Esperanza and Joey leave her great-grandmother on their way to ‘The Big Date’
We stop off first at Jack In The Box, for some tacos before the movie. It makes me feel proud to pay for it. I ask her about the pictures on the wall. She tells me the guy in the Navy uniform was her father, he left them when she was like four or five years old, and she doesn’t remember much about him. She had another sister, an older one, who died of bronchitis when she was nine years old, that her mother worked two jobs, cleaning toilets by day, and offices at night. Her great grandmother was 102 years old, and had outlived two husbands. And she was thirteen when she was, Miss Teen Puerto Rico, in San Juan, but nothing ever happened with it after that.
I ask her why she doesn’t enter beauty pageants anymore, that she could definitely be Miss America. She smirks and says she doesn’t have time for that anymore, she’s got to make that money. And besides, only White girls ever get to be Miss America. By the time we finish eating, I feel more comfortable with her than I ever have before. I still don’t know what movie we’re going to see, though.
We get to the Liberty Theater, and there’s a double feature playing - Death Wish and Lipstick. Esperanza says she’s really looking forward to seeing Death Wish, and everybody’s been talking about it. Besides, she says she thinks Charles Bronson is so sexy. I go to get the tickets, while Esperanza stands off a little to the side.
“Can I see your ID?” asks the skeletal old black lady, at the ticket booth.
“Whadaya mean - ID? Why do I need -”
“These movies are rated R, you got to be at least seventeen to get in here, unless you’re accompanied by a guardian.”
“Accompanied by a guardian?! This is ridiculous. (I lower my voice) Of course I’m seventeen, I’m a senior at Roselle High.”
Well, I still got to see some ID.”
Panic starts to set in. I pull myself closer to her face, and lower my voice to a whisper.
“Please lady, gimme a break here; I’m on my first date with this girl - I -”
“I’m sorry, but it’s my job.”
“What’s the problem, honey?” Esperanza interrupts.
I - I forgot my ID,” I cut in, before the lady has a chance to say anything.
A slight scowl crosses Esperanza’s face. I immediately feel my johnson retract deep inside my tighty-whiteys.
We do get in, and I get the popcorn, trying to revive some vestige of my compromised manhood. But the embarrassment I just suffered there, feels like a mortal wound. As we sit at our seats during the coming attractions, I can’t even make myself look at her. She peeks at me with a sympathetic smile.
“Don’t worry about it, papi.”
My johnson expands just a little bit, a tiny portion of relief spreading over me. About five or ten minutes into the movie, there’s this pretty brutal scene where these junkies break into Bronson’s NYC apartment, rape his daughter, and kill his wife. I look at Esperanza, who’s motionless - and emotionless - then mumbles something in Spanish under her breath.
Suddenly, a wave of intense fear, then nausea, breaks over me. Scenes of the rape I witnessed last year, of Butch Finnegan in the high school bathroom, race vengefully and unexpectedly through my psyche. Fuck! I can’t believe this! I’ve buried those thoughts way out of my consciousness for the past year, and now, suddenly, I’m replaying them?! Or rather, they’re being replayed for me. Against my will, with all the same stomach-numbing feelings and reactions accompanying them. I’m silently battling with myself to remain conscious; holding down what I’m sure is going to be a torrent of vomit.
I just want to reach out and put my arm around Esperanza, I want – need - somebody to hold me, but I can’t do it. Every time I just about build up the courage, the inclination to make the move, Bronson shoots another thug! Esperanza would be lurching forward, nearly spilling the popcorn to the floor, shouting:
“Yeah, get him! Get that motherfucker, papi!”
The second movie, Lipstick, is starring this supermodel, Margaux Hemingway, in her first featured role as - what else? A model that gets raped by her little sister’s music teacher. And then as the movie ends, she winds up blowing away the guy’s guts all over the parking lot with a shotgun! Just as he now attempts to rape the little sister.
The lights go up and everybody in the theater cheers victoriously. After four hours of rape and revenge, though, I feel drained and emotionally spent. Usually, violence doesn’t really affect me…why am I reacting this way? What am I - a punk? A pussy? A twinge of shame shadows over me as we walk silently to her car, and now driving quietly too. With only occasional peeks at each other, and quick (nervous on my part) smiles to break the spell. The gnawing sense that I have failed her in some way hounds me still, making me doubt that there has ever really been any chemistry at all. We cross over into Roselle, down First Avenue, heading to my house. Damn! I didn’t even get to kiss her tonight…and now I’m never going to see her again.
