Moulin Rouge
Friday night R, LWSRN and I went to a special showing of Moulin Rouge at the Castro Theater in San Francisco. I left work a tiny bit early and LWSRN met me at my house and we went together to R's new apartment in San Francisco. She'd prodded us to dress up for the event and I wore a little black dress and spike heels. I got changed before we drove up, LWSRN waited to change at R's.

I was a bit punchy and depressed. I haven't been getting enough sleep lately and that always makes depression worse. We were going to have dinner with R and a friend of hers. Her friend had to work late and decided to meet us at the theater. R was too stressed out to eat, so LWSRN and I had a nice salad that R'd put together and a glass of wine while she and R got dressed. D put on a tux shirt I'd lent her, and some nice black slacks. R wore a lovely red dress that was half transparent and sparkled all over. She also wore some full length red PVC gloves.

We drove over to the Castro theater about 45 minutes before the show and LWSRN gallantly decided to drop us off and park the car. R and I stood in the first of two lines (tickets and then door). Lines and spike heels just don't mix. My feet ached. It was cold, but at least I'd expected that and was wearing my leather top coat. I think we were probably in the lines for 40 minutes. R's friend was held up further and we were in the theater sitting before she arrived.

I'd never been in the Castro theater before. Never mind that I've been in the area for 12 years now, I just never got there. It's a marvelous place. There was a huge organ playing when we first sat down, and the theater was downright baroque in its magnificence. But by then, I was a bit out of it. Tired, very tired, and sore too.

Eventually the movie started. I'd never seen Moulin Rouge before. It was distorted, choppy, and the sound was out of sequence, almost like being on drugs. But then I felt almost drugged before it started. It'd been running for about 15 minutes before they stopped the film. It seemed that there'd been a silent film festival that afternoon, and they hadn't gotten the projector adjusted right. They started the film over about 15 minutes later.

I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it was not what I got. Snatches of modern song woven together against a century old backdrop, pounding base beats, and at times percussion almost worthy of the industrial music I love. Mind you, I like many sorts of music. It was entrancing. The photography had an almost fairy tale look to it, and the scenes moved as dreams do.

I want to put this aside for a moment. I've mentioned my depression a number of times. I don't get suicidal any longer, that passed one night about a decade ago when I got close enough to it to think about some of the consequences and realize that no matter how desperate life got, the alternative wasn't worth considering. Even so, when I get depressed, two things happen: I get clumsy and have weird accidents, and I keep having these mental flashes of hurting myself. They're more irritating than anything else. They give me some idea of the shape I'm in emotionally.

Anyway, here we were, in the middle of this movie, and the zooming of the camera between scenes was mesmerizing, and all of the sudden I have this flash of being in a skydive and not opening my parachute. Just this experience of rushing towards the ground, like the camera was rushing towards a building. It gave me pause. It scared me. The first thing I did was ask myself if I needed to stop skydiving.

But I remembered some of the other little flashes I get. When I'm driving and going over one of the arching curved freeway overpasses they're fond of here, I get flashes of not turning with the curve of the road and just going out over the edge. But I never do. This couldn't be any worse than that, could it?

I was a bit nervous for the rest of the film. I love it and want to get a copy for myself. The music is still rolling through my head days later -- do I need the sound track as well?

Saturday came too early, and I always jump Saturday. I got to the dropzone very late, because I'd had to turn around once to get LWSRN's spare car keys to her. She'd left her keys at R's apartment the night before and there's no longer reasonable mass transit on the weekends on the San Francisco peninsula. It was getting close to noon by the time I was ready to jump. I checked everything twice, and asked for a recheck by other divers. I kept having those little flashes, but I jumped, I pulled, and everything was fine.

I wonder what it's like to not feel depressed. To feel normal. To not have to watch my every move...