I was talking to a longtime friend the other night and he was bemoaning the fact that of the three great old movie houses that once called downtown Sacramento their home, only the Crest Theater still survives, and even it doesn’t really play first- run movies anymore.
‘Why would anyone in their right mind want to tear down that beautiful old Alhambra Theater to make room for another parking lot?” he asked me with sad eyes.
“For some reason,” I said, “I always liked going to the Fox Theater on K Street better. Maybe it was because the seats were so lush and comfortable, not to mention that you had to walk right past this little stand where they sold caramel popcorn balls and that place always smelled sooooooo wonderful! And I think it was a lot cheaper to go to the Fox, too.”
“Come to think of it,” said my smiling friend, “it was also easier to pick up girls at the Fox than at the Alhambra.”
“Really?” I asked with interest. “Why was that?”
“I’m not really sure,” admitted my still smiling friend, “but I think it had something to do with the fact that the Alhambra was a classier place. And when my best friend and I would go to the Fox, we’d always pick out a couple of good-looking girls – at least they usually looked good in the dark – and then sit right down behind them. I had some pretty good moves back then you know!”
So, as my friend went on and on about his once bullet-proof moves, I found myself thinking back to a long ago fall afternoon when the first move I ever put on a girl didn’t go very well.
If I remember right, it was a Jerry Lewis movie, and although I no longer remember the name of it, I do vividly recall that it took me almost a month to work up the courage to ask a girl, I’ll call her Molly, to go with me to see it. Actually, in a superhuman effort to totally insulate myself from any possibility of rejection, I had asked a friend of mine to ask a friend of his who knew Molly’s best friend to ask her if she would ask Molly if she would consider going to a movie with me. And after a day or two of slyly passing secret notes back and forth between all the parties involved (one of which I tried to chew up and swallow when Mr. Lloyd, my eighth-grade teacher, strolled suspiciously up to my desk), Molly’s best friend finally tapped me on the shoulder, giggled and assured me it was a done deal.
So, the next Sunday afternoon, with my nerve-racked body reeking of my dad’s Old Spice cologne and my hair plastered down with a double-dose of Brylcream, my mom (who had insisted on both taking us and picking us up) and I pulled up in front of Molly’s house. After I had assured her father (who didn’t look the least bit happy to see me) that I would have his only daughter safely back in less than three hours, we silently climbed into the backseat of my dad’s station wagon and spent the next fifteen minutes clinging to our respective doors and listening to my poor mother try to make small talk while looking at us with one of those “aren’t they so cute” smiles in the rearview mirror.
Once inside the beautiful old Fox Theater, however, things definitely started to pick up.
“Where would you like to sit?” I finally managed to blurt out.
“In the back is okay I guess,” Molly answered with a surprisingly friendly smile.
“Really?” I asked, sure that her words were actually some kind of secret signal that all girls used when they wanted to do more than just sit around for two hours watching Jerry Lewis make a fool of himself.
With the movie about half over, I sucked up all the courage I could muster and decided it was time to make my move, which back then consisted of faking a yawn, stretching both of my arms high over my head, and then dropping one of them down, with a loud thud, on the back of Molly’s seat. Then, with stealth-like cunning, I very carefully inched my trembling hand to within what couldn’t have been more than a fingernail of her shoulder. But that is where my nerve totally deserted me, and no matter how much I double-dared myself to go ahead and actually make physical contact with Molly, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.
So, there I sat, for at least a good 30 minutes, with my arm uncomfortably draped over the back of Molly’s hard seat, too afraid to lay it on her soft shoulder, and not yet knowledgeable of a decent `return move’ which would have extradited me from the whole miserable situation.
Molly, being the sweet young thing she was, finally took pity on me, reached back, grabbed my hand, and pulled it down on her shoulder. But just when I was about to jump for joy, it dawned on me that my arm (all the way up to what I am sure was the sweatiest armpit in the theater), had fallen asleep and was completely dead to the world. It was nothing more than a big slab of meat that I couldn’t move, much less lift. And then, to make matters even worse, the most incredible painful case of pins and needles ever known to man started. It began in my fingertips first, and then very, very slowly – torturously actually – worked its way up to my aching shoulder.
“What’s the matter?” asked Molly, noticing that I was biting down on my lip and squirming all around in my seat.
“Oh, nothing,” I assured her, my face no doubt full of agony.
Mistakenly thinking that I wasn’t really enjoying our newfound intimacy, she suddenly yanked my throbbing arm off her shoulder and unceremoniously returned it to my lap, thereby abruptly bringing to an end any hope I had of attempting my next move, which I had been daydreaming about ever since the first day of the onset of puberty.