Showtime on 7th Avenue

Sometimes it only takes a few words from someone to transport you back in time. I got an email from Nicole earlier today in which she said she was fondly remembering how she used to scour the TV listings to find out which horrible movie would be on later that night.

We were living together in Brooklyn in the spring and summer of 1998. I was hating work, sinking deep into a miserable depression, living in a room the size of my current bathroom, smoking too much, and grieving the loss of my stepsister whom I never really felt I got to know.

And yet, during the miserably hot months that gripped the city and made us want to cry (and I think prompted both of us to move to L.A., truth be told), the late nights brought their respite in the form of so-bad-they-were-genius movies. I closed my eyes today after getting that email and suddenly I was in that brick-red living room, curled up on the beige loveseat in shorts and a tank top while Nicole reclined across the room from me on the couch, artfully dressed in a slip, a sandal, mule, or flip-flop dangling from one foot, bouncing as she absently jiggled her foot.

It would always be too late. We'd already spent too much time staring out our windows across 7th Avenue at our neighbors who would do all manner of things in plain view. There was the hot Puerto Rican guy who would just come to the window naked and stand there while we (I in particular) tried to appreciate it, despite his being backlit. Then there was the couple in the next building over. The female half of said couple apparently took belly dancing lessons and practiced her routine one night for her boyfriend, perhaps unaware that Nicole and I were screaming with delight as we watched her shimmy and otherwise try to enchant her man with somewhat awkward maneuverings that looked more like an uncontrollable twitch than seductive gestures.

These moments were the pre-show, of course. The escapist joy really came from watching Meredith Baxter (or was it still Baxter Birney then?), Connie Selleca, Melissa Gilbert, and many other actresses who generally specialized in all things Woeful scream, yell, and cry their way through films the plots of which usually included stolen babies, bad marriages, and glycerin tears--lots of them.

And there we sat, cigarettes in and out of our mouths, street noise permeating the apartment, sweat refusing to dry on our skin, the faint smell of trash sitting on the sidewalk in front of the deli downstairs wafting in. And for those 2 hours, the disappointment of relationships gone sour, the horror of premature death, and the uncertainty of what we might do next with our lives just melted away.

The movies didn't always entertain. We were not always treated to the antics of our neighbors across the street. And sometimes one or both of us couldn't muster the energy to make it to 2 a.m., but there's something to be said for having a partner in crime.

I didn't feel like I had much else at that point, but this was more than enough.