Pursuing The Great Stone Face...at a cost
I came into the office that day with a gait that belied my 135 pounds.
Every step I took resulted in a new effect from the norm; not the picking up of the shag rug's fibers by my static-powered polyester pant cuffs, but the large impressions that my feet were leaving due to the sudden lumber of my tread.
My co-workers - we all wrote ad copy together...that is, when we weren't busy stepping out to play video games, to enjoy long, ethnic lunches or to shop for vintage clothing or books - momentarily wondered what gave, 'til the imitation wind chime sounds I began to make made what was going out a bit clearer to them.
"Where did you get all that change?," one of them asked.
"Must have worn knees," the other added.
"Very funny," I replied.
I explained:
That afternoon, -in those days just before the invention of the VCR - a Buster Keaton film I was dying to see, The Three Ages, was scheduled to play on French television. As I couldn't go home for lunch and still call it a productive - or in the tradition of that particular office, semi-productive - day, I would spend my acceptably extended lunch hour at the bus station. There, for those forced to endure long wait times for that precious, crammed ride to, say, North Bay, were uncomfortable plastic chairs with built-in television sets. One quarter would buy you five minutes of television time. Hence, two hours - the Keaton film plus commercials - sixteen quarters, the musical instruments that had been playing in my pockets.
My co-workers thought I was nuts. What kind of a character would go to that length to watch some stupid, obscure silent movie? I rebutted by pointing out their individual bents - one's costly love of Matchbox cars, the other's disposition toward gaudy, amateurish art - but remained in their eyes a creature of lesser standing.
Though I desperately sought the approval of these two loons in all things - I was, after all, their junior by some seven years - the prospect of soon seeing Keaton's Three Ages imbued me with enough inner confidence to risk their estimation of me.
At the allotted hour, I excused myself from our tiny office and jingled confidently through the downtown streets, reaching at last that poor man's Bijou, the Catherine Street Bus Terminal.
I settled into one of the chairs, waited 'til exactly the right moment, then, inserted my sixteen quarters into the slot.
The television flickered. It flickered again. For a moment, I panicked. Then, finally, the set came dutifully alive, alive with the much anticipated image of...
...Anwar Sadat, as he collapsed at the hands of his own troops.
There was an immediate cut to studio, where French politicos just as deadpan but nowhere near as entertaining as Keaton pontificated, pontificated and - goodbye, last of my quarters - pontificated some more.
I stormed back to the office, my feet no longer prompting a jingling sound but the heavy stamp of an extremely angry young man.
"So...,"one of the guys asked, his eyes on some copy for a stereo store, "how was your precious movie?"
No response. He looked up at me.
It was I who had spent all of the hard earned change...but it was he who got to see The Great Stone Face.
