all scaried out
My boyfriend Tad and I hate scary movies. We’re both easily scared. The other day we went to the video place.
“Let’s look in the Foreign Films section!” I said.
“Okay!” said Tad.
“Ooh, look at this one! It has a pretty girl on the cover and the words on the back can be paraphrased as, ‘This stunningly moving film begins innocently and soon winds its way into a veritable haiku of an enigmatic psychological thrill-ride that will make you think as you gently sip your wine. Winner of the 2001 Elitist Award,’ Ooh, I’ve heard of this one! Let’s get it,” I said.
“Okay!” said Tad. “Yes, let’s rent Audition.”
Oh, my gosh. Oh, my christ.
Never, ever rent Audition. Don’t believe what the liars are saying in the IMDb reviews about it being merely “chilling.” Halfway through the film, I was almost in tears. “Oh, HELL no!” I was saying. “I’m getting out of here! Jesus!”
“No, no, stay,” said Tad. “Stay here with me and watch it.” I think he just didn’t want me to leave him in the living room alone. After the horrible movie was over, I tried to excuse it all as a feminist statement in order to calm myself. But then I realized that it was just a horror movie about what Japanese men must fear most – women who are the opposite of submissive.
Since then, I sometimes like to push Tad down on my bed, jump on top of him, put my face really close to his and simper, “Kiri, kiri, kiri, kiri….” And that’s almost worth having seen the movie, but, no… then memories of the vomit scene tip the scale back to Hell No.
[I can be coy, or I can type spoilers. Which do you prefer? Okay, I’ll be coy, then.]
round two
Prepped by the Scary Movie parody and with Audition now under our belts, Tad and I decided to watch The Ring. Tad’s best friend Mark was completely frightened by this movie, but my cousin Randy said it wasn’t scary, just good. The DVD cover compared it to The Sixth Sense. “Let’s do it!” we told each other. “We can handle this. One, two, three – break!”
This time Tad was the scared-er one. “Hold me!” he squealed, hiding his eyes in my cleavage.
“Don’t be afraid, baby,” I said all smooth like LL Cool J. “This ain’t so scary. Uh… hey…. Hey, quit squirming. Don’t be pushing my feet off the couch and onto the floor, now…”
The Ring was very clever. I especially liked the cleverness of the very end. “It’s about time this woman became a good parent!” I said. But then, later, while preparing for bed, I wondered aloud why the little girl was so evil.
“Why was she so freaking evil, baby?” I said. “It doesn’t make sense. She got what she wanted. Why was she still evil? What…. Was she just, like, born evil? What’s up with that? That doesn’t make sense. There has to be a reason for her to be so evil. Otherwise, anybody could be that evil. That just doesn’t…. There must have been some kind of childhood trauma…. Maybe her mom inhaled crop dust while she was still in the womb…. A person can’t just be evil for no reason at all….”
“Sweetheart…” said Tad. “Please.”
When my children are around, I’m not afraid. I have to be strong for them. When Tad’s around, I’m not afraid. I’m too distracted by pleasant pastimes. But when I’m alone, in bed, at night, my mind wanders. This is where it goes:
Doo dee doo dee doo… Okay, it’s bed time. What should I think about? How about… checking and renewing insurance policies? No, that’s no good. How about… all the bills I have to pay and the fact that my BabyDaddy hasn’t paid us child support in two months? No, that’s no good, either. How about… the fact that I haven’t been to the dentist in more than a year? No, no… I know! I’ll think about… the scary-ass faces those people had when they died in The Ring! Or… the spooky little fucking girl with the hair in her face and the fact that she was evil for no reason! Or, even better… the thought that my children could start drawing weird-ass pictures because their minds are being visited by evil little girls! Yes! Well… no. Well, actually, yes – because it’s too late now, because now I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT IT.
As always, Tad and I work through unpleasantness with humor. That is our gift.
“You know what would be funny?” says Tad. “If we made a video of the Ring video and scraped all the labels off it and sent it anonymously to Mark. He would shit his pants.”
“Ha! And then, you could spy on him to see when he was done watching it, and then you could call him! He would freak.”
“No, no, no…. Dude, we could be at his house just hanging out, and all of a sudden I’d say, ‘Hey, Mark, there’s a fly on your TV screen.’ Then I’d pull off the fly I’d planted there, and when I turned around, I’d have fake blood running out of my nose!”
“No, no, no… I have it! We could go get custom-made masks – like the faces the people had when they died. We could get Katie to put one on and hide in the closet. Then, when Mark came home from work and found her there with that scary face… dude… he would freak out!”
“HA! Baby… that’s mean. He would have a heart attack and die.”
“I guess you’re right. It’d be funny, though.”
[a pause]
“Hold me, baby.”
“No, you hold me. And move your butt over. Jesus – you almost knocked my feet off the couch!”
