22- Solid Gold Video

            There used to be a video store down 149^th, just a few blocks from home called Solid Gold Video.  Kevin and I, as kids, used to walk down there on rainy afternoons, trudging through ankle-deep gutter puddles with two dollars in each of our pockets, and we’d always rent the same two movies.

            Always.

            The first was “Tron.”

            “Tron” was one of those movies that nobody would watch today.  Jeff Bridges inside a computer playing video games as a kind of computer world Jesus trying to liberate all of the programs in the sector.  It was silly.  It was neon tubing and black light and early, clumsy digital effects.  It was Disney, for Christ’s sake.  But it transfixed us.  It was fun, and uncomplicated, and we rented it all the time.  The second movie was “Troll.”

            “Troll” was about a sinister little troll, who takes over a California apartment building.  He begins this by taking over the body of a little blonde girl and over time turning each apartment into a remnant of his own magical world and the residents, one by one, into dwarves, elves, and whatever else.  The only person who seemed to notice all of this was the girl’s teenaged brother named (and today this is funny) Harry Potter.  Kevin and I would watch, him gleefully, as flesh melted, burst or transformed into sticky, muck-slicked creature flesh and yuppie neighbors turned into Tolkien-ish animals.

            Kevin loved this movie especially, but he never liked the ending.  I didn’t dig it as much as he did.  One afternoon, Kevin and I were maybe…nine, we sat, watching the boy hero on the run, and Kevin, rapt, on the edge of the couch with his toes digging into the carpet, screamed, angry when the troll was killed and my mother came downstairs, half-dressed, a cigarette between her teeth, and smelling like gin and whichever guy she had over, and she asked, “What?  What?  What the fuck are you boys screaming about?”

            “Nothing,” I said.

            Kevin said, serious, “The movie.”  My mother pulled the cig out of her mouth and blew a smoke ring and waited for something more.  “The ending,” he said.  “I never like it.”

            Mom smoked her cigarette and said, “Fucking kids,” and she headed back upstairs.  Dad was at work, and she gave me money to split with Kevin to keep it quiet whenever she had a guy over.  I didn’t like dad enough to care.

            “Kevin,” I said, “if you don’t like the ending, then why do we keep renting the movie?”

            “I keep waiting for a different ending.”

            I said, “It’s a movie.  It doesn’t change.”

            “Everything changes,” he said.  “Stare at something long enough and it always changes.”  Upstairs, I could hear my mother going through her routine, the thumping of the headboard, the screaming and the moaning and the sound of a man’s rough hand slapping against her ass.  I didn’t really understand that part of being an adult, but I kind of did.

            “It never has before,” I said.  “I don’t even know why we keep watch…”

            “Because what if it happens the next time,” he said, almost shouting.  We sat for a few minutes and listened to upstairs.  She was calling his name, but she never said the same name more than twice consecutively.  Sometimes the man upstairs was Johnny, and sometimes he was Marcos.  I didn’t ever hear her screaming Dad’s name.

            “What if it’s the next one,” Kevin said, quiet.

            He picked up the remote and he hit rewind and waited for the movie to restart.  Outside, the sky thundered and poured rain all over New York and Kevin said, “The Next time is going to be different.”

            Even as young as I was, I had been fascinated with Kevin’s undying need to try to change something that was forever locked into it’s sameness. His stubborn unwillingness to accept the fact that the movie was the movie and his anger that the final product never changed was evident each time he frustratingly pressed the rewind button on the VCR. The plot was the plot from point A to point B. The movie wasn’t going to change just because he WANTED it to, and it didn’t matter how hard he mashed his finger against the button sending the movie back, once it went forward, it was always going to the same outcome. The troll was never going to get what he wanted. He was going to meet his demise at the end and the credits would roll on and our heroes would be happy.

            “Everything changes,” he said.  “Stare at something long enough and it always changes.”  And in my little mind I thought about that. I rationalized it as best I could in my childish mind, maybe you can? So as Kevin sat on the couch, and with a sour puss watched the end of the movie and had to relive the fact, yet again that the ending wasn’t going to be any different. I walked away into the kitchen and stared at the ceiling, listened to the sound of my mother, and this man, a stranger, upstairs embroiled in coitus. And I hoped for change. I longed for it with adult intensity.

             So I left.

I left the house, Kevin, my mother and whatever bag of shit she had up there.

And I walked.

The words were seared into my little soul:  “Stare at something long enough and it always changes.”  

I was sat in the bleachers, at a little league field near the highway.  Kevin and I had played in the Ozone Park Little League at this place, before it became too expensive for us to buy the Jersies and my mother stopped coming to the games- but mostly because my mother never showed up anymore. The games were played all over the neighborhood, at different fields.  The good fields were down by the Aqueduct, down by the League’s home office.  All of the other fields were public parks, and they had public park problems.  Cigarette butts under the bleachers, holes in the chain link fencing, big chunks of sod ripped out of the field where you could run, and catch your ankle or your knee in a buckle.

            I sat in the bleachers, smoking cheap cigarettes I had stolen from my mother, and sipping from a hip-sized bottle of Vodka I also stolen. Little kid me, the tiny smoking alchy.    

            I took a sip of the Vodka, I hated it and I took quiet stock of the things that I knew.  I knew I didn’t want to be at home. I knew Kevin was still mashing his finger into the VCR, and I knew my mother would never love me. And I knew I wanted change. And if you stare at something long enough, it’s always changes.

            A puff off the cigarette.          

I took another drink.

            I looked at the sky, the ceiling, dark, with a million pin prick stars poked into it, and I followed the blanket of stars to where the sky met the trees. A bright flood light just beyond my reach caught my attention.

If you stare at something long enough, it always changes.

So I started to stare. I held my gaze, eyes open until they burned from the inside out.  But I didn’t blink…I didn’t stop looking. I held my stare with pure intent and curled nose, and teeth gritting. 

And the light moved.