LIVING IN THE DARK

My Life and the Influence of Film

PREFACE (2.)

Back in the early seventies there were only thirteen TV channels, including three or four local stations that ran shows like “Star Trek” and “I Love Lucy” in syndication, and played old movies all night long.

Each Monday, as soon as the TV Guide arrived in the mail, I’d pore over every page to see what was programmed for that week.

Of course, in a house with three other kids and two parents and one TV, it was difficult to have my say about what got watched. After all I was the youngest, and though I sometimes had the loudest voice, I was also the first to be dismissed.

So, I waited for everyone to go to sleep — bedtime for the kids was 9pm and my parents would usually watch a little Johnny Carson and be back in their room by midnight — and then I’d make myself a cup of instant coffee and stay up, sometimes ‘til dawn, watching movies by myself in a silent house.

I’d have to keep the volume down low so I didn’t wake anyone, which meant dragging the cushions off the couch and lying on my stomach right in front of the TV set. But my secret late night movie viewing became the balm I needed to assuage my bruised spirit.

One night I watched a triple feature starting at 1am of “King Kong”, “Son of Kong” and “Mighty Joe Young”. I’d just climbed back into bed when I heard my dad getting up for work.

This “living in my own world” was more difficult to accomplish during the daylight hours since the constant barrage of household chaos made it impossible to have an inner life of any kind.

But one day, when I suddenly found myself home alone in the afternoon, something strange happened that altered my relationship with my sense of reality.

I remember lying back on my bed and hanging my head over the edge of the mattress, looking at my bedroom until it became a perfect upside down version of the real world.

And as I stared into that image of an upended universe I started repeating — for a reason I couldn’t begin to fathom — the phrase “is me really me?” again and again until the words lost all meaning, and even the syllables became gibberish.

I don’t know how long I was lying there with gravity dragging my head downwards, speaking the phrase “is me really me?” like some kind of incantation, but eventually I started to feel weightless, as if I was detaching from my body and becoming a formless entity, floating in pure thought.

I was excited by this new discovery but I do remember worrying: “What if I can’t get back from here?” I’d say to myself: “Okay that’s enough, let’s get up.” But my body would’t move. I even had a sudden panicky thought: “Is this what it means to be paralyzed?”

Then, I heard my mom’s car pull up outside. And I snapped back to the real world and went to face whatever misery was inevitably headed my way.

But I was different from that point on. I had found a refuge and every chance I got, I’d escape into my upside down world.

And these bouts of daytime disassociation, along with my nighttime escapes into the land of movies became the front line of defense against the increasingly unpleasant realities of growing up.