My date with me

I’ve never been to a movie by myself.

I’m almost 30. I’m single. I love movies, and I love seeing them in the theater. I’ve had my fair share of obnoxious roommates and infuriating family members to drive me out of the house, and I know I’ve contemplated taking refuge in a movie theater more than once on a hot day.

But somehow, I have never been to a movie by myself. Really.

Today, I decided it was time to remedy that: I would go to see Sex and the City. Alone. (There’s a subplot here, which I won’t get into all the details of, except to say that a certain younger sibling and I were supposed to go together on opening weekend to see SATC, but there was some confusion about which day, and I had a commitment I couldn’t get out of on opening night—and said younger sibling, not able to wait until Saturday because she had made additional plans with other people for Friday, went without me and convinced my very kind mother—who had promised she would go with me the next day—to go with them instead. I called a friend who I was pretty sure would have a girls’ night out planned to see it, hoping that I could maybe hint my way into an invitation if it wasn’t opening night, but she never called me back. I then went through everyone I know who I thought might like to see it, but they’d all seen it. All of them.)

Anyway, I’m pretty much over all that now. Obviously. In the defense of my family, both my sister and my mom did offer to go see it (again) with me later that weekend. I declined. Partly that was because I wanted them to think of me sitting all alone in the theater (yes, I’m a martyr—soon there will be statues of me at your local religious institution, where you can stare up at my likeness and contemplate my lonely state). The point is, everyone I know who wanted to see it had already seen it, and I didn’t want to see it with someone who had just seen it. It’s not the same experience. I hate going to a movie with someone who has already seen that movie, because inevitably that person starts watching you instead of the movie, looking for your reaction at key scenes, and he/she doesn’t laugh as much or react to scary/shocking moments because he/she already knows they’re coming.

When I said to my sister, “No, I’ll just go by myself, thanks very much!”, it occurred to me that I have never been to a movie by myself. Not once. And I was curious to see what it was like. I’ve been thinking lately about being single, and how every year the odds increase that I will stay that way. I’m not being maudlin; it’s the truth. I don’t have the exact statistics, but I know that the chances of marrying decline steeply for women after thirty. We live in a culture that puts a high value on romance and marriage. If you’re not paired off, your life must be missing something. I’m not saying I will be single forever, but I don’t want to live in fear of it, either. I can’t let it stop me from doing something I want to do, just because I don’t have someone to go with me. I understand that single is not the same thing as lonely, but sometimes I need reminding.

So tonight was it. I was going to a movie alone. The beginning part was pretty much the same: I put a water bottle and ziploc bag of candy in my purse, drove to the theater by myself, bought one ticket at the window, and went inside. The difference was, I wasn’t meeting anyone in the theater this time.

Actually, as I sat down, I realized that going to a movie is the perfect thing to do alone. It’s not like you are expected to talk to or look at someone else while the movie is playing (in fact, they rather frown on that). And no one can see you sitting there by yourself.

Also, in the last few years, the theater companies have very thoughtfully provided twenty minutes of vacuous advertising-disguised-as-entertainment before the movie even starts, so you’re spared pretending to read a book in a darkened auditorium so that no one thinks you’re lonely (has anyone ever really been fooled by the “reading a book” trick? When I’m the one reading alone at a table or on a bench, I am aware that I am sitting there alone, and that people are looking at me as I sit there alone. Maybe it’s just me; probably everyone else who is furtively hunched over a library book is actually reading. I’m not.).

Of course, I did have to pick the most date-friendly, girlfriends-going-to-the-movies-together movie currently in theaters. It was a Monday night, but the theater was still about two-thirds full of groups of women of all ages, and a few young couples. I admit that I put my sweater over the seat next to me. I might have been saving the seat for someone else.

But it didn’t really bother me. In fact, I was amazed at how little it bothered me to be there alone. I still enjoyed the movie. I still laughed aloud, and yes, even cried a little. I still felt that rush of camaraderie that a live crowd in a full theater watching a good film brings.

Driving home, I thought about how, even though I really like going to the movies with someone else—because you can nudge each other when a familiar actor appears, share smuggled snacks, and pick apart the plot in the car afterward—I’m going to promise myself that, when there’s something I want to see or do and no one to go with, I will go by myself.

No, I will go with myself, and not worry about what anyone thinks.