Life Goes to the Movies Read Online Free PDF

itself, its teeming arabesques of pattern and color mirroring
the thrilling, multi-hued chaos outdoors. It had been so thrilling for me back then, the city, so modern yet so old, its hydrants and fireboxes layered
with thick coats of time, its skyscrapers leaping into tomorrow, the subway’s roar as fierce and rank as a lion’s. Now, though, the city
crushed me under the weight of its excesses, made me feel hopelessly, helplessly small, inept and orphaned. I had no idea how to exist there. Not a
clue.
    Dwaine showed me the curious parts of the city, its intimate shadows and nooks, the parts that, had the city been a woman, you would have most wanted
to kiss. As if it were a confection he had spent his whole life concocting he shared his hometown with me. He taught me to savor the city’s
garlands of scent, from shoe polish to Xerox toner to the smells of money and fear wafting off people’s bodies in the subway. He could even
distinguish between doughnut smells, from old-fashioned to honey glazed. From dry cleaner chemicals to brass polish, he had a nose for every city odor.
Walking down Broadway from 125 th to Wall Street, he could name every business on every block with his eyes closed.
    At the Russian baths on East 10 th Street we doused each other with buckets of ice water and flailed each other’s bare backs with oak
branches holding crisp brown leaves. While doing so, I noticed the two quarter-sized fat cysts on Dwaine’s back. His “Lucky Lumps,”
he called them.
     
    15
     
    When summer came around I decided to stay in the city. It was my first summer alone in New York, my first summer away from home anywhere. It happened
to be the summer of the Son of Sam, that moonfaced postal employee who, on orders from a neighbor’s barking dog, shot his victims dead in parked
cars while they necked at sundown. When my mother heard about it on the TV news she phoned me up immediately, hysterical, begging me to please come
back home. It took me over an hour to convince her that the odds of this particular psychopath drawing a bead on her precious creatura di dio
were small indeed—especially given that I had no car to smooch in, and no girlfriend to smooch with.
    “Okay, fine,” my mother said. “Do like you want. Maybe someone come here an shoot me, if I lucky. Maybe then you come home to see me
to my funeral, if it no asking too much, if you no too busy. Pffff.”
    “Mom, please—”
    “Eh, va bene: I no give a goop.”
     
    16
     
    Some good movies came out that summer. Dwaine loved Black Sunday, but hated Close Encounters of the Third Kind, especially the last part
where the dumb heavenly chandelier descends. And while That Obscure Object of Desire bored me stiff, Dwaine pronounced it a masterpiece (he was
right, of course).
    And though I never found a movie so bad I had to walk out on it, Dwaine walked out of many. Halfway through Star Wars (which he condescended to
see in the first place only because I wanted to), as the Death Star loomed into view, he stood up, said, “That does it,” and made a beeline
for one of the Exit doors.
    I caught up with him in the street.
    “What’s wrong?” I asked, panting.
    “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong.”
    “So why did you walk out?”
    “Because: fuck that shit, that’s why.”
    “Why? What was wrong with it?”
    “Oh, babe, you know you really disappoint me at times, you know that?”
    “Why?”
    “Do I really have to explain?”
    “Yes! I mean, what was the problem? What didn’t you like about it? It was entertaining, wasn’t it? And it wasn’t stupid. Was
it?”
    “Fine. Then go on back, if that’s how you feel. No one made you leave.” All this time he kept walking, fast, with me keeping up with
him, or trying to. “It’s a free country, that’s what they tell me, anyway.”
    It was late afternoon, but dark clouds hung all over the city, making it look like evening. I wore the button on my lapel, the one they had given us in
the theater lobby, the