Pink Life

The Pickwick Theatre is old-school, truly: 100 feet of concrete obelisk rising up and grooved Art Deco, so retro, imposing its shadow onto the humble Chicago suburb below. An embellished red marquee. The single word that glitters white: PICKWICK. Movie titles remain in removable black letters, the kind that White Castle still uses. My parents used to take me to the Pickwick in kindergarten. Walking up to the facade, I remember how they held me and chorused “1… 2… 3… swing!” Up and over the curb, I was hoisted between their strong hands. Whenever we drove out to the Pickwick, I got to order “face pancakes” at the diner across the street. A smile full of whipped cream. I learned what sex was at the Pickwick when I was five years old. We were watching a Jack Nicholson movie, Something’s Gotta Give.

The scene: Jack Nicholson’s character, a shallow debonair, finally gives into his growing attraction for an uptight playwright his own age, played by Diane Keaton. The two escape a rainstorm in her clean white beach house which matches her clean white cashmere turtleneck. (Thank you, Nancy Meyers.) They light candles. They banter between forceful kisses. “Soft lips,” Jack Nicholson remarks in his classic snarl. His voice lowers slowly so the words come out “So-oft li-ips.” I do not remember exactly when my mother covered my eyes. I remember seeing the illuminated pink flesh of her palm, so close, while Jack Nicholson’s strange cadence continued through heavy breaths. I remember the distinct rip as he shears open Diane Keaton’s turtleneck with a pair of kitchen scissors.

Sometimes I see Jack Nicholson’s smirk in the moon when I am alone, walking, and my face gets hot. Sometimes I walk past homes or even hospitals with vents on the sides of brick walls that let out warm air which rushes me and I smell laundry so clearly with its thick specter of detergent and my face gets hot again. Sometimes the bottom of my skirt flies up a bit. I am inside this stranger’s basement with my face in their sheets for a minute, with my skirt catching the breeze, and it’s thrilling. It’s even a little sickening, being inside somebody’s home like that. I don’t want to smell a stranger’s laundry. Steam funneling onto the sidewalk. 

For a long time, most of what I knew about passion came from the turtleneck sex scene in Something’s Gotta Give. Or from the decidedly cornier 27 Dresses, which was always playing on TV. When Katherine Heigl and James Marsden's characters finally do it in the car, also in a rainstorm, after Katherine Heigl shimmies to B-B-Benny and the Jetsss. (Yet another straight-laced heroine who only needed a few shots of whiskey.) And then there was Moonstruck, of course, when Nicholas Cage tosses the table on its side, yanks Cher out of her seat with both hands, and ravages her. (“Where are you taking me?” “To the bedroom.” “Oh god, I don’t care, I don’t care.”) Then cut away: the facade of a white beach house in fog, fading, or a predictable salmon sunrise, the slow close-up on a poster for La Bohème where an earnest couple holds each other in the snow. So blue. The zoom set to opera music. When Katherine Heigl’s foot pressed down on the horn, the couple's giggling filled the frame. So much depends on the pictures in a cut away, I’ve learned.

Like what will you choose to see besides a bedroom ceiling?

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