26.

I got my bag ready, I didn’t have all that much to put in it. I packed the Counting Crows CD, hope that’s okay with you, and decided to take your jacket. Like to wear it out. Take it on me. I end up just hovering, and decide to go watch television. When I go to look for the headphones in the entertainment center so as not to bother your parents, I discover a discreet collection of VHS tapes, most of them recorded off TV, with movie titles written in by hand. Some in your handwriting, Reality Bites, for example. I can’t believe that still exists, can’t believe it could possibly have survived the hours and hours of exposure to which we subjected it. I thought we’d used it up, literally. But no. So then I knew what to do for the next hour and a half. At first the tracking had a little trouble, the tape started out with an episode of The Simpsons, one of the first ones, the one with Nanny Potts. Too bad, I could have happily watched that as well. Anyway, but so I put on the headphones, pull the armchair up, and Ali gets comfortable on my lap, not without first kneading me with her paws and claws, bumping up into the unconscious, into sleep.

So anyway, Winona Ryder and Janeane Garofalo are driving in their car, singing, provoking Ben Stiller, which is how it all starts. Ben Stiller! He did pretty well for himself there in the end, acting like an idiot, catching his dick on his zipper, getting into just about every scatological situation possible, in later movies. But this is the first one I ever saw him in, and I would go so far as to say it’s the most dramatic role of his career. I remember I kind of had a crush on Ben, when I saw that movie, when we saw it back then, back when he was a thirtysomething yuppie. The one who didn’t end up doing that well was Winona, who seemed to hold such promise. Didn’t she? Or did she not? I feel like she got stuck in the nineties, like she just couldn’t make the transition into the next century. Is there anything more nineties than Winona Ryder? There are probably a few other things, but without a doubt she’d have to be in the top ten. Poor Winona, now I see her and think she’s overacting. But that was her thing, right? That was part of her charm. We all wanted to have her haircut and have it look as good on us as it did on her. In this she’s great, I think it’s the best thing she did. This and Mermaids and Beetlejuice too. But I’d take this one over those, she’s gorgeous in it. In Reality Bites, Winona, you will always shine. And then there’s Ethan, the most respectable of the three, I guess. He doesn’t act in that many things, he tends to choose pretty good projects, he was married to Uma Thurman. In this one he and Winona are a lovely, horny young couple. There’s some kind of youthful spirit there, fairly cheap, but effective in the end.

I don’t know if the movie is good or not, probably not, but it doesn’t really matter. The soundtrack holds up, it’s still good, Garofalo is a great supporting role with her incredible voice, her baby face, and those bangs, and the movie has a couple of little gems that still work. Like that first dialogue between Ethan and Winona, walking around the city, with that little conversation of you and me and coffee and cigarettes and we don’t need any more than that, something like that, and then the scene of them kissing, when they finally kiss, where she’s wearing this highly sexy pajama-type outfit, and finally they kiss against the fridge, and it just kills you, that still works. And at the end, too, when he gets out of the taxi and is standing there in his brown suit, after shot after shot of Winona filling up ashtrays with cigarette butts and getting psychological assistance over the phone; he’s there, she’s there, they love each other, and that’s it, they don’t need any more than that, just having one another is plenty/enough. They’re so hopeful. But sometimes, now, for example, that tonic hits the spot, that message of hope to think that love is enough, love, tobacco, coffee, and a few ideals, or not even, a couple of principles is plenty, no? Or at least in Houston in the nineties it appeared to work, right? I turn off the TV and there’s not that much time left now before I leave. I go to the kitchen. I lift up Ali, who wakes up slightly but quickly gets situated again in the armchair. I ended up wanting coffee. And wanting to smoke. But I don’t have anything to smoke, not cigarettes or pot. That’s on Juli. So I put on some coffee—it smells incredible—and make a couple of salami-and-cheese sandwiches for the road. With mayonnaise for Juli, cream cheese for me.