Seeing the movie Gravity for the first time was an amazing experience. It was a Friday night in woodland hills and David was about to meet his good friend Christina. They met in the parking lot outside of the AMC and decided it would be fun to smoke a bowl before going in.
“I haven’t smoked in such a long time.” Christina was a friend, but not in the traditional sense of how hanging out with friends led to expectations onto their poor backs. No. Christina existed in a circle of friends where they spend weekends partying in a couple of Pasadena and Alhambra night clubs -- hoping to find that little sweet time that will make the entire shitty week at our jobs worth it.
“I just want to feel like I’m in space.” David didn’t know what he was talking about after his first pull, but he knew, in about twenty minutes, he was going to be put on the edge of his $20-a-ticket recliner leather seat. The CGI was incredible and all he could think about was how hot Sandra Bullock looked in her dark green spandex floating in zero gravity. The movie was an incredible thing because it made David think about what it meant to be human, especially one that existed in an extremely alien and incredibly hostile environment. The movie displayed a scary attention to detail that had his 29-year-old, heavily under the influenced self stuck without even a water bottle to ease the suffering of dry cotton mouth.
After they finished the movie they stumbled out of the theater –it was past 1AM. There was fog in the air from the California winter breeze. David's car was covered in fresh due. They both laughed about this feeling as if they were hanging above the Earth’s ozone, literally flying through orbit. “Did she really ride a fire extinguisher home?” Christina puffed out a plumb of smoke from fresh bowl David just packed when they returned to the car. That was the part that brought David out of the movie, but he stopped caring about that. In fact, he didn’t pay too much mind to what existed beyond that point, only that he was with a good friend at that moment in time.
“I know. After watching that movie, no air, no sound, it's almost as if we were under water the whole time.” David started feeling confident in himself. “Like compressed you know. Does it feel more scary to you, to be underwater? Like, you’re trapped in there and no one can hear you scream.”
“Well you can’t be in too much trouble with a fire extinguisher.” Christina had a sarcastic sense of humor that David always enjoyed. She just didn’t care and his attempt at showing some sense didn’t change that for a second. “It’s just crazy to think about all that stuff that floats above us.”
“What do you mean?” David asked.
“Those satellite thingies that orbit the earth. Its crazy how they circle us. Right now at this very moment.”
David's head was getting heavy. He wanted to go home –to a small room he was renting in a house in Winnetka. “Yeah, that’s what satellites do. Right? Haven’t you seen a single spy movie?”
Christina wasn’t really staring at David at this point. She just sat there in the passenger seat –twisting her dark hair between her fingertips –just staring out the moon roof right into the night sky. “We all depend on those things, huh? Just floating up there, around us like some communications wizard.”
“I think I about lost you at this point.”
“Look at us. Some fragile creature needing all this…this…floating junk around us –crashing into each other.”
Crashing into Earth, that’s all David really saw in it. But he didn’t want to be a downer about the whole existential thing. Its like were some catalyst for destruction, like some flying missile into a stream of helplessly orbiting satellites. All that crap doesn’t really matter to him right now. David just started to notice Christina in a whole new and refreshing light –a shade of excitement from this new possible emotion. He knew socially it would be disruptive to his circles socially if they got involved, but the primitive thrill was too tempting to ignore.
The end of the night came at around 3am in the morning. They let their heads clear and sober by the time Christina said she was leaving. They had a good conversation, about life and tragedy –maybe even an embarrassing moment or two.
“Do you need me to walk you to your car?” David tried to pull up as close as he can.
“No I’m alright. Don’t want you to get cold.”
“What are you doing next Saturday?”
“I have a date.”
“Already back in the market?
She already closed the door behind her. She gave David a smile and wave as she got into her car. He didn’t know what came over him, but for that single moment she was the most beautiful person in the world -- not talking about in a romantic, sexual preference, but in a tone that speaks to what it means to be alive and in the moment. The way the streetlight bounced off her eyes as she walked away that night.
David knew that would be the last time she would enter his life.
It’s almost as if people are all free falling within the spaces of one another -- floating like wandering strangers, waiting to be discovered -- gasping for air. She was becoming reborn, disappearing from his conscious life, falling back into memory, just as the image of Sandra Bullock as she glides out of her space suit – transforming, fetal, as if reborn in zero gravity.
