If you have ever had the pleasure of hanging out with me while drunk, chances are good that you've heard this story before. Still many of you may have not, and I been wanting to write this one down for years.
The story that follows is one of the most (and quite possibly THE most) awkward moments in my life. And like all great uncomfortable moments it involves family.
The evening started innocently enough. I was out at mom's house visiting. As per usual we had been chatting for quite some time. Any number of subjects had been covered as me and mom are both easily distracted when it comes to conversation. More often than not random thoughts, and side conversations, wound up taking center stage. At least until the next random thought or shiny object. Somehow we ended up touching upon the idea of brainwashing as a form of control. A which mom dropped a reference to the film "A Clockwork Orange". This admittedly caught my attention for two reasons. One, while I had heard of "A Clockwork Orange" before, I had never actually seen the film. My mom had just name dropped one of those movies that most film-geeks get disturbingly orgasmic about when anybody brings it up. Which brings us to the second reason this caught my interest, I was VERY into movies at the time. Especially when the film had the potential to get really dark. I suddenly very much wanted to see the film. This would prove to be an exceptionally bad idea.
Now before I go any further let me clarify something, "A Clockwork Orange" is a very good film. It is very dark, and at times overly artsy, but still a good film. At it's most basic level it's a film about a truly horrible young man living in a rather hellish near-future. Eventually he is captured and brainwashed so he won't be so much of a threat to the surrounding populous. It is quite a good film, and I would recommend seeing it some day if you haven't already. That being said, never, and I repeat never watch the film with family members.
With our unfortunate course set we sent Bob out to rent the film (Ah... The days before Netflix.) and pick up a pizza for dinner. Upon his return we put the pizza in the oven, and began to start the film. At this very moment grandmother walked into the room and very cordially asked if we were about to watch a film. To which we both said, "Yes, would you like to pull up a seat and join us?"
To which she replied, "I'd be delighted!"
So there we are. Our little subsection of the nuclear family all gathered around the tv ready for an evening of family entertainment. (Now that I think about it I find it slightly odd that Bob wasn't there with us. He may have known better.) Again if you've already seen the film you are probably already cringing, but if you haven't allow me to explain why this whole scene was so bad.
As I mentioned earlier the film is centered around a horrible young man in a horrible world. Well since the audience didn't yet know how disgusting this guy was yet the film needed to show us. So the opening moments of the film are this young man and his friends (i.e. gang) involved in all manner of bad things. Beatings, b&e, and perhaps the most vile rape. All of these scenes happen to be set to a background soundtrack composed mostly of classical music. Every frame of it is deeply unsettling, and uncomfortable.
And I'm sitting there not three feet away from both my mother and grandmother.
At roughly the same moment me and mom realized that we had made a horrible mistake. We both began to look around like wild animals looking for a way out of a cage we had just found ourselves to be trapped in. Now at this moment you may be wondering why we didn't just get up and press stop on the damn VCR? While that is a perfectly rational option, neither me nor mom were feeling particularly rational at the moment. No, it would be safe to say that the two of us were locked in a blind panic. Both of us knew that this was a bad place to be in, but our minds couldn't get us out of it.
Grandmother, for her part, just sat there being as prim and proper as she had ever been in her entire life.
In many ways that was the worst part. Here was this woman from a very different generation. A southern belle in almost every meaning of the phrase. A woman who could be disapproving of the amount of violence in children's cartoons, suddenly found herself watching one of the most disturbing openings that I have ever seen in a film. And. She. Just. Calmly. Sat. There.
I knew that at any moment one of us was going to break. The tension in the room was just too thick. Up until this moment none of us had been able to speak. I don't think any of us knew quite what to say. Honestly, I don't think I was capable of speech. Still the moment had to come, and it did with the next scene.
The next scene involved our gang invading a home, beating a husband, and raping the wife. All the while our "hero" is singing an impromptu rendition of "Singing in the Rain". Just like everything that had happened before this would have been incredibly uncomfortable to watch alone, let alone with two earlier generations of family members, but to make matters worse it was at that exact moment that grandmother decided to break the silence of the audience. She simply turned to my mother and me, and just as sincerely as she could muster said, "Well at least the music is very nice."
I think at that very moment my brain said, "Fuck this! I'm going to Hawaii!" and then proceeded to crawl out through my ear and go to Hawaii. I instantly jumped up, stopped the movie, and said, "Oh hey! Look at the time. I should really get home. I'll just take the movie with me." No one argued with that idea.
Mom later confessed that while she had seen the movie before she had no memory of the opening scenes. Otherwise she never would have suggested that we should all watch it together.
I never talked with grandmother about that night ever again. In fairness she never brought it up either.
So that's the story. If it didn't seem that odd or awkward to you, well maybe you just had to be there.
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