An Apology

To anyone who was in the IFI during the below screening of Everything Everywhere All at Once

‘I need a break’, I told Husband, moving Baby Girl from the washing machine where she was currently 'helping' with the laundry. ‘I’m going to take Monday off and go see a film and spend the day by myself.’
 
‘But Monday is writing day’, he answered, and silently reminded me that we agreed I wouldn’t go back to my 9 to 5 job post-baby if I took two days a week to write, and also chastising me - wordlessly and with abject cruelty - that I’m always complaining about how little time I have to write. He added callously, without saying it, that I always seem to find blocks to my creative time.
 
Under this torrent of unspoken abuse, I crumpled to the floor and buried my head in the laundry.
 
‘However, you do seem a little stressed’, he said over my muffled wailing. Baby Girl didn’t seem to agree, stuffing a sock into my ear. ‘Maybe you should take Monday off from writing and refill that creative well you’re always talking about?’
 
On Monday morning, before he could say so much as ‘Where’s the goddamn damning son of a bastarding Sudocrem?’ I was out the door and fleeing for the sanctuary of Dublin’s city centre. Feeling like I’d stepped into the opening titles of a particularly jaunty musical, I alighted the DART and skipped through the sunshine into my perfect day.
 
A perfect day: reading a new book, ‘Unmask Alice’, in a quiet cafe with a cappuccino and pecan plait. Then: strolling through near empty clothes shops at my own leisure and picking up not 1 but 2 pairs of jeans that actually fit. And: eating a falafel wrap outdoors in Meeting House Square in the early afternoon sunshine. And finally: realising that the film you’ve wanted to see for months - and been so afraid of hearing any spoilers about that you’ve skipped past several chunks of your favourite podcast, Kermode and Mayo’s Take, for weeks on end - is showing in your favourite cinema in exactly 15 minutes.
 
Ah yes. The Gods of Day Off were truly smiling on me now. ‘I’m going to get a tea’, I said to myself, possibly aloud, smiling at the cinema doors. ‘I’m going to get a tea and a chocolate brownie and I’m going to have the most wonderful and transcendent experience of my cinema-going life.’
 
Realising that I hadn’t spoken to anyone all day and that my post-baby life meant I spoke to strangers very little, I consciously curbed my enthusiasm when buying my ticket from the smiling woman at the box office.
 
‘GOOD AFTERNOON,’ I said, ‘AND A CHIPPER DAY IT IS TOO! MAY I HAVE A TICKET TO SEE EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE?’
 
Something about the way she winced made me think I hadn’t adjusted my ‘talking to grown ups in the real world’ voice. I pulled back.
 
‘Not that I want to see everything, everywhere, all at once, you understand? But the film; Everything Everywhere All At Once. That starts at 1.30pm.’
 
‘Sure. I understand,’ she smiled.
 
‘I guess you get that a lot?’
 
‘No,’ she smiled still. ‘Are you an IFI Member?’
 
Ah yes... Well played, Box Office woman. But this little side swipe wasn’t going to ruin my perfect  day, even if it did cause a brief stab of soul wrenching despair that I’d let my membership lapse when I left my old job for the - less lucrative but dammit it’s my dream and you only get one life - job of writing.
 
‘Not anymore.’
 
‘No worries.’
 
‘I was but I let it lapse.’
 
‘Sure look, it happens.’
 
‘Sorry.’
 
‘That’s no bother.’
 
‘I’ve been meaning to renew it.’
           
‘Grand so.’
 
I could feel her seething hatred. I panicked.
 
‘Can I renew it online?’
 
‘Or I can do it for you now, if you like?’
 
‘Yeah, cool maybe on my way out,’ I assured her, making a mental note to slip out the back way.
 
‘So…,’ she said, with the tone of someone explaining why you can’t have a mortgage, ‘you’re currently the only ticket holder,’
 
‘...You’re joking?’
 
‘No, sorry.’
 
The heavens opened with a burst of light and chorus of angels singing.
 
‘BUT THAT’S AMAZING!’
 
The only ticket holder. The. Only. One. No texters or talkers or loud eaters or chair kickers! No bored kids or view blockers or frequent toilet visitors! Truly, this was the perfect day. I resisted the urge to ring Husband and tell him my great news.
 
Having only had this experience once in my life before - Rocketman in the Lighthouse Cinema - I was ecstatic. Bopping along in the vast, empty cinema to ‘Saturday Night’s All Right’ and ugly weeping during the drug overdose swimming pool number are still memories visceral enough to make me smile.
 
I told her about my prior solo cinema experience.
 
‘Oh, what was the film?’
 
‘Starman,’ I said, because I hate myself.
 
‘Rocketman?’ she said, because she was nice.
 
‘Yes.’
 
‘Where do you want to sit?’
 
‘Who cares!’ I cheered, ‘Put me anywhere! I’ll move every half hour!’
 
‘Ha ha,’ she said.
 
I left Box Office for tea and chocolate brownie. After telling the guy who sold me both that I was amazed they were still showing this film and I was so happy to be able to see it at last and how I was really looking forward to it because it’s just my kind of film and that I’d done everything I could to avoid spoilers, even skipping sections of my favourite podcast, and how I hadn’t even read reviews and how it was great to be back in the cinema after covid but also that I hadn’t been to a cinema in over a year because I had a one year old but my husband had encouraged me to go and take some time off by myself to refill the well because I’m a writer as well as a primary carer for our kid, I left my new friend for the sanctuary of my own private cinema.
 
‘I presume you’re not checking tickets for just me?’ I asked friendly box office woman with a big ‘we’re sharing an in-joke’ wink, ‘Will I just head in?’
 
‘Yeah, go ahead!’ she replied, ‘Oh! And someone else just bought a ticket.’
 
Ah.
 
Shivering piss sticks.
 
Someone else. Just one. Just me and one other person. Just us. All by ourselves. Sharing the cinema.
 
Never mind, I said to myself, never ye mind. This is your perfect day. Get in there, sit really far away and hope he’s a Proper Cinema Goer.
 
He was. Oh, he sure was.
 
He sat in the third row. I sat two rows behind. The lights were up as I shuffled to my seat. Don’t worry, I told him telepathically, don’t worry about me. I’m a ‘Proper Cinema Goer’ just like you. Behold! I turn my phone onto airplane mode and off! Hark! I remove coat and bags and leave them on the empty seat beside me to reduce the risk of ruffling. Christ! What is that horrendous vibration pummelling my chair?
 
A quick survey along the row revealed a large vent on the wall. The air con was on this aisle. No big deal! Just move! Moving once was AOK. Moving once was practically expected when you had the choice of any seat bar one. The trailers hadn’t even started. I gathered all my many things - shopping bags and coat and extra bag with water and book and takeaway cup and chocolate brownie - and moved further along the aisle, careful to make it clear that I was DEFINITELY NOT moving closer to Proper Cinema Goer.
 
I settled in and the trailers started.
 
And Oh Christ on a Peanut Stand, it was worse here. Worse. I had inadvertently found the only seat in the cinema more vibratey that the last one. This seat, in fact, may have been the real source of the vibration.
 
Well. Ok. I could stick it out. It wasn’t so bad if I sat forward and favoured one bum cheek over the other. Besides. Maybe it would stop once the film started? I couldn’t move again. So it had better stop.
 
But the film started and it didn’t stop. And I was getting a nauseous, slightly anxious feeling in my stomach from the vibration and a cramp in my back and bum from the awkward sitting position and dammit I was having a perfect day and this weird vibration was not going to spoil it. Moving twice. That’s not weird. It’s not.
 
So I slowly, painfully, got up, gathered my things with the ninja-like skill I’d honed from months of checking my baby is still alive without waking her up, and moved two rows to the easier access seats at the back.
 
I settled in.
 
There was no vibration.
 
This was fine.
 
This. Was. Fine.
 
Except. Ex. Cept.
 
The emergency exit. The emergency exit was veeeeeerrrrry bright. It was bright. Oh Lordy, was it bright. It was so bright it was burning my retina. It was piercing a hole in my vision the size of a penny. It was performing laser eye surgery without my consent.
 
But I couldn’t move again. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
 
But.
 
Was I really going to ruin my ONE day off from baby? My first cinema outing in over a year? What if this was the greatest film ever made and I hated it because of a radioactive green light blasting through my entire peripheral vision? How could I ever forgive myself?
 
Moments later the desire to complete my perfect day with a perfect cinema outing had won over my desire to not look like a perfect creep and I was rising from seat number 3 and clambering into seat number 4 in near total darkness, with all the subtlety of a blind cat breaking up a bar fight.
 
I slouched down into my seat in shame. Proper Cinema Goer didn’t turn around. Not even once. Not so much as a curious glance. Nope. He stared at the screen and sat still. Very, very still.
 
And that’s when I realised that in the darkness I’d sat in my first seat. The very first seat I’d sat in. Seat number 4 was in fact seat number 1. I’d moved not once, not twice, but three times only to go back to my original seat.
 
And when the film started I didn’t even notice the vibration anymore. Why? Because balls, that’s why.
 
After that the only movement from me was in the last twenty minutes of the film when I surreptitiously wiped streaming tears from my face. The film’s key relationships are between a fiery woman (it’s me!) and kind, even-tempered man (it’s Husband!) and their teenage daughter (it’s Baby Girl!) ‘This is how I fight’, he tells wife, and the pipes burst. ‘I’ll treasure these moments’ she tells daughter, and I missed baby girl with a soul shaking, heart searing agony. By Christ, when I got home I was going to hug her and kiss her and squeeze her with every fibre of my being and never ever leave her again not even to go to the shops or the garden or the jacks.
 
I slid out the door before Proper Cinema Goer could identify me, ducked out the back to avoid verbally declining membership renewal, and hurried all the way home, stopping only to pick up two more falafels for ever-patient and loving husband and myself. Because I WILL treasure these moments and because this is how I’LL fight.
 
On the way home I received a text from Brother the Younger (but older than me). I’m starting a blog, he said, you should too.  
 
‘I’m thinking of starting a blog,’ I told husband at the kitchen table that evening.
 
‘But what about your book?’ Husband responded and added, wordlessly but viciously, that I’m finding yet another block to my writing.
 
‘On the other hand,’ he said, as I mashed my distraught face into my falafel, ‘you find whatever outlet you can.’