him coming, had seen this moment building, and he just looked at the stranger and the expensive camera hanging around his slim neck and did nothing. And when this man—this tourist—went to take a picture of the next child swaying in a swing the mother darted out in front of her son with her hands out screaming, “No pictures!” and this made Greg feel so very small. If he couldn’t even stand up for his daughter what kind of a man was he? What if her picture was now plastered all across the internet? What if twisted, nasty old men were jerking off to her? That would be his fault. He allowed that. Out of fear. There was the time he allowed a man to comment on his wife’s ass right in front of him, she said she understood, that it wasn’t worth it, but he thinks she secretly despises him for it.
Even if the confrontation is minor—a simple and successful shushing in a dark theater—it’s always difficult for him to get back into the proper headspace, so rattled is he by the experience and the anticipation of it. For him, nothing is more important than headspace for a movie. One has to be fully engulfed by the sound and images, submerged in the creation of this world. There is no escapism if reality has only been shoved as far as the rows ahead of you. There have been times, the second the movie begins, when he knows he isn’t in the proper mindset—reality has not yet even departed his head—and the entire experience is going to be negatively affected. A failed escape. Though he can’t even bring himself to leave—what might people think? what would they say as they watched him walk down the aisle? He knows being engulfed by entertainment is not truly living, that life is actually the opposite of such things. Not distraction, but deep focus. But that way lies pain. He doesn’t want these thoughts in his head all the time. Like most, he doesn’t want life. Never has. He only wants an exit. One way or another.
The sound system is silent as advertisements linger on the screen for 30 seconds at a time. The local pizzeria. A company putting up fences since 1989. There’s an ad for a senior living complex with a silver-haired couple with gigantic plastic smiles that turns his bones leaden. He had helped pay for his mother to live in that very place. Joyful Escape. He remembers laughing at the name because he knew it was more of an escape for him rather than her. Twenty-five minutes away and he hasn’t visited in months. Hasn’t let her see her granddaughter. But why should he? His mother’s a miserable person, always has been, and she’s only getting worse. She hates children, including when he was one himself. She never wanted him and wasn’t shy about letting it be known. “There was always so much more to do,” she had said countless times while lost in the fog of her memory. “Those opportunities are gone now. All of them. You’re here instead.”
Throughout his childhood she constantly took him to the movies. It didn’t matter if he was four or fourteen, if the movie was rated G or R. She would take him and tell him not to say a single word, and then she would sit two rows behind him in her statuesque way eating the popcorn from the bag with nothing but the tip of her tongue. If he had a question, if he had to use the bathroom, if he talked in the lowest whisper—if he even coughed—she would lean forward and do this little hiss and then when the movie ended and they were back in the car she would let him have it. She would beat him while calling him by his father’s name.
He has a preference for previews, however many there might be. He prefers previews he hasn’t yet seen, but will gladly sit through those that he had already deemed exciting when viewing them online during his off periods instead of grading papers or preparing lessons for unappreciative and often inattentive students, and even for those that truly care too, all 5% of them—fifteen years of teaching will do that to you; it shows you the future and tells you to run. He prefers the trailers to be treated as if they’re part of the movie and has often remarked that they are actually better than the movie. He sees the art to them, the masterful editing, the perfect use of music, the condensing of something bloated into something short and powerful and moving. Done correctly, they were the essence of the whole. Often, he would rewatch old trailers, some of the very best—A Serious Man; The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; Alien; Little Children; Pulp Fiction; The Exorcist—and he would be reminded of what he loved so much about those movies, about all movies. He didn’t need to watch the entire film, just the trailer. The trailers were enough. They put everything in perspective. They brought all the feeling and emotion rushing back, reminding him of what he had forgotten. Two and a half minutes. It summed up everything in two and a half minutes.
Shadows play. Voices carry. Phones alight. A can can be heard popping. The smell of fast food. A fissure of laughter. Seven people in the theater and it’s enough to ruin the movie. The start time has passed, deep into the trailers now, and he still hasn’t taken a bite of his over-salted popcorn. Not a sip of his soda. That will come when the lights drop even lower and the screen widens with that perfect hum, theater warnings and protocol will ensue, and hopefully the people will abide and fall quiet.
Preferences.
His mind isn’t clear. It never is until the movie starts, but this morning it is especially bad. The trailers aren’t working. They feel false. They’re lacking. A failing drug.
He called in sick to work again. He preferred not to teach today, wasn’t sure he even could. His soul felt small and flat. All he wanted was to escape into a movie. He preferred something light and distracting. Puff. Filler. Something to put air back into him, to make him three dimensional again. A movie like the one about to start. Every Day is a Holiday. A movie about a lovesick girl who, after suffering through one dating disaster after another, struggles to see the beauty of the world. She is alone and miserable; her self worth nil. On New Year’s Eve, under the guidance of her friends, she resolves to finally give up on men and celebrate life, and she will do this by participating in a holiday for every day of the coming year. January 31st is Backwards Day. February 1st is Work Naked Day. March 26th is Make Up Your Own Holiday Day. May 22nd is Buy A Musical Instrument Day. November 20th is National Absurdity Day. And so on and so forth. Greg gleaned all this from the trailer. He gleaned the inevitable montage of bad dates, the inevitable montage of quirky holiday hijinks, the inevitable montage of stumbling into love through her newfound outlook on life. He gleaned the entire arc of the movie, beginning, middle, and end, all the conflict, the entire hero’s journey, in two minutes and 30 seconds. And it made him feel good to know what he was getting. The movie as advertised. Still, he preferred to watch this predictable and lighthearted romp in a quiet, nearly empty theater. He preferred to sit in the back, alone and undisturbed. He preferred to forget his life. Or lack thereof.
The movie’s opening credits begin, a loud, upbeat and popular song that he can sing along to, but doesn’t know the name of or, for that matter, the artist—he hasn’t known the name of a new singer or band in over a decade, and the song titles fade like hours-old skywriting. New Year’s Eve. New York City. An unaffordable apartment. Outrageous clothes. Expensive wine, half empty. A girl gets ready for the night. A pop-up life.
To the right of the screen, another shadow emerges from the entrance hall—the movie’s start time was officially listed as being over twelve minutes earlier, and though this happens during almost every movie he sees, Greg still can’t fathom how unaware and nonchalant some people are, how the film always seems secondary to so many, that the ticket is just a seat in which to talk, text, and eat in, something that can be done for free in almost any other location.
A large man with a full tub of popcorn and a soda the size of his thigh stops and stares up at the screen, fixated, the images dancing inside his thick glasses. He stands in the entranceway a good two minutes before he turns around and starts to climb the stairs slowly, awkwardly—both feet hitting each step, a toddler’s ascent. His knees don’t fully bend and his back his arched in a way that indicates pain. He has dark uncombed hair that falls straight down his brow; in the back it descends into a weak mullet. He can be anywhere from 20-35 years of age. Poor posture, a large, sagging stomach, and hardly any neck. His face shines in the dark. Greg can’t help but watch him out of the corner of his eye, his gaze shifting from the screen to the man and back again. He is unable to enjoy the movie, not until everyone is seated. Only then can he relax and only when he relaxes can he fully escape into the story. The man keeps climbing and Greg feels sick. Although the theater is mostly empty, he knows the man is oblivious and is going to come for the row just ahead of him. He puts his feet up again, but knows it won’t work. He coughs, deep, phlegm filled hacks. He opens his phone so that the light illuminates his face, but the man continues to climb, hugging the popcorn to his chest. He is wearing a backpack, sandals with socks.
He is three rows from the top when he stops and glances back at the screen. He does this quickly, a snap of a turn, as if he heard something he liked. He laughs audibly, the only one in the theater to do so, and dips his head down toward the popcorn. A slug of a tongue practically unrolls from his bulbous mouth, the tip adhering to a single kernel and retracting it past his lips. His glasses dip and nearly fall into the glistening tub. He’s stuck there as if he forgot he was supposed to sit. He is breathing heavily. His sideburns are bushy and dotted with perspiration, his face unshaved and flush. Greg knows his teeth are the color of the popcorn.
The man eventually continues his climb, a sly grin on his face as he nods to himself and mumbles something incoherent. On screen, the lead character—Greg has already missed her name, all new information unable to grab hold of a passing neuron in his head during this trying time of his—is crying to her best friend about the dearth of good men. She says that after pursuing what she had deemed a healthy relationship for so long only for it to be hopeless has distorted her. She says she doesn’t even know who she is anymore, that everything has to change. Her friend then insists she find herself and an appreciation for life without men. “How?” the protagonist asks, and just like that a notification pops up on her phone saying that January 1st is National Polar Bear Plunge Day. The perfect way to start her new year— a sort of cleanse.
The man skips the penultimate row and Greg can no longer move, estranged from his body. The screen has gone black. He is in an unreality. An amorphous place. As the man shifts toward him, Greg’s head is fully turned in the stranger’s direction, his mouth open, but not as wide as his eyes. The man is still facing the screen, watching intently, while scuttling over very slowly, one foot knocking the other. Two seats in, three, four, five. His body odor precedes him, as does the suction sound of his skin meeting at his thighs. A piece of popcorn is lodged in Greg’s throat. It feels like a tooth buried in the lining. Like the slow growth of a second being inside his neck. Like it was born biting. The man keeps coming, his face dipping down into the popcorn, tongue writhing, searching, like Greg’s mother’s used to. What he doesn’t swallow comes out with his laughter. More shuffling. He doesn’t seem to be stopping. He’s locked in to the movie. At this point a seat seems unnecessary. He just might slide right past Greg without even noticing. He might wander up and down the aisles, never sitting, not once. Greg hopes for this. Prays.
Until the man plops down right beside him.
An explosion. It’s in Greg’s head, directly behind his eyes. It shifts him far to his left, and he groans as if in pain. He mumbles, curses, makes a show of his adjustment, none of which the man seems aware of. The movie is completely gone, wiped out in the aftershock. There is no sound. Even the other people have vanished. It is only Greg and the man beside him, but the man sits there as if Greg isn’t. His soda is placed in the holder closest to Greg. The armrest has been claimed by a hairy forearm with several dried cuts and picked scabs, a band-aid showing blood. The backpack sits on the floor between his feet. His shirt has risen to expose a ring of fat and the pale lines of faded stretch marks. He keeps adjusting to the seat, shaking it. He does this as he laughs and eats, laughs and eats. Finally, his legs are spread wide and he is comfortable.
Greg is no longer breathing, not that he is aware of. His body is nebulous. He can’t feel the seat beneath him. Can’t feel anything. His feet are falling through the floor. Senses gone. He is pure thought now. He is the vapor of deep mourning. There is no easy way out of this. Beside him, the man sits there, content. Almost visibly happy. There is a perpetual little lift to the corner of his lips that claims victory. His fingers shine with butter, as do his nose and substandard mustache. His cheeks are full, his eyebrows thick and wild and nearly one.
He looks like an Incel. This is Greg’s initial summation of this man’s life. That he has never had sex. That he doesn’t mix well in society. That he is often mocked. Somehow he feels he is owed this seat. It is his. He won’t move. Elliot Rodger goes to the movies. Black pills in his gut. A manifesto open on his computer.
Greg’s eyes drift down toward the backpack, eyeing its bulk. It had made a certain sound when it was placed down, didn’t it? A clack, like metal on linoleum. When he looks up again, the man is staring at him in a deeply personal and penetrating way. He sees straight through Greg as if he were made up of the same dust lingering in the light of the projector. The man flashes a popcorn flecked smile and all Greg can do is pretend to yawn. The man simply turns back and Greg goes ice cold. His left hand searches to brace the armrest but can’t find it, his right is curled in a fist that is pressing against his thigh though he doesn’t feel it. He trembles and thinks only of recent killings. Shootings with guns that were pulled from backpacks. He thinks of Seung-Hui Cho and Adam Lanza. He thinks of severe depression, anxiety, and selective mutism. He thinks of the boy who, after each kill, said, “Another one bites the dust.” He thinks of the one in the movie theater. James Eagan Holmes and The Dark Knight Rises. Insanity and a young man who worked with children. Theater 9 at Century 16. Smoke bombs. Shotguns, glocks, and Smith & Wesson M&P15 Sport semi automatic rifles. Black stars. People with something to say.
See something say something. The man beside him has done nothing wrong. Not outside a social miscue. But he has the stench of a predator. The appearance of a perpetrator. See something say something. Moments that transcend a life. Eternal moments.
Greg Lyle Dawsett can’t even remember the name of the movie. He can’t see the lead actress’s face. Instead, he is picturing his death at the hands of this man. Gunshot to the head. The first victim. He sees his tombstone. “The husband of Brazel’s widow.”
He wants to move. He wants to find a new seat and forget all of this. Lose himself and everything else in the movie. The man’s not a killer. He’s just like Greg. He has a preference for the back row center. He’s just like Greg.
Thus far the movie has failed. His thoughts have invaded. They’re swarming. Taking over. Jumbled. Illogical. Nightmarish. There’s no controlling them now. A man fucking his car, Brazel fucking his wife. A shooting spree, pedophelia rings, memories mistaken for movies and movies mistaken for memories. Brazel’s gallery pieces, his mother yelling at him, Greg yelling at someone else. A beatdown, a suckerpunch, the Knockout Game. Screams, cries, and begging. Blood, tears, and sinning. Helpful police, hurtful police, hands in the air and hands in fists. He sees his death. He sees his death a million different ways.
If he moves his seat it might trigger the man. But Greg isn’t going anywhere; he can’t even flex his hand right now. He can make a scene, he can make accusations; he can warn others, but what if he’s wrong? Then again, if he says something it might be the last thing he ever says. But Greg isn’t going to say a word; his tongue is dead in his mouth.
The man spills popcorn everywhere. They are in the folds of his shirt and in the buckles of his sandals. Greg imagines his house to be a mess. He read somewhere that the average human being produces a ton of garbage each year. This man, he is convinced, must produce three times that. There’s a stink to him, a convention hall smell. He looks dirty. A hoarder’s body. What’s he hoarding? What’s he got in that bag?
Stubble covers the Incel’s face. The dark whisks travel so high up his swollen cheeks they almost reach his eyes. A hidden visage. He hasn’t spoken, but Greg knows his voice, knows his speech. He speaks like the internet. In sentences with hashtags and backslashes. Code and hate. Opinions and fake news. He breathes so hard his glasses fog.
Greg tries to get back into the movie. He tries to forget the man. Not even look over. He tries to pretend he doesn’t exist, but the images on the screen are blurred and the sound is muffled. It can’t save him. But he needs it to. He needs it.
The lead in the movie is celebrating a new holiday. Kiss and Make Up Day. But there is no way she is going back to the men of her past and apologizing, not for a single damn thing. Instead she visits her mother in a nursing home. There is a touching scene during which she forgives her mother for holding her back all these years, for beating her down that she wasn’t ever good enough, that all she was ever supposed to aspire to was being a wife and keeping her mouth shut. She tells her mother she’s changed, that she’s not going to be held back by anyone anymore. She says she’s sorry her mother never had the strength or insight she has recently obtained. She says she’s sorry that her mother grew up in the time she did. Then she kisses her.
Greg hears the man crying beside him. It’s not subtle. It’s not a sniffle and a lone tear. It’s a man in pain.
When the scene ends, the man looks over and sees Greg watching him blubber away. And all at once it’s as if the tears ice over in his eyes. What remains is an expression that is so hard and cold Greg feels it like a punch across his jaw. Greg turns back but, out of the corner of his eye, can tell the man is still staring. He can feel it, the cold burn, the hate inside. It lasts somewhere close to a minute. On screen, somebody screams. Greg notices the man reaching down for his backpack. He hears the pull of the zipper. An awful sound. The man reaches in. The man pulls something out.
The music is blasting. It’s an old song. An obscure rock tune from Greg’s youth. It’s out of place in the movie. It shouldn’t be there. Something about pretending to be dead.
A million images flash through his mind. All this failed life. Missed opportunities and unfinished business. Weakness and trepidation. His mother, Holly, Brazel, the tourist with the camera. He sees humiliation and all those moments of deep reflection in front of a mirror. He sees laughter in his direction, damning names formed on snarled lips. He sees school and church shootings, 9/11 and burning buildings. Kids jumping from windows and under desks. Live streams and news reports. Signs on city subways and cameras on city streets. Tombstones and Twitter screens. He sees all this.
As the man sits up after reaching deep into his bag, before he can use whatever it is he dug for and grabbed and now has two hands on, the object as dark as the shadows, Greg stands and throws a haymaker. He puts everything he has into the punch, all his past curled up in his fist. Even over the sound of music he hears the crack of the jaw and it’s as if he has fired his own gun. The man slumps forward, straight out of his seat, dead weight. He crumbles into the small space of the aisle, barely fitting, his ass in the air, an inch of dark hairy crack exposed as the seat rattles to a stop. He’s not moving, but Greg doesn’t quit. He kicks and stomps, he spits and curses. The popcorn spills, half the bag emptying over the man’s head. Something snaps.
When it’s finally finished, Greg, trembling with enough adrenaline to collapse his legs, plops back into his seat and stares out into the theater. No one has even turned around, some are even laughing. He saved them all and they don’t even know it. But that isn’t why he did it, of course. Heroes don’t do it for the accolades. As the movie continues to play on in the shape of girls and boys concealed from all this reality, Greg shakes his head and smiles wistfully. Hands slapping his thighs, he gets up and walks tall down the aisle practically whistling. As he strolls through the lobby with his hands in his pockets, he casually stops one of the passing ushers and says, “There’s a man passed out in the top row of theater 6. I think he has a weapon or something. You should check it out before he wakes up.” Then he makes a gesture that he isn’t even sure is appropriate, something between a salute and the tipping of a cap, and exits the building, the punishing heat of the world having been cut by a passing storm.
Michael Paul Kozlowsky is the author of Scarecrow Has a Gun (Imbrifex Press). His children’s novels, written as M.P. Kozlowsky, include Juniper Berry and The Dyerville Tales from HarperCollins, and Frost and Rose Coffin from Scholastic Press. His short stories and poems can be found in Miracle Monocle, The Inquisitive Eater, and The New Croton Review, among other places. He lives in New York and can be contacted through his website www.mpkozlowsky.com.
