Now I Get It

Last night, Denise and I went up to Journal Square to the old Loew's Theater to see "Carrie." Today they're showing "The Wolf Man" and "Rosemary's Baby," but I'm selfishly guarding my Saturday. I've been overwhelmed and today is for me. Not for friends or work or class or being social. All mine and you can't have any.

The theater is so cool... Roberta and I were last up there to see the band Magnetic Fields (with Claudia, but you don't remember that because I wasn't blogging in 1992). It's a grand movie palace from the 1920s.

"Carrie" turned out to be highly entertaining, with lots of inadvertent funny moments. I don't think that the gym teacher smoking or slapping a student were intended to be time capsules when the movie was made. And the girl's shower scene evoked audience snorts. Lots of 'em.

I thought back to some girls I didn't know in junior high. They saw me in the girls bathroom every day before lunch and took to calling me Carrie. At the time, I vaguely knew this was not a compliment. I do sort-of resemble Sissy Spacek, but my mother does a lot more. Anyway, they weren't calling me Carrie because of my cheekbones.

Now I know why. I had really long hair, was terribly shy (which still exists but in a different way, where I don't open up to anyone without getting to know them really well), and probably hid under my hair. I learned early on to wear invisibility as a shield, in the rough-and-ready neighborhood I grew up in. I'd try not to be noticed. Being noticed could mean getting beaten up.

Being Carrie might not have been a bad thing. They left me alone.