But then two things happen. There are two entrances, the first by a pair of young french girls, neither of whom seem to want to sit at the front and so make their way towards me, slowly plodding up the steps with shopping bags strewn over their arms, and carrier bags, a tell tale sign of a noise-maker, the kryptonite to my Superman, dangling from their hands. I watch, my lips pursed, as they reach the top of the steps. The two or three rows in front of me are empty so I am in no hurry to move my feet, presuming, as many would, that they will do the polite thing, for my comfort if not for their own, and sit in the row in front.
No. It becomes clear that only the back row, only the two or three seats to the right of my perfect spot, my cinematic nirvana, can provide them with a satisfying enough experience. I do as much as I can to hold them off, I wait until the last minute to move my legs out of the way, as if commanded by William Wallace to HOLD! But it is no good. Up they go, muttering and giggling as if they had just caught a brief site of Zac Effron's ballsack.
They chatter through the adverts, then the trailers, and I begin to become rueful of my spineless surrender. I shoot them the odd chastising look, but they land in the water with a dull splosh and the girls are unaware that they even under attack. I feel my rage building as the opening credits begin to roll, the chattering and laughing continuing. What can possibly be so funny, I think, about the quiet and poignant opening sequence of Shifty? Am I missing something? Is there poo on the screen? No, there isn't, they're just completely and utterly disrespecting the unwritten rules of cinematic audience participation, they are taking a big steamy piss on the sanctity of the screen. And I am furious. But not as furious as I'm about to be.
As the opening scene unfolds, and I start to enjoy the dialogue, the naturalism of the acting, the delicacy of the exposition, I notice something in the corner of my eye. A shadow. Someone has come in late. A bumbling, bulbous figure begins to round the front of the auditorium and my eyes cannot help but watch him. I know what is about to happen. I know it. I have that flickering eyelid that tells me that someone is about to upset my status quo.
And up he comes. Closer, closer, he glances up towards me, then back down at a weighty pile of receipts and tickets in his hand, the collectings of someone with a less than secure grasp of reality. When he reaches the top of the stairs I brace myself, almost expecting him to sit on my lap and lick my ear for the next hour. He doesn't. He does something worse. He sits DIRECTLY in front of me. In the seat in front. He doesn't know he's doing it but he elbows my foot from the arm rest onto the floor. At this point I think I had a small aneurism. Just a small one, but something popped, something went POP in my brain and I was lost. The seat was ruined. Not only this but we were five minutes into the film and I had not one fucking clue what was going on. Suddenly there were bags of drugs on the kitchen table and someone's brother was shouting at him for not respecting Muslim tradition. I was baffled and the situation needed rescuing. I had not the bottle or nerve to ask anyone to move. It is a free country after all, and there's not much weight in the argument "You can't sit there, it's disturbing my usual viewing structure, plus you've entirely disrupted the audience distribution patterns in this particular screen."
I had no choice but to move. And move I did. Seven or eight chairs down along the same aisle. I made a big deal of it too, picking up my bag so that the strap slapped on the ground, sighing heartily, letting my chair flop back so to clap against the wall. I was making a scene. In all fairness I'd probably distracted more people than I had purposefully scourned, and to you I apologise, but come on...it had to be done.
I enjoyed my film, and didn't glare back along the aisle too many times, only enough to realise that there was no amount of looking, however strained or venomous, that would stop the two girls from enjoying their little catch up time, and that this was not the time to start shouting or tapping on shoulders or throwing wine gums at heads. So I kept on. And it was fine, but it annoys me now, and it annoys me every time I visit the cinema. The same exact thing has happened to me in the same screen only a week before, except that the galling Gallic cacklers were replaced by two older women, both of whom seemed to have forgotten to tell the other about a myriad of recent gossip from the front line.
I am a lunatic, yes. I understand this. What kind of human being would become so passionate about such a minor invasion of public space? But I ask you this; what would you do, men, if you were poised at a urinal, at least six or seven metres of clear, glistening silver to each side, and in walks mister inconsiderate, ready to flop his tiny cock out of his trousers so close to you that you could count the hairs in his ugly, matted bush. Wouldn't you feel begrudged? Invaded? Wouldn't you want to turn around mid flow and soil his feet, just so that he understood the gravity of his incredible lack of social awareness. And women, don't pretend for a second that if you were enjoying a hot summer's day on a beautiful empty beach, miles of clean white sand around you for anyone to enjoy, you wouldn't bite the sand in fury if mister inconsiderate, with his hairy back and uncomfortably shiny face, decided to put his towel down a few feet from yours, belching and scratching his cavernous arse crack.
These are basic feelings! They are natural. I, for one, feel that the cinema is my place of peace, it is my escape, and I enjoy, almost more than the film itself, the finding of good, comfortable spot with a decent view. No-one, not anyone, wants their place of peace, their sanctum, disrupted. You don't see me coming into your yoga class and pulling your mat out from under you like a magician, do you? No. So fuck off out of the cinema, or sit somewhere else. I will fight in the future, not with fists but maybe with words. I will fight and I will probably lose, because there are more people who take the experience with much more lethargy, much less infantile possessiveness. But as long as I am who I am, as long as my heart beats, I will fight for my peace, for decency and consideration in screen 13. That is my memorandum. My call to arms. Now put that fucking plastic bag away before I wrap it around your fucking head.
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