The Hot, Older Woman

It’s not working. It’s not working. It’s not working. Last week, I went to watch The Weather Man in an effort to get my ex-girlfriend off my mind. Thanks to the all the archery, it didn’t happen. It was a toss-up between that film and Prime. Prime sold out so I saw the other one. This week, I saw Prime and I made sure that I got to the theatre nice and early. Well, now I’ve got several girlfriends on the brain, and perhaps film is not the best way to forget.
The day started like any other Saturday: I scrambled out of bed at 7:45 so that I could have a nice hot shower before going to my all-day class. I got to class about 5 minutes late. I left the flat at 8:55 and got to class after 9:00, but still before the teacher. I don’t see what the big rush is; my class is a week ahead of schedule.
I sat and talked with a friend from Spain. She mentioned chocolate con leche. It’s like hot chocolate, but thicker and richer. I asked her if it was like Starbucks’ Chantico. She had never heard of it so I felt a duty to educate her. After showing her what it was, and explaining how they make it, she said it’s not the same. Chocolate con leche is only sweet if you dump sugar in it she said. Rosa is Basque, but she speaks Spanish like a real madrideña. Did I mention that I have a thing for certain accents? She could whisper “The prices of sarsaparilla in Barcelona are very low at this moment. It is a hot day, so buy several on the way home” in Spanish in my ear once or maybe twice and my toes would curl.
The class went pretty leisurely until lunch. The entire class went back to the Japanese restaurant. I didn’t like it so much this time. I ordered something different and broke my cardinal rule. Never order combos. These are usually the low cost, high margin items that restaurants depend on to survive, and usually involve more than 1 thing. I ordered it because one of my classmates ordered it last week and she couldn’t finish it. It seemed like a large meal at the time. Except when I ordered it, I didn’t get miso soup and the waitress forgot to give me a cup for tea. The restaurant itself was freezing, and I have a slight problem maintaining body temperature. Always have, and probably always will. I shivered the whole time, and had to listen to the usual conversation about what is the best accounting software to use, or what is the best course to take if I want to learn certain software – blah blah. I noticed my classmate Misako sitting silently across the table from me so I asked her about my second favourite Japanese dish. She had not had it lately, but as soon as we mentioned food, the teacher changed the conversation. She is always interested in trying new types of food. She asked what it was, and my initial explanation of kani miso wasn’t good enough because when I told her that kani miso tastes like liver, she looked at me kind of funny and said, “I’ve never heard of crab meat that tastes like liver”. She didn’t get it. She asked how it is prepared at the restaurant I go to. I couldn’t remember, and couldn’t give a good description of what it is because we were at the dinner table. Jeez, even when I go to the restaurant the waitresses are reluctant to tell me exactly what it is. I found out on my own what it is, but just can’t bring myself to say it at the table. No worries, Misako explained. Kani miso is crab offal. All that stuff inside the top shell that we normally throw out. Some Japanese people eat it, and I have to say that it tastes quite pleasant. If westerners can eat goose liver or veal thymus, then I don’t see anything wrong with eating crab offal, but apparently some people do. I’ve eaten all three, and have to say that they are all very nice. Trigger. Shit. So we drove to and from the restaurant because it was raining and cold outside. My friend Rosannah drove us in her car. She has so many trinkets in her car; I’m surprised she can still fit 5 people in there. She has two trinkets on her rearview mirror, two on her dashboard (one of which spins), and little stuffed puppies jammed across the ledge behind the rear seats looking out the back window. She had a stuffed dog in the backseat which had some funky stuffing in it. I liked it. She also had a pillow in the backseat. I asked her if she sleeps in her car sometimes. I shouldn’t have asked because she could have answered something about comfortable car sex and I didn’t need to hear that.
After class, I tried to make an appointment to get my hair cut. Nobody was answering the phone, so I went out in the cold and rain and walked down to the shop. That’s how badly I wanted to get my hair cut. I went inside and Tony was the only one there. He said that my stylist went to a wedding. Hmm. I suppose I can live with a shaggy do for a few more days, so I’ll go and see Naomi on Monday. I went down to Tinseltown to see what was playing. Shopgirl was the only one that interested me, but I don’t know if I want to watch a Jason Schwartzman movie. I’ve heard that Shopgirl is a lot like Rushmore, and that one kind of upset me, I don’t know why. The Asian Film Festival was also on at Tinseltown, but I passed on the Saturday shows. I went home and did some homework, and then made my way to the Paramount nice and early. I stopped at a Starbucks and got a grande Yukon, to warm me up and cursed when I discovered that Paramount has Seattle’s Best available. I could have had coffee AT the cinema. Coffee is also near the bottom of my list of permissible cinema fare, along with tacos.
I didn’t want to stand in line, so I went straight to the debit machines. This is embarrassing for me. I work with cash, credit and debit cards every damn day, but I can’t manage to use a touch screen interface to buy a ticket. I pick up my Yukon, my brolly and find the nearest employee to help me out. There is actually a person stationed near the debit machines to help with any questions. I’m not sure what prompted the girl to ask me, but the first question out of her mouth was “Is that an American debit card”? Here’s why I am different than most people. I thought, “Sure, why not? If she thinks I’m a tourist, I’ll act like one”. I informed her that no, the card was a local bank card as was clearly visible on the face, so she took me to the next open machine and walked me through. I swear that next time; I’ll be able to do it myself. It’s a damn debit machine. Why does someone have to actually touch the debit card option in order to proceed? There shouldn’t even be an option. Logically, debit card should be the de facto method of payment on a debit machine, no?
Off I go with my stuff with about 25 minutes to spare. I don’t understand the pricing of external vendors in the theatre. I understand that with a captured audience, vendors could get away with charging maybe 10% more than at their other locations. It didn’t seem logical to me that if at the local fast food restaurant on Main St. a burger costs say, $3.89, that the same burger should cost $5.05 at the theatre. Somebody was being gouged. I’m willing to let that slide in the name of supply and demand, but what made me scoff incredulously was that the burger combo was more than twice the cost of just a burger. While there are many competing views to product costing, general wisdom shows that a burger combo should cost less than two burgers. If the burger costs $5.05, then the burger combo would cost $5.05 + fries + drink. The labour cost for the fries and drink are sunk, so the incremental costs should only be the material. The drink (syrup and water and carbonation) costs tops 30 cents. Go ahead and add 15 cents to make the customer feel like they’re being charitable. That brings the total up to $5.50. I don’t know about anybody else, but I’ve never had to buy a potato for $4.50+, but that’s what they were charging. Burger, drink and fries all for upwards of $10.00. I thought that maybe it was that particular vendor only. I strolled around and noticed that the other two fast food outlets were using the same pricing strategies, and it should be worth noting that none of the three offered a full menu. We expect the in-house candy counters to gouge us, so I felt much better about forking over $4.50 for a box of Milk Duds. It’s not every day that one gets to eat Milk Duds, well at least not me. The first time I had Milk Duds was on a trip to the Point Defiance Zoo. My mum belonged to a group that split the cost of a coach with a group of dwarves and we all went to the zoo. My mum told me and my brother to not say anything mean or stupid, so we didn’t because we knew that when we were in a foreign country we really had to listen to her. But that didn’t stop the other group from saying nasty things to me and my brother. I didn’t care, they had reason to be bitter and I had my Milk Duds. I don’t seem to remember any other kids on this trip, maybe one or two, but that was a really cool zoo. I’m not even sure if it was Point Defiance Zoo, but it was in Washington someplace other than Seattle and that’s the only zoo I can think of.
With all the time to spare, I sat down at a table and started to enjoy my Milk Duds. I noticed scads of people filing into the theatre well early so I thought I better hop to it. I walked in to the theatre and the place was already 85% full. Crap. I had to find the first seat I could. I ended up sitting in the second row up from the landing. There was an empty seat between me and the next person, and so I waited. I waited for the inevitable moment that someone comes along and asks me to move because I am solo and they are a pair. Fully prepared to direct them to the pit, the seats that are so close to the screen that one’s neck must recline approximately 135 degrees to see the film, I waited.
Eventually, a really cute girl who has milled around the theatre for about 10 minutes approached me. Bitch. Okay, I speak many languages and I reserve the right to slide in and out of them as often as I see fit, but that doesn’t mean someone else can approach me and use broken English so that I’ll take pity on them. She spoke very quickly as though she had practiced what she wanted to say and needed to say it. She asked me to move down “because you are one, and we are two so that me and my friend can sit together”. There was only one other seat. If I move over one seat, that still leaves only one seat, so how are they going to sit together? I asked her, or at least I tried to ask, “Where is the other person going to sit?” but clearly unfamiliar with the interrogative mode in English, she cut me off after “Where is the other person…” with another rushed response. “She is right here”, pointing behind her shoulder. Apparently now I am also blind. The trailers were playing and I didn’t have time for an ESL lesson so I just said “Whatever” and moved ONE SEAT OVER. There was still one seat lacking. She was very polite and thankful so I didn’t get too pissed. It’s just that I had to move my Yukon, my Milk Duds and my brolly, and it took her 10 minutes to ask in the first place. Her friend, also cute, sat in front of us in another single seat, and then got up and left. WTF? I noticed a perfect solution and then realized that perhaps that’s what the girl had meant to ask in the first place. Her use of the preposition “down” in the context she used made me think that she wanted me to move one seat “over”. Perhaps it would have been better for her to ask me to move “one seat below”. While her friend was away, I leaned over to the girl and asked her in perfect Mandarin, “Do you want your friend to sit here”? All of a sudden she’s speaking perfect English, so I change back to English. Why did she use broken English in the first place? Damn. She duped me. I got up and moved one ROW down, and as usual she was very polite and thankful. Regarding the rest of the audience, there was quite a mix. It was a date movie, a lot of couples in their mid to late 30s, some older in their 40s and 50s, and actually quite a lot of teenagers. There were even a few kids: The film was PG-13.
Like I said, it’s not working. It’s not working because in the second trailer, a forty-foot high reminder of my ex-girlfriend appeared on the screen. A lot of my friends don’t understand when I say that Jennifer Aniston looks like my ex-girlfriend, whom they all know to be Japanese. I guess I should say that Aniston reminds me of my ex. They don’t look alike as if they were twins, but they have the same chin and the same twinkling eyes when they smile. That’s enough for a trigger. Anyway, the first trailer was for a movie starring Queen Latifah, which looks like it might be worth an afternoon, and the second trailer was for the movie with Aniston, Mark Ruffalo, Kevin Costner and several others. It’s a retelling of The Graduate called Rumor Has It. It sounds like it might be good to see. There was a trailer for The Family Stone, which I’ve written about before but which also stars Luke Wilson. If I see the film, I will go to see it for Luke Wilson. Mathew Broderick and Nathan Lane are back in the cinematic adaptation of their Broadway performance of The Producers. Wil Ferrell also stars in the film, along with Uma Thurman who in a 3 minute snippet, made me have a whole new appreciation for garters. I’m not really a big fan of Uma, but Prime changed all that.
As the film opens with a really easy instrumental, I miss the credits because I’m listening too hard to the music to figure out if it was bossa nova. It turned out not to be, but I was able to catch the name Madhur Jaffrey, and then… John Abraham. Just as I was thinking that I’d hit the double jackpot, I looked again. It was not John Abraham, it was Jon Abrahams. Two Bollywood superstars getting near top billing in a Hollywood film? Too good to be true. I have a confession to make – I love Bollywood. Formulaic love stories aside, the real talent lies in the filmi itself. Spontaneous dance numbers? Can’t get enough. Playback singers who are more talented than the actors themselves? Not uncommon. Asha Bhosle? Love her, but I can’t find her albums. Yuge gaps in the sometimes farcical plot? The filmi is usually three hours long to begin with – imagine if they tried to fill in the holes. What I really like is the use of colour in a lot of the filmis. Pristine whites and vibrant reds, yellows, blues, pinks, greens and even browns (my second-favourite colour after green) really catch my eye. The colours, the music, and the babes. The heroines are usually real babes. Sometimes not, but Preity Zinta can’t be in every film can she? I find the Hindi ones easiest to watch, but once in a while I’ll catch one in Bengali, or another language.
Madhur Jaffrey plays the therapist of therapists. The aforementioned Jon Abrahams, plays the best friend of the male lead in the film, and despite my disappointment, makes me wonder why the film isn’t about him. We all have a friend like him. If we don’t, we are the friend. He is the friend who causes a lot of trouble for you, but is always there when you need him. For example, his character Maurice has a fetish for cream pies – or more precisely throwing cream pies in the faces of women who won’t give him a second date. Meryl Streep is the female co-lead and plays a therapist whose son is having a relationship with one of her clients. The client is Rafi Gardet, played by Uma Thurman. Now, I haven’t seen too many movies with Uma Thurman in them, but I never understood why people think she is gorgeous. Well, now I am one of those people. She is totally gorgeous in this film. Rafi’s boyfriend David is played by Bryan Greenberg, and I have a strong suspicion that he is the reason so many teen-aged girls came to watch the movie. I’d have to say that I can think of a few of my female friends who would like to share a bottle of manischewitz with Dave. The only thing I couldn’t believe about his character was the amount of chest hair he had. He plays a 23 year old, but I had more chest hair than that when I was 17. So part of the movie deals with Dave’s mum’s neuroses about things like manischewitz. His mother must serve the wine chilled, which is apparently funny. I don’t know about that. I used to know a very rich old man who swore by putting a few ice cubes in his red wine. He said ice made red wine taste better because it mimicked cellar temperature. He was a little sketchy overall, but that was one of the things I figured must be true. Why would he make that up? Besides, my cocktail book has several recipes for summer coolers, all which involve red wine and ice cubes. When Lisa realizes that her client is sleeping with Dave, she starts to freak out and does a little dance groping her necklace and smoothing down her front which totally reminds me of one of my aunts. I pity the day she discovers that her son is dating older women. I was expecting quite a few triggers in this film, and actually got more than I bargained for. During one of Rafi’s therapy sessions, she tells her counselor that Dave has a beautiful penis and that she would like to knit it a hat. Funniest line of the whole movie. I’ve been told that I have a beautiful penis, but nobody ever offered to knit it a hat. This film is not based on my life, nobody would pay to see that film, but it has a lot of parallels with what I was doing when I was young. Dave is a frustrated artist. I was a frustrated artist. Dave’s mum freaks out about his relationship with Rafi, but at least she didn’t deny his existence after finding out. I watched the film feeling totally bad about all the stuff Dave put his mum through. My mum probably went through at least half that stuff, and it probably didn’t do her health any good. Dave and his girlfriend spend a weekend in the Hamptons with three gay guys. I can’t say I’ve ever been to the Hamptons or spent the weekend with three gay guys, but the whole Rafi-bashing incident is something I’ve had to witness. The differences in the lives led by Dave and Rafi cause some tension, and the couple eventually break up. Dave is devastated, but his mother is relieved. Not happy, but relieved. Dave sleeps with an acquaintance of Rafi’s, whom he met at a photo shoot. The shoot totally took me back. A few years ago, I used to work nights from Sunday to Thursday and the dinner break on Sunday was particularly difficult. There was nothing open nearby, so I used to go down to a predominantly gay area of my city which is always bustling to find a restaurant there. I liked to try different places each week, and I chose to go to a place that is shut now, but I walked in the front door with a bit of stubble on my face wearing a black leather. I was greeted at the door by an older fellow looking even rattier than I was who asked in a very gay, unnecessarily loud voice, “Staaafff???” How rudely presumptuous of him. Miffed, I said, “No. Paying customer” to which he said “Sorry, it’s a private function tonight”. I turned and walked out the door, and as I walked past the front window I noticed that the place was full of drag queens. One of them gave me a nice smile. Too bad. I think it would have been a real kick to hang out with a bunch of queens for an hour or so. That black leather is in Indonesia someplace now. Good times, good times. In the movie, Dave experiences an equally awkward moment. He goes to the photo shoot in search of Rafi, and asks several people. He interrupts a small group and asks for her. A guy with shoulder length hair asks Dave if he is the make-up guy. Dave says no, and asks the other guy if he is the hair dresser. This gets Rafi in a bit of trouble because the dude is her boss. Dave explains that he has nowhere to live and has no money. Rafi decides to let Dave move in.
Things progress and the age difference starts to become apparent. My sister had a boyfriend once who was much younger than her, or at least he acted that way. He used to call her at work and nag her to come pick him up from school and drive him home where they could hang out. Needless to say, he didn’t last very long. In Rafi’s case, Dave takes his time looking for a job, spends more time in Rafi’s apartment than she would like playing Nintendo. She had been warned, one of her friends told her that if she liked sex, she better not buy Dave a Nintendo system. That is absolutely, totally true. Ask one of my ex-girlfriends. Her sex life went down the toilet once I started playing Nintendo. Dave and Rafi eventually have a fight because Rafi catches Dave trying to lie to her. She kicks him out, which is when he gets depressed and Maurice takes him to a party where he hooks up with Rafi’s acquaintance. Rafi finds out, and she gets totally upset. Strange, she was the one who said they should break up and see other people. But guys never learn. I never did. When one of my ex-girlfriends told me that she wanted to see other people I said okay, thinking it was okay for me to see other girls. I was surprised to learn a few weeks later that I had been mistaken. My brother called me and told me that my girlfriend was looking for me and she wasn’t happy. I met up with her and she told me flat out that she never meant for me to see other people. WTF?? That’s how I learned that seeing other people means only the person suggesting it is allowed to see other people.
At some point, Dave and Rafi get back together to make one last go at it, and he tells her that he wants to get her pregnant like she’s been wanting. She realizes in a big way that she can’t do it. Dave says something like, “It’s okay baby, yes you can” but Rafi says no way. She loves him too much and has to let him go. The trigger on that one was so strong, I couldn’t even see straight. My first major girlfriend broke up with me for the same reason. She didn’t tell me at the time, but years later after she was married and raising an infant at a time when she felt she could be honest with me, she said that she broke up with me because she loved me too much and didn’t want to ruin my life. There was no baby-making involved with us, but it was very much like the break up between Dave and Rafi. Of course, I didn’t know it at the time so when my ex came to mother’s funeral a few months later, I totally felt it was appropriate to ask her certain questions which didn’t exactly make her feel good. To her credit, she handled my garbage really well and didn’t let me make a scene. In the film, Dave and Rafi end up going their separate ways and a year later, or so we’re meant to believe, a chance meeting finds them in the same restaurant. There is no scene, instead it’s a moment where each lets the other know that they are doing alright… and life goes on. The doomed relationship is made to look as though it will last with the help of additional music by John Coltrane, Rufus Wainwright, and others. Without the music, I’m sure the audience would have dismissed the relationship as unworkable from the early stages.
All through the film, the cute Asian girls sitting behind me giggled and giggled. Sometimes they even giggled before the humour happened. Anyway, the point is I liked their giggling and fancied my chances with the one I had spoken to earlier. Yeah, I know. I picked up my brolly and left the theatre thinking they were right behind me, but they weren’t. So much for a chance to chat her up. After the grande Yukon, I was busting so like any other caffeine addict; I reasoned that I would return to the Starbucks and use the toilet. To show my patronage, I would then buy another coffee. At this rate, cigarettes would be cheaper. Anyway, on the walk back to the Starbucks I happened upon a woman passing who announced to a proprietor that she was going to grab a coffee and then go to work. I thought “Huh”? She was dressed in a business suit and stilettos. I reckoned that she was a call girl. As my aunt would say, “But Dax, how do you know she was a prostitute? Maybe she really was going to work”. Well, for one she was going to work, but the only places around to work were bars and I’ve never seen any bar waitresses who wear stilettos. And two, her skirt was see-through. She was a brunette, and she was totally gorgeous. Her pleasant attitude reminded me of one of my ex-girlfriends, except that she didn’t have red hair, no freckles and no braces. Is it just me, or is it totally fucked up to see a gorgeous woman and all you can think about is sewing a lining into her skirt? As it happened, the Starbucks loo was out of order, so I walked home with a gutful of Milk Duds trying to dodge drunken football fans. Saskatchewan was in town, and they have the most hardcore fans. I’m used to guys trying to touch me or grab my junk, but every once in a while I’m caught off guard. I almost got into it with one guy, but I only had one arm free and he was just trying to pat me on the back, plus he had two buddies with him and was drunk, so drunk in fact that he didn’t even realize that I wasn’t his buddy. CFL fans, gotta love’em.