Starting the year off with a whimper

My friends Stacy and Howard are in right now in a car headed down 95 South to North Carolina. Stacy is moving there for three months to do research on her next book; Howard is Driving Miss Stacy. I helped her carry her things down from her fifth-floor walk-up to the rental car, so I feel very altruistic and virtuous. (In truth, I only made one trip, then got the coveted "wait with the car parked at a hydrant" position.)

I rewarded myself with a midday movie. It feels so decadent somehow, having this Monday off. I even got popcorn.

(Everyone has their post-9/11 traumas; mine are loud noises and crowded public spaces. The AMC 25 on 42nd Street is not the place for an incipient claustrophobe, as it turns out. I went because it has stadium seating, and I figured the midtown location wouldn't be a huge draw on a holiday. Bad choice. It's got these horribly narrow escalators that go up for three stories at a time, barely fitting one person; and I didn't see any stairs. How did the architect get away with this? Did he pay off the building department for the permit?)

I saw Brokeback Mountain, which I'd heard all the good things about, and which I didn't want to be the last person in the world to see. It is all you've heard it is -- spare, taut, sexy, sad... incredibly sad. I cried, as I knew I would, but not as much as I would have if there hadn't been a guy sitting next to me wrestling me for the armrest for the entire two hours.

I was impressed though, that he appeared to be there on a date with a woman. From what I have heard, heterosexual men are not flocking to this movie. I go back to work tomorrow, to the office which is composed of 95% straight men. It didn't occur to me until afterwards that I may have chosen the wrong movie to see in order to keep up with the water cooler chat.