As soon as we stepped from the theater into the lobby, Marcia said she had to use the ladies room and walked off. I waited, leaning against the wall, smoking a Salem.
“Enjoy your popcorn?” a guy asked me, walking by, and his girlfriend threw back her head and laughed.
I didn’t understand.
Then I noticed the front of my sweater. It was covered with popcorn—it was made of popcorn. There were whole kernels, fragments, even some seeds in there. I began frantically brushing and picking and pulling them off, finishing just in time.
“Go for some coffee?” I asked Marcia, leaning against the wall once again, smoking a Salem.
Marcia was my roommate Eric’s girlfriend’s roommate. I’d only met her once, just for a minute, but the next day she actually called me up and asked me out, which bewildered me because she was tall, a senior, an English major, on the pretty side, and I was short, a sophomore, Undecided, on the homely side. But I told her, “Yeah. Sure. You bet.”
The movie was her idea.
Afterwards we went for coffee at the student center, sitting across from each other in a booth, sharing an ashtray. Turned out, this was her third time seeing the movie. I thought parts of it were funny and it was pretty exciting towards the end, but Marcia loved the movie—her word— especially Dustin Hoffman.
“You mean … as an actor?”
“I mean Ben,” she said. “Benjamin.”
That was the guy Dustin Hoffman played.
“You love Benjamin?”
She sipped her coffee.
She loved Benjamin.
Once again I was bewildered. First of all, Benjamin was short and looked like a rodent. Plus, he was this very depressed, very depressing guy. I considered it a major flaw in the movie to have someone as beautiful as Elaine be interested in a guy like Benjamin. It just didn’t seem believable. I could see her with Steve McQueen, someone like that. But Dustin Hoffman. Even his voice was wimpy. Whiny, in fact.
I asked Marcia, right up front, what she found so attractive about Dustin Hoffman—or Benjamin—either one.
“He’s very sad, very sensitive, very sweet,” she said, just like that.
I told her I thought he was very annoying.
“Annoying?” she said, her hackles up.
“Moping around, staring at his goldfish …”
She sat there shaking her head, just sat there looking at me and shaking her head.
“What,” I said.
She tried to explain why Benjamin was so unhappy. It was because he was spiritually unfulfilled. He had all these achievements and material things, everything society says is supposed to make you happy, but he felt totally empty inside. She said that was such a great moment in the movie when his expensive little sports car runs out of gas, the symbolism of it.
I said, “You can tell you’re an English major.”
She lifted her chin. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. I’m just saying.”
She sighed, like it was hopeless even talking to me, and sipped her coffee.
I sipped mine.
This wasn’t working out.
She didn’t like me very much, that was the problem. And I didn’t like her a hell of a lot either, come to that. But she was definitely on the pretty side and she wasn’t even wearing any make-up. I wanted her to like me so we could go out again and possibly eventually have sex together and then our different tastes in movies wouldn’t matter so much.
“Marcia?”
“What.”
“Would you like a muffin?”
“You know what’s so ironic?” she said, giving a little ironic laugh. “I wanted to go out with you because you look like Dustin Hoffman and I thought maybe—”
“Wait a minute, hold it.”
“What.”
“You think I look like Dustin Hoffman?”
“Well, you’re short, and you have a big nose, and you’re kind of sad-looking, and I thought maybe you’d be like Benjamin.” She shook her head and said, “Boy,” meaning boy was she ever wrong about that.
We sat there.
I told her I could get pretty sad sometimes. “Damn sad, as a matter of fact.”
“Right,” she said, looking off, smoking.
I told her the popcorn-on-my-sweater story, how that girl had thrown back her head and laughed at me standing there all sad and covered with popcorn.
It didn’t move her at all. She wanted to know how I could have gotten that much popcorn on my sweater—did I have trouble finding my mouth in the dark?
We finished our coffee and I walked her home.
I said goodnight outside the front door of her building and didn’t even bother asking for another date. I just turned and walked off, with my head hung, hands deep in my pockets, dragging my feet …
“Wait,” Marcia said.
I almost burst out laughing. I almost blew it.