For One, Please
Existentialism feels good in a place like this
Once or twice a month I seek shelter at The Americana, nestle into the worn out upholstery, and wait for the screen to light up.
There’s a lot of things I tend to second guess: What I’m feeling, how I’m being perceived, how I perceive myself, if I’m overthinking, or not thinking enough, and if any of my decisions will lead me astray. The wrong job, the wrong lover, the wrong apartment in the wrong neighborhood. I’m not sure there’s really a place to be led astray to that I couldn’t leave from, but I know I don’t want to be there. I want to be at The Americana, where second guessings dissolve as quickly as the paper straw lodged in my Coke Icee, and my only concerns are deciphering Jacob Elordi’s southern drawl sans captions, or how many stars I should log on Letterboxd as I walk back to the parking garage.
Having grown up in a town built by Disney, The Florida Project filmed right outside its white picket fences, there’s a strange comfort I find in an environment so manufactured. Our family friends used to tease, “Cue the deer!” as our landscape appeared formulaic, seemingly under constant surveillance, hauled onto the set of The Truman Show one late afternoon while we all laid down to nap. Even to wander the roads alone at night, soundtracked by one’s own feet and breath on a humid Florida night, the streetlights throw their beams down like spotlights to stage. There’s no barrage of Citizen notifications, no lurkers in your shadowed periphery, the only jumpscare a timed sprinkler to a lawn nearby.
I mean yes, The Americana is a bit much—there’s the trolley that serves no purpose other than providing tracks to trip over as you stroll to the next storefront, or the apartments lining the manicured center, which I continue to doubt fulfill a genuine residential function, serving primarily as a consumerist veneer—but it’s close enough to my homeland. It’s actually kind of like Disney sans Disney Adults, so I don’t have to kill the part of me that cringes. It’s also far enough from Sunset that there’s no one to dress up for, allowing my glasses and sweats to blend effortlessly into the crowd of locals. I get to witness, brushing shoulders with it all just long enough for disinterest to fall upon me as I swing open the door to AMC.
Films were a large part of my upbringing, probably yours too. My parents used to own this hefty white Yukon with a DVD screen in the back, and even for a drive around the block we’d turn on whatever we had in. The amount of times they’d play over and over, I’m certain I could still recite the entirety of any early 2000s Pixar film from memory. I mentioned in Why We Go Out the stories I’d grown up with, and the paths I envisioned my life taking from a young age. This is where those stories found me, on a flip down screen in the back of a white Yukon. They find me today after a brief foreword from Nicole Kidman.
It’s funny, this hesitation to lock-in for fear of being locked in, which follows me even to the cinema, where I routinely book the seat nearest the door—the one between aisle and handicapped companion, where the rows jut inward toward the center of the theater a bit, still allowing for an end without warping my view. I also enjoy the immense leg room, and I’m not positioned too close, so the actors aren’t giving “Hello Dubai” quite yet. It’s my habitual comfort. My own personal survival. In a way, it’s one of the few decisions I can always lock into.
It doesn’t really matter though where I’m positioned in my fold-down red seat; my vantage is still both history and possibility. I’ve had a nice life. I continue to have a nice life. But even in the nice life there’s room to wonder and fantasize about that other life, or the bow that will eventually descend and wrap this nice life up once I’ve acquired everything I believe the nice life should or shouldn’t have. So I wait here at The Americana, checking in each month to see if it’s better through the screen, waiting for that silver to get worn down just enough to catch a glimpse at my decisions and dreams reflected in it.
10/10! 5 stars! I loved every moment of this.