A few months later, on a late night, he called. I slipped into the bathroom to take the call, thinking it would only last a little while. But hours went by. I ended up sitting on the toilet, talking to him after standing too long. The scene must have looked ridiculous, but there I was.
There’s something about sharing secrets with someone who still feels a little like a stranger. That night, though we didn’t know each other well, we talked about everything—family, friends, hobbies, dreams, fears. Not the polished kind of answers you’d give in a job interview, but raw, unfiltered thoughts. Even the strange, crazy ones.
He told me he lived with just his mom. I said I did too. I told him how much I adored my grandmother, and he said he did too. He asked, “Have you heard Jay Chou’s Grandmother?” I told him Jay Chou was my favourite singer at the time. He laughed and said his old MP3 player could only hold a dozen or so songs, and every single one of them was Jay Chou. “Mine too,” I said.
Then I confessed that sometimes I wondered who I was, how I ended up in this world. Those thoughts made me feel so strange, like time itself was slowing down. He chuckled, “Like Jay Chou in Initial D?”
He said he was always curious about what it might feel like to break the law. I admitted that the thought intrigued me too, though of course I’d never actually do anything illegal. But I did like playing harmless pranks. Once, at Toys "R" Us, I secretly turned off all the little TVs on display. (Don’t try this at home.) He laughed again and told me he loved cult films, because they were filled with the kind of madness you could only imagine but never act on in real life.
“Got any cult films to recommend?” I asked.
“3-Iron is pretty good,” he said.
And so, one film led to another, and here I am today.
Sharing a still from the movie …And They Lived Happily Ever After. The plot isn’t much, but Charlotte Gainsbourg looks stunning, and Johnny Depp, effortlessly handsome. The most romantic minutes of the film became the music video for Creep—a story of two strangers meeting in a record store.
“When you were here before, couldn’t look you in the eye.”
—Creep by Radiohead
