With art by Timothy Weaver (Timo)
Maybe when the sun bursts we’ll wonder where all the meaning went. I don’t know. I’m in school. Angela is smoking a cigarette again. The sun is never going to burst, she tells me. It’ll just die out like the rest of us. I don’t know. I want to eat the sun with a knife and fork. I imagine it’d taste better than the moon.
‘You and your crazy ideas, Yi,’ she says to me. I offer her a slice of sun and she calls me a dope. She says she’d rather have the moon. This is my girlfriend. She’s smoking inside of school but the fire alarms aren’t going off and the teachers don’t seem to care. ‘You dope.’
‘Call me a dope again and I’ll kill you.’ We switch into our fighting positions.
‘Yi Mao! Mao! Mao Mao Mao!’
‘I know what my name is!’
I punch her gently in the breast. The greatest feeling in the world is that of a girl’s breast through her clothing. ‘You think you can get away with that?’ She yanks my hood down over my face and keeps pulling on it until I’m forced to bend over. Then she elbows my neck. Ow. Physical contact is the greatest. We do it because we love each other – only people who love each other are allowed to touch each other. I stand and rub my neck.
‘Here, hold this,’ she says, and she sticks the cigarette in my mouth. She’s a sloppy smoker so I can feel her saliva on the paper; it’s soggy and gross. Kids like us aren’t supposed to know how to smoke anyway. I try not to breathe it in because I don’t want to die.
Angela is rummaging through all the random papers in her locker.
‘What are you looking for?’ I mumble through the cigarette.
‘We have to fill out some silly questionnaire in my homeroom class,’ she explains, becoming increasingly annoyed as she rifles through a million white papers that all look exactly the same. Finally she yanks out a folded paper that had been stuck in the sharp metal corner of her locker. ‘Here, I found it,’ she says. She is exhausted but triumphant. She goes to kiss me, fitting the lit end of the cigarette into her mouth, and I wonder how she manages to avoid burning her tongue; she sure is a great kisser despite being such a lousy smoker. I think only Angela can make that possible.
When she pulls away she has the cigarette between her lips, with the lit end facing outward. Oh, now she’s just being impossible.
‘Okay, let’s see here,’ she says to herself as she rights the paper. She’s a lot better at speaking through a cigarette than I am. ‘What’s your name?’ she asks me.
‘Yi Mao,’ I say. I’m not amused and it comes out clearly in my voice.
‘The date?’
‘Something/Something/Something.’
‘Okay. What’s your favourite movie?’
‘The Sixth Sense,’ I tell her, though she already knows this as well.
‘Why’s that?’ she asks. She’s looking away from the paper now. She’s looking directly into my eyes.
‘I dunno. It’s satisfying and entertaining. I’ve always liked ghost stories. And I think it was either inspired or influenced by Fanny & Alexander, which is my favourite movie.’
‘But you just said that the Sixth Sense is your favourite movie.’
‘Yeah.’
‘It has to be one or the other! I can’t put two movies down here. I’d look like a fool.’
‘Let me see that,’ I say, and she lifts her leg in some kind of defensive position. ‘Come on,’ I say, but obviously she doesn’t want to let it up. ‘You know what I think?’ I ask, and she opens her mouth as if to speak, but of course I continue without waiting for an answer. ‘I think you’re making me answer questions you’re supposed to answer yourself.’
She gasps. It’s only for effect. ‘So?’ she says. ‘Okay, next question: what’s your favourite phrase or expression?’
‘“Remember that you are mortal.”’
I think she’s growing tired of my obsession with death. The bell rings and she kisses me anyway. This is our relationship – it’s the same as any other. It is where all the meaning goes. It is where everything goes. It is everything.
‘Bye, Yi,’ she says.
‘Buy Yi?’ I ask.
‘Bye bye.’ She waves her pale hand and smiles. Classes are starting.
‘Sell sell.’ I have to go to mine. The rush of students is overwhelming.
Angela and I are going to meet each other after school so we can go see a movie at the Rainbow together. Is it a date? We still haven’t told each other we love each other yet; love is more magical when it goes without saying.
In the movies people are always going on and on about how much they love each other, but it seems to me they’re just lying to themselves. I think they’re more in love with the words they’re saying than what they actually mean. But then again they’re actors reading from a script, so of course that’s what they’re doing. We project our love onto them because they have no love of their own. We hold hands and watch the actors say our lines.
I go to my film class. I’ve been going to this school for a couple years now but I still get lost in the labyrinthine hallways. By the time I make it to class, I’m five minutes late and they’re already discussing our current movie. I quietly take my seat and get out my notebook.
The teacher is showing clips of my life on the small classroom tv and pauses them every so often to ask questions. The clips are from the movie Yi Mao Rises To Heaven. Most of the clips involve me either purchasing comic books or reading them, since that was essentially my childhood. Right now he is slowing down footage of me organising my comics in order to pinpoint the exact moment I acquired obsessive-compulsive disorder. Apparently it was when I decided it would be a good idea to flip through each individual page of my 300-page Vergaman graphic novel, as if by doing so I’d be able to experience it again without having to actually reread it.
‘Notice how the director made it a continuous shot,’ the teacher says.
Some of the students groan because they don’t want to notice it. Tiny fingers turning 300 pages in real time is one of the most alienating shots in film history. Nothing is gained from it.
One of the students speaks up: ‘I think this is one of the most important shots,’ he says. ‘The repetition defines Yi’s life, who’s a kind of nerdy everyboy character. We see this in the sameness of his days. This is how it is for many people like him: clinical, submissive repetition that culminates in nervous tragedy, a life that leads absolutely nowhere. Notice how each shot has a rosy haze, a certain nostalgic tint to it. From the point of view of the film this is almost sarcastic, as if these are memories that are meant to be cherished. Yeah, right! But if we look at these as memories from the point of view of Yi, which I think the film purposes to do, then we have something sad and fragile. Either way, it becomes black comedy.’
I write all of this down in my notebook. The teacher appreciates the student’s thoughts and it sparks another discussion. While they talk, the teacher leaves the movie running during a random scene. I don’t pay any attention to what anyone is saying. I just want to watch.
It’s the scene of Angela and I meeting at a friend’s party. We are drunk even though I never drink. She is wearing black & white like she normally does, but it’s not a goth thing or anything – they’re just the opposing forces of light and darkness that make up who she is. That’s what she tells people, anyway.
My stomach suddenly hurts. I don’t want to think anymore. All I had for lunch was a banana muffin and a small carton of chocolate milk but I guess they’ve decided to start up a revolt inside of my stomach. This is very upsetting. I can’t concentrate. I want to watch the scene of Angela and I meeting for the very first time but I can’t concentrate because my stomach is pins and needles and now it’s making sounds and it feels like it’s coming apart. I feel like crying. I wish I wasn’t so afraid of public restrooms.
Okay, I think my stomach is starting to settle a little. I missed the scene, though. Now the teacher is going back to an earlier comment and is talking about the lighting in a certain scene, how it seems to halo my head. If only death was haloes and wings.
My stomach still hurts. I want to fly away. I feel like going home.
Class ends and I have to make a big effort of getting out of my seat without sending certain substances down certain tubes. I’m sweating a little. I make it outside the school to find Angela standing in the unofficial smoking pit, talking and smoking with her friends. The stench of smoke doesn’t make me feel any better.
‘Angela!’ I cry to her. ‘My stomach hurts please help me.’
‘Oh, poor baby!’ she says. She flicks away her cigarette and sits against the school wall. Then she waves me towards her with both her hands. ‘Come lie down,’ she says. ‘It’ll make you feel better.’
I do what she says. I lie down on the dirty ground like a homeless person, only I have Angela’s lap to cushion my head. I hear and then smell her lighting up another cigarette as I moan.
‘Are you finally dying, Yi?’ she asks me after exhaling smoke.
All I can do is moan. The pain is unbearable. She strokes my black hair.
‘Golly, what did you eat?’ she asks.
‘Muffin,’ I manage to say. ‘Choco milk. God.’
She sings me fragments of lullabies: ‘And if that diamond bird don’t sing, Momma gonna buy you a popcorn ring.’
Her lap is so warm, soft and peaceful. I lie for so long that I nearly fall asleep. She notices and wakes me up with a bounce of her thigh.
‘We have to go to the Rainbow, Yi,’ she reminds me.
‘Why? Which movie are we seeing?’ I don’t think a bad movie would be worth dragging around my aching stomach for. The Rainbow is about five blocks away and we always go by foot.
‘Yi Mao Rises To Heaven,’ she answers. I forgot that the Rainbow sometimes shows older films.
‘I’ve already seen it,’ I say.
‘I haven’t,’ she says.
‘Really? But you were in it.’
‘Not all of it.’
I know I’ve lost so I need to find a way to make it seem like I’ve won. ‘I was actually planning on seeing it again,’ I lie. ‘I hear they put in some deleted footage for the limited rerelease.’
I fart silently and the smell is toxic. Angela helps me out of her lap and I push myself off the ground, pressing my palms against pebbles and cigarette butts. We quickly leave the area before the smell embarrasses us further, as if it’s worse than cigarette smoke.
As we walk towards the Rainbow my stomach feels like it’s about to tear right off my body. Maybe I should see a doctor.
‘Do you have cash?’ Angela asks me. We’re downtown now but the Rainbow is still about two blocks away.
‘No,’ I answer distractedly. I’m more concerned about my rotting stomach than about whether or not I have cash.
‘Does the Rainbow accept debit?’ she asks.
‘I have no idea,’ I say.
‘Maybe you should go get out some cash just in case,’ she suggests. We stop in front of the bank.
‘Okay, wait here,’ I say. ‘I’ll make it quick.’ I slide my debit card into the door and it opens for me. Somebody else gets in as well.
I feed my card into the bank machine and get out twenty dollars. It’s pretty much all I had in there. Since we’re going to the Tuesday matinee it’ll only cost about five dollars each, which is fine by me. There’s no chance I’m getting us popcorn and pop, though.
I accidentally bump into someone on my way out and apologise. They don’t seem to notice my apology or perhaps they simply don’t care. Adults these days sure are weird. Back in my day adults would stop you in your tracks and demand an apology, and they would try to make the whole scene into something as humiliating as possible. I think I prefer being humiliated to going unnoticed.
Angela looks really excited about something and I can tell it’s not just because she’s seeing me again.
‘Look, Yi!’ she exclaims, proudly holding up a small coin like a little kid. ‘Somebody walked by and gave this to me.’
‘I don’t think you should be all that happy about it,’ I tell her. ‘It means they thought you were homeless.’
She makes a dismissive sound by pushing air through her lips. ‘Yeah, well, it’s free money, Yi, and it’s mine.’ She tries to angle the coin so that it reflects the sun into my eyes. Is she really that excited about it? I honestly don’t know if she’s kidding me or not.
‘You know, it’s funny how excited you are about a – a what, is that a dime? How excited you are about a freakin’ dime, your “free money”, when you don’t even bat an eyelash over me getting out my hard-earned cash to pay for your movie ticket.’
Angela makes another dismissive sound, which I immediately mimic so she can hear how stupid it sounds. ‘Your “hard-earned cash” is given to you by your parents, you dope! All you have to do is live for another week and then they give it to you as a prize! It’s allowance money. I worked as hard for this dime as you did for your weakly twenty dollars.’ I can’t be certain if she really said ‘weakly’ and not ‘weekly’, but with her I might as well make the assumption.
Autumn is supposed to be the realm of overcast skies but today is really quite bright; I’m almost hot in my hoodie and sometimes I have to squint just to see what’s ahead of me. Angela seems to be okay. The autumn sun has a very specific, piercing brightness to it, like shards of gold being shot through a pillow. I’m almost hot and nearly sweating but there’s a certain chill to the air that makes my bones feel brittle. It’s not like summer at all. I guess that’s why it’s autumn.
Sometimes a leaf scuttles past and I make a conscious effort to crush it with my foot.
Homeless people line the streets like carefully-arranged corpses and make it hard for us to walk. We have to skip and jump and step over and walk around them, making it into a game of sorts, a linear sidescrolling level that we try to max out the score of. My mother had a Nintendo. All I have are homeless people and Angela’s infinite lives. I know she has infinite lives because she loses one with each cigarette she smokes, and by now she must’ve broken the 100 mark, must’ve died 100 times, turning the life counter into a series of glitches and symbols. We beat the game.
She’s still smoking. I point it out to her and she asks if I mean she’s smoking hot, or what. Or what. Not even a question mark. This is how she speaks to me.
She likes to say my name a lot.
‘Yi! Yi! Yi Yi Mao! Mao Mao Mao Mao Mao!’
‘I know what my name is,’ I remind her again. Maybe she’s not actually in love with me but rather with my sudden fame. She’s in love with the idea of being in love with me. Perhaps she’ll become famous by proxy. No, I’m just making stuff up. What am I talking about? What am I thinking about? What a strange little sponge of grey mass I have, what an odd electrical blue current I am. Sometimes I’ll say random things to myself when I’m all alone, things such as ‘help me’ and ‘oh no’. Sometimes I’ll curse loudly and pound my desk and maybe a tear or two will come out. This has all been documented on film; this has all been seen by over one million people. Sometimes I’ll look in the mirror and not be able to put my name to my face.
The Rainbow is tucked away in the Galleria, which has been under renovation for the last seven years. There are only about five stores remaining on the ground floor, with the rest being hidden by tarps and walkways more convoluted than the halls in school. The upstairs food court is home to nothing but a Subway and some sushi place that opens and closes whenever it pleases. Angela and I press on through all of the traps that the mall tries to throw in our way and finally make it to the Rainbow. A few people come out and one of them seems to recognise me. He’s a younger kid with a bright red backpack and appears to be fat with enthusiasm.
‘Yi Mao, Yi Mao, you’re Yi Mao Rises To Heaven!’ he calls out. The other kids stand around awkwardly while he waves. I guess they just came back from seeing the movie.
I wave back and Angela nudges me. The kids carry on, yippeeing and making all the other sounds that kids like to make; these sounds are so much more pure and innocent than the sounds that we – pseudo-adults and onwards – make, sounds like Angela’s dismissive pushing of air. We also yell at members of the opposite sex as we pass by out of car windows, and make strange obnoxious sounds out on the streets at night as if we’re in heat. It is such a terrific reminder of our mortality to see how much like animals we are, completely indistinct beings sharing the same mentality. We react to tone in the same way dogs do.
Two girls come down the escalator that leads up to the auditoriums. As they draw near I can hear them talking about the movie. Both of them are blonde.
‘So what was the point of that?’
‘Haha, oh god, why didn’t we just walk out of that? What a stupid movie!’
‘Haha, like . . .’
‘Why didn’t we just walk out?’ They’re bouncing against each other as they laugh.
Listen to enough conversations and you’ll realise everyone is saying the exact same things: all art students say the same things about art school, all gossips say the same things about other people and all nerds have the same conversations about their nerdy subjects. Hearing how excited these people are as they obliviously regurgitate the same subjects over and over again is either extremely cute or particularly depressing. Perhaps that’s why movie dialogue can sometimes affect us so deeply, or be so comforting, because here the dialogue is either scripted or improvised within a specific, absurdist context, with the intention of being unique. It gives us the delusion that our everyday language is unique as well. A memorable line of dialogue, one that holds meaning within the context of a film, will find its way into the day-to-day exchanges of regular people and is thus rendered meaningless. I see dead people. We only wish we could say something like this in real life and have it be filled with meaning. Instead we have cell phones.
‘Hi,’ I say to the ticket seller, who has dyed black hair and the pimpliest face I’ve seen. He says ‘hi’ back and seems to be legitimately happy, which I find surprising given his appearance. ‘Two tickets for Yi Mao, please.’
My hand brushes against the Interac machine as I give him the twenty. He gives me an unbroken ten back.
‘Enjoy your shlow, shir.’ Is this guy for real? The ‘shir’ I can handle, but how did he manage to put an ‘l’ into ‘show’?
The lobby for the Rainbow also acts as a small arcade and it looks like Angela must be hiding from me in it. She does this sometimes because she thinks it’s funny. I try checking the nook between the Jurassic Park and Aerosmith light gun machines but only find a cornucopia of candy wrappers and condoms.
Something strikes the back of my head and I’m not sure if the hollow ring is coming from the assaulting object or my skull. I swiftly turn around, ducking a little as I do so, and see Angela standing there holding a plastic gun. I guess this is how she thanks me for buying her ticket.
‘Ah, so you’ve been planning on killing me all along,’ I say.
‘Do you have any change for this?’ she asks, holding up the gun and pointing to it.
‘What about your dime?’
‘Jeez, Yi, don’t you know anything? These things only take quarters.’ She pokes my ribs with the gun and then we head for the escalator.
Angela is lighting up another cigarette. I didn’t even notice she had finished the last one.
‘If they made a video game of your life, do you think you’d be able to beat it?’ The question is almost lost amidst all the smoke.
‘I dunno,’ I answer.
‘I think you’d feed it quarters until you won,’ she says, chuckling to herself, ‘and find you lost a hundred dollars.’
‘Does that mean anything?’ I ask. ‘Is that supposed to mean I’m stubborn? What?’ I don’t know what she’s talking about. This happens sometimes.
She chuckles some more. As we reach the top of the escalator I hold her right cheek and, holding my breath, kiss her left one. It sure is a lot warmer than autumn. She tries to press her shoulder against her neck as if I had tickled her or something, but I know she enjoys my cooties just as much as I enjoy hers. Our relationship is based on the mutual understanding that we’re pretending not to understand each other even though we usually do, or at least I think we do.
This is the girl I’ll long for when I’m old and married and no longer mystified by the opposing sex.
We give our tickets to the guy – I don’t know what he is other than ‘the guy’ – and he hands us back our stubs. Angela keeps glancing at the popcorn stand but I don’t think she can afford a ten-dollar small with just her dime. I steer her away and over to our theatre, where Yi Mao Rises To Heaven will begin in about ten minutes. Angela declares she has to go to the restroom first so I let her go.
I manage to find a seat where the floor is stickiest and make a face. So far there’s only one other person in the theatre and I wonder what type of person comes alone. I guess it’s the same type of person who can’t make any friends.
I sit back in my seat and watch the trivia screens slide past, not bothering to figure them out. They’re always about movies and people I’ve never cared for, as if I can judge people from what I’ve seen of them on a stained screen. There are some cigarette burns lower down. I think Angela could have put a few of those there when she was younger but she’s smart enough not to put any there now.
I think she’s been smoking since she was fourteen. She’ll be an old lady by the time she’s twenty. I’m hoping I’ll only be twenty by the time I’m twenty, and then I’ll try to find a girlfriend who’s younger than me. Seventeen would work. I realise I shouldn’t be thinking about this when I turn and see her, Angela, coming into the theatre, as if by tilting my head I had been giving her a stage direction.
‘Has it started?’ she whispers as she gets into the seat beside me.
I turn back to the screen and see Tom Cruise’s mug as the big reveal for a trivia question.
‘Yes,’ I tell her. ‘That’s me. I’m Tom Cruise.’
She looks at me with an exaggeratedly widened mouth, as if she really believes that I’m suddenly Tom Cruise, and then she punches me in the arm as hard as she can.
‘Dope,’ she says, and then she puts her feet up on the seat in front of her and takes a drag from her cigarette.
My arm is throbbing with pain but I try not to rub it. I’m supposed to be a man, after all.
The colourful trivia slides finally fade out and the theatre goes dim. I hear a few more people coming in behind us, probably a group of three. I don’t bother looking since I don’t like appearing paranoid. The sound pops and the previews of coming attractions blast in. Oh, there are some commercials first. Okay, now here’s the coming attractions, each one brought to me by the same guy with a deep voice, even the comedies. It’s embarrassing how he tries to balance his gruffness with some kind of light-heartedness for them. God, make it stop.
I notice there are far more previews for comedies being played before my film than there are for action movies and dramas. I wonder what that means. A computer-generated animation of a film projector dancing with a bag of popcorn comes on screen and fills out the edges. Then an extinct bird – I think it’s a dodo wearing a top hat – tells us to turn off our cell phones, and the screen goes black.
The first we see of the film is the title card, which has YI MAO RISES TO HEAVEN in yellow text on top of an orange background. This is immediately followed by another title card that has YI MAO RISES TO HEAVEN written over and over again in a continuous stream, from the top left of the screen to the bottom right, the words bleeding off the edges. Each letter is a different colour and it is all set against a black background.
There is no music, just the sound of a baby crying. In this new release we are spared the birthing scene. Thank god, because I’m sick of seeing where I came from and how I came out. Such reminders of our flesh and blood nature have no place in cinema.
‘Look at how cute you are,’ Angela says, smoking and giggling.
I’m a baby now. But is that really me? How can I be sure? I have no memories of this. I don’t even think the baby is cute. I’ve never really thought of babies as being anything other than fleshy, writhing, wrinkled things that sometimes turn into cute children. The film must realise this as well, because the baby scenes tend to focus more on my family: my parents and my uncles. My parents still lived in an apartment when I was an infant, and our apartment had hanging beads separating the living room from the main hallway along with giant, elaborate ashtrays everywhere and paintings of semi-nude, muscular women in fantasy settings. It was a very brown and yellow apartment and the lights were rarely turned on outside of a lamp in the living room and the light in the kitchen. Otherwise my parents made good use of natural light, which equates to good use of natural lighting for the film.
My uncles bring a bunch of live lobsters to the apartment and let them loose on the carpet – with their claws clamped shut, of course. I fend them off as best I can in my infant form. They terrify me. Well, they terrified me back then. I crawl to safety: my mother. Is this supposed to establish that I’m a coward? Anyone would have done the same.
Angela is holding her sides. She’s laughing and chuckling and giggling throughout all the embarrassing moments of my infancy and early childhood. I cross my arms and try to let it slide. I can only handle the laughter of females when I know I’m the one making them laugh; otherwise it starts to grate on me. I don’t know if this is normal or if it’s because I’m crazy. I’ll probably never tell anyone about it because I’m paranoid of being thought of as paranoid.
‘It’s not that funny,’ I say, but Angela shushes me. She wants to see this.
She sees all of the stuffed animals I had as a kid. When I was a kid I was afraid of the dark but I believed my stuffed animals would spring to life in the event of monsters and valiantly protect me from them. There were always around ten stuffed animals in my bed when I slept, including my favourite, Piggy the pink pig, which I still have tucked away somewhere. It’s the only stuffed animal I ever kept, having either sold or given away the rest. I also had a giant bear that was about as big as I was, and I would set it in my doorway at nights to fend off any intruders.
I was more obsessed with girls as a kid than I am now. Seeing the film really hits that home, no matter how many times I see it. Angela is visibly shocked at seeing little Yi take every available opportunity to masturbate. But that’s not to say my obsession with girls was purely sexual. It had more to do with the way they walked, played, sat down, wrote, answered questions, talked, everything. Sometimes, when no one was looking, I’d try to imitate the pose of a particularly pretty girl, to try to feel how she felt. Angela is seeing an example of this as one of my classes watches a bootlegged copy of Beauty & The Beast. I guess I’m lucky I never became a cross dresser.
I try to act disinterested as I watch this, as if this is all completely dull and normal. I breathe a sigh of relief when we finally reach my early teens. It’ll all be over soon.
Here I am pimply and depressed. I have no friends. I don’t bother talking to people. I figure nobody wants to talk with me because of my pimples. All I really do is wander the school halls without even bothering to familiarise myself with them, just lost in my own thoughts. Even if the film could show what I was thinking, it would still be completely aimless. If I remember correctly, all I ever thought about back then was different ways of isolating myself both mentally and physically.
Then a few people talked to me out of the blue – I think it was in foods class – and because I had gone for so long without talking to people I said the strangest things possible to them, which they actually liked. I was invited to parties. My acne went away. I met Angela.
Angela takes my hand and squeezes it. This is the scene where we first meet. I squeeze her hand back. How romantic. She snuggles up to me and mouths all the words in the scene. I find it almost depressing to see how drunk she was but she doesn’t seem to mind or notice. From here on Angela is a lot more familiar with what happens in the film so we just talk over it.
‘Oh, I forgot to tell you, Yi,’ she says. ‘I have some bad news.’ She tries to give me puppy dog eyes even though I don’t like puppies.
‘What is it?’ I imagine it really is bad news like she says so I just want her to come out with it.
‘I accidentally taped over your DVD.’
‘You can’t tape over DVDs,’ I tell her.
‘Well somehow I managed to,’ she says, ‘and I’m sorry.’ I don’t really mind so much – it was only the theatrical cut of Fanny & Alexander.
‘What did you tape over it with?’
‘NASCAR,’ she replies.
‘What? You don’t even like NASCAR. Nobody does.’
She sighs. ‘I’m really, really sorry.’
‘It’s okay,’ I tell her. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
On screen the film is finally starting to catch up with us. There we are, dodging homeless people.
I feel that now she knows my life – and hasn’t run away screaming from it –, she deserves to know how I truly feel about her. I bite my lip as I try to prepare myself and stop biting when I realise how girly that is. I take her hand and place it on my chest so she can feel how fast my heart is beating. Her eyes widen.
Up on the screen, Angela is telling me she taped over my DVD. The scene uses jump cuts to speed itself up.
‘Okay, Angela, here it comes,’ I say. Up on the screen I just said the same thing.
‘Nooo,’ she whisper-cries jokingly, her voice doubling. I let out a quick laugh. I’m nervous and letting her know it.
‘Angela,’ I say, but I don’t say it like she always says my name. I say it with great care. ‘I love you.’
Angela’s smile starts off as a curl of her lip and then widens unashamedly. It may be the first time I’ve ever seen her smile on a sincere and honest level. She takes the cigarette out of her mouth. ‘I love you too,’ she says, and then we start making out. Our tongues meet and dance and I feel her breasts with one hand and her back with the other. The audience watches on.
My film goes on forever.