I.
Don’t ask me how I got the job.
I had no experience.
I was nineteen;
I had given everything up,
my salvation included.
I had youth. I had time.
What did I love about it?
The darkness. The upstairs climb
to film reels coiled and waiting,
slippery and sleek as black eels,
on four horizontal platters,
film strips traveling
round and up
and through the air,
churring as they fed
into the projectors,
twenty-four frames
per second, and that beautiful soundtrack,
which was four soundtracks, four films,
voices whispering together in a room.
I can still smell the celluloid and hot oil.
II.
I came to love the progression
of it all, and I could do it all:
sell tickets, shovel popcorn, sweep
and pour beer, then shoot upstairs
and thread four films in fifteen minutes.
Twelve-hour shifts on four hours of sleep.
I had youth. I had time. I survived
on bad coffee and instant noodles,
and I suspected I was vicious
like the women I watched all day
on screen, their mouths stained dark
with red wine as they twirled a long glass stem
between their fingers, smiling or smirking
as a hand moved a sleeve of their dress
below the shoulder.
III.
Most of all, I loved the mastery of my hands:
twisting the silky clear leader film
gently through the clutch
of metal spools on the first platter,
pulling it low into a tension roller,
and back up through a cleaning roller,
making sure all the while that nothing caught;
then taking the film like a child’s arm
over to the projector, opening the door,
unsnapping drivers and metal bobs,
coaxing film into place, checking
first that the frame was in line with the gate,
adjusting the aperture, matching sprocket holes
to teeth, looping and twirling the film
between my fingers, then locking it all in place.
IV.
When it was finally time, you opened the shutter,
turned the projector on and held your breath.
If you were unlucky,
you threaded the soundtrack the wrong way;
or film would snag in a tension roller
and the lamp would pop off;
or you’d burn a hole in the reel,
which meant passing out free movie passes
to a hostile theater. Or, worst of all,
an alarm would sound
and suddenly the platters would be going nuts
spitting film all over the floor,
film jumping and writhing like snakes.
But if you were lucky,
the platters would spin like fluid
new galaxies, and the film would progress:
the lifeless leader first then shadowy
burned on pictures flowing beautifully and smoothly;
the white lamp light would smash its brilliance,
holier and more reverent than chapel candles,
onto each image, each frame given its full
moment in the light; twenty-four frames
per second; every cell arriving and departing
so fast, journeying into the lens before
splashing onto the little glass window,
where it grew and became what everyone else knew;
and I could hang up there for a little while,
watch the audience settle, see how they touched
one another, laughed or wept in the dark.
V.
I wish I could believe in miracles.
I believe in luck, and on February 12th
that year, I was lucky when a boy,
a man, entered the shopping plaza
connected to the theater fifteen minutes
before the 7pm showing with a pump
action shotgun and a backpack full of ammo.
I was lucky it was a Tuesday and my shift
was called off, lucky it was slow,
my manager finished with threading
and downstairs by the doors, so when he heard
the first shot he had time to close
the metal grates and nobody I knew died.
I tried to make sense of it, but
none of it fit together. It was senseless.
Glass walls blown out for weeks,
bullet skids in brick tile. It was two days
before Valentine’s Day and a fifteen-year-old
was shot in the head in a greeting card store
while her mother crawled towards her.
I’m ashamed
I can’t remember how many people died.
VI.
I usually think back
to a few days before it happened.
It was a break-down day and make-up
day; the projection room stank
of cigarette smoke; we all drank
too much coffee, littered the floor
with greasy paper bowls of buttered
popcorn, waiting for the new
pictures to arrive downstairs, broken
into small reels in metal carrying cases;
and when they appeared, we carried them up,
lifted the images out of their dark holes
and into the air like newborns.
My manager inspected each frame
in his silky white gloves, bent over
the guillotine splicing table,
and the film was perfect.
We joined the head and tails of each
film strip together, and it became whole.
Then, so late after the last show,
we all went downstairs to watch
whatever it was we pieced together:
some of us drunk, some of us stoned,
some of us happy.
VII.
I quit senselessly
one afternoon not long after.
There was new management and talk
of converting to digital. I stopped
taking my pills and felt impulsive,
you might say reckless,
or maybe just a little more like myself.
I began to feel like a moth
flitting too close to a bright lamp,
my skin singeing, and I wasn’t sure
what I was doing. I remember wondering
if anyone would notice if I left.
I remember walking through the back doors.
I had youth. I had time.
I remember the brightness of that late winter
afternoon, March or April; the mountains
severe as always, snow still clinging to the peaks,
smog choking the valley. Cars slowed
as I passed; frost gnawed on the aspens.
