Superhero Movie

You wanted to see a Superhero Movie. I wanted to see a Superhero Movie. Everyone else wanted to see a Superhero Movie, too, but then they went without us so we went later.

We spoke on the phone in the morning before going for the Superhero Movie and you asked me, when did a Superhero Movie turn into the Superhero Movie?

Does it really matter, I asked. It was hard to hear you clearly because the phone lines had been dug up a little. There were craters the size of thirty children going around the mulberry bush. Elephants, the government reported. Just, like, elephants, you know. Falling from the sky.

Because nobody in their right minds would go watch The Superhero Movie, you retorted.

Halfway across the world renowned actor Drake Bell sat down to a quiet early dinner with his immediate family, unaware of the cruel oblique jibe at his expense. There was too much butter on the shrimp.

I reached the theatre a whole forty minutes early. There was a lot of time to spare so I sat around with a suitably thick tome to swat at the air with. After what seemed like eternity I looked at my watch and realized I’d only killed ten minutes.

You called with twenty-five minutes remaining. I’ve just woken up, you said.

It’s a fine sort of day to have just woken up to, I supplied. I decided to walk while I talked. There was a temporal anomaly where the mall's central promenade had been; people walked into the blue-green haze and suddenly found themselves bitter and resentful, wondering where the best years of their life had gone. A minor leak, a man standing on a wooden crate was yelling into a megaphone, we were laying gas lines and there was a minor leak. Nothing to see here. Move along. 

I sidestepped the anomaly. 

All of this for a stupid superhero movie, I grumbled.

I had forgotten all about the stupid superhero movie, you confided.

Halfway across the world renowned actor Drake Bell waited until the rest of his family was asleep before creeping down to his study. He picked up a salt-shaker half filled with grade-A Bolivian snow and helped himself to a toke. He looked at the walls, decorated with prime-time Teen Choice Awards, none of which he’d won in this decade. He decided to help himself to another toke and then some.

It was decided that you'd make it by the skin of your teeth and we'd watch the movie minus the irritating trailers that we'd wanted to gasp at.

And what if I don't make it in time? You inquired.

Come on, I exhorted. It's not like we haven't had our fill of superheroes.

And that was true: the only known superhero alive at the time was a young man from Tampa Bay, Florida. He called himself Horsedick Fuckaton (spelled Fuckathon in EU countries) and was victim to a severe case of functional retardation. He was also the metahuman equivalent of a truckload of Supermen on steroids: a Godlike entity who couldn't tell apart his various abilities, let alone control them. 

Each and every one of his adventures caused billions of dollars worth of property damage and almost always culminated in the gruesome deaths of at least a thousand people. It had come to a point where criminals stayed at home just so they didn't have to be guilty of causing the spontaneous implosion of an entire housing complex because ol' Horsey couldn't discern between his left hand and his right.

We could always Google Horsey's latest exploits and feel terrified, I reassured you. The elevator to the top floor had been wrenched clean out of its moorings and skewered into the ground like a flagpost, six miles away in an open field. Some government official was probably on site, lying through his nose. 

It felt good not to know for certain.

Halfway across the world renowned actor Drake Bell hit himself upside of the head to clear the ringing. Then he realized the ringing was the alarm of the battered sedan into which he’d plowed his Porsche. He felt himself up and down before ascertaining his only injury was a moderately severe nosebleed; but he’d had that since before he got into the car. He opened the door, fell outside like a discarded juice carton, and then fumbled to his feet before continuing down the nearest darkened alleyway.

I'm sorry I made you miss your superhero movie, you said.

That's all right, I suggested. You'd turned up seventy minutes after the movie was supposed to begin. I'd tried reading my book for all of five minutes before taking the temporal anomaly for a spin. I felt too woozy to be upset. I also felt a strong urge to watch Nirvana live.

No, I feel like I wasted your time, you said as you typed out yet another text to yet another friend - your fifth or sixth in the past two minutes.

You don't, actually, I said in a more perfect world.

We were standing outside now. I felt fine. A little less woozy but in control.

Pardon me? You looked at me politely. Your fingers on the keypad never slowed down.

It was just another Superhero Movie, I remarked. In a season when superhero movies are a dime to the dozen. It had more to do with spending a bit of time together. Maybe it wouldn't have been awkward. Maybe it would even be worth it.

You stopped texting and looked at me intently, in this perfect world I had in my head. The intensity of your gaze increased considerably as I took off my jacket, revealing red and black tights underneath. I raised one fist towards the sky and then I was off - over the buildings, the concrete hills, the rivers of smoke - far, far away from the realm of your all-too-human eye.

Halfway across the world renowned actor Drake Bell slumped against an overturned trashcan and waited for his breathing to regain some semblance of normalcy. Then he took the .38 Magnum he'd yanked from the Porsche's dashboard and put the barrel in his mouth. He'd already cocked the hammer and squeezed his eyes shut before he realized he could not do it - he could not possibly die with that terrible overbuttered shrimp as his last meal in this world. He waited momentarily to see if he'd change his mind before tossing the gun in the nearest garbage can and starting upon the long walk home.

The story ends quite unsatisfactorily.
Which, in retrospect, happens to be the point behind this poorly-constructed narrative.

We don't live in a perfect world. Or else Horsedick Fuckaton would have choked to death on his own umbilical cord. And Drake Bell would have the best shrimp in garlic butter sauce he'd tasted in his life; and then he could off himself less than a hundred meters from the carcass of his beloved Porsche.

And I could afford to be a raging alcoholic with writerly ambitions. And you could be utterly self-absorbed and insensate, because we'd know ourselves with all of our problems and failings.

And there wouldn't need to be the tantalizing promise of some larger-than-life icons sweeping up our trash for us and making us whole again.

You'd see what I've seen all evening - what drove me to try something as preposterous as this in the first place.

All we have - all we really ever had - is each other. And no matter what our problems might be, we can take them on. You and me.
The way we were before we became this twitching mess of neuroses and inability to communicate with one another, let alone relate.

We'd watch the stupid Superhero Movie because we'd have three hours in a darkened theater to hold half a million discussions that the world wouldn't have to share in.

We'd have reaffirmation.

And the Superhero Movie could go back to being what it is - a stupid goddamn Superhero Movie - rather than a metaphor for all that is wrong with our world right now.