Today is the anniversary of my dad’s death, and there’s been a lot of talk about streaming services and whatnot on my radar. On the topic of both, this is an excerpt from showtime, an essay collection I wrote a few years ago. The ending is different now, because things are different now. And yes, I was high when I wrote it.
When I was a kid, my dad would record movies that played on TV. I remember admiring his scrawled labels on the tapes in all capital letters. White Men Can’t Jump is one that’s never left my mind. In fact, it’s the only one I can truly remember. There were stacks and stacks of tapes, but White Men Can’t Jump is the one that burrowed inside my mind and continues to live there. As an adult, I held off actually watching it, telling myself that preserving the memory of the movie was more important than watching the movie itself. Death sometimes forces us to cling to the miniscule details that remain as proof of the life someone once lived. My dad died when I was young, so I don’t have a lot of tangible things to remember him by, aside from mildew-smelling photographs and memories that flash and vanish in my mind’s eye.
What I've come to learn is that he was kind, outrageously funny, and would sacrifice anything for people he loved. He smoked Newports, liked Mr. Goodbar, stood at 6’4”. And then there was White Men Can’t Jump. I’d ask when we could watch it together. “When you’re old enough,” he would say. He would always watch Disney movies with me though. We would spread blankets across the living room floor and I’d lay down watching — sprawled out on my stomach with my chin propped in my hands. He’d sit in his soft blue recliner. During sad parts of the movie, I’d start crying, only to look back and see tears streaming down his face, too. “It’s just so sad, Al, isn’t it?”. When the movie was over, I loved rewinding the tapes, abiding by the law of the large “BE KIND, REWIND” horizontal sticker. Sometimes my mom would come in the room and say “I see y’all are at it again,” and walk back out. She wasn’t really into TV then.
When I started kindergarten, I begged and pleaded to have a TV in my room. My idea of luxury was having the privacy to watch TV alone. I don’t remember how long I asked for one, but one day, I finally got it. I got a VCR too, which was really the cherry on top. I couldn’t believe it. Getting a TV in my room opened more viewing opportunities. When I got up to pee in the middle of the night, I’d turn on my TV and quickly flick through the channels to see what was on. I easily fell into a routine of watching The Pink Panther at 5am, and then Little House on the Prairie, after which I would go back to sleep. I thought it was my secret little double-feature event, but my mom informed me many years later that they both knew what I was doing.
This was around the time my dad introduced me to The Wizard of Oz. It’s still my favorite movie to date, and I have two copies of it on VHS. One is the normal version I pull out for regular viewings, and the other is the special anniversary edition with behind-the-scenes footage and a booklet of trivia and facts. I don’t have many prized possessions, but those definitely rank at the top of my list. I’d like to be buried with them, but I don’t think anyone will actually honor my request. You never know what people are going to do after you die.
After my dad passed, we moved. My mom packed up the house and moved everything herself, taking trip after trip back and forth in our old Corsica while my brother and I were at school. When we got to the new house, there was an entertainment center with a newer tv and a little cabinet underneath with a shelf for movies. When I opened the doors, I noticed that my mom had gotten rid of dad’s old tapes. I guess I couldn’t blame her, but it felt like part of my life had been erased. They weren’t my tapes, and I’d never told her that I wanted to keep them forever. I guess I thought it was implied.
We had cable TV at the new house. I think the hook-up was from the previous tenant, but I don’t know. I just remember we had cable and had the distinct impression that we weren’t paying for it. At first, I had no idea what to do with so many channels. I fell into a routine of slowly clicking through each channel, trying to make a mental note of what was on and when, so that I could make the best possible decision about how to spend my life in half-hour increments. My brother is six years younger than me, but we were usually able to agree on something to watch. It was a democracy in the truest sense. We gobbled up Disney Channel Originals like candy, greedy for more after each 30- or 90-minute block ended. Soon, it got to be that most of the shows we liked were in syndication, and we were watching the same episodes over and over. My mom would ask “Don’t you ever get sick of watching the same shows over and over again?”. The answer was the same each time she’d ask: “No.”
Years passed and Josh and I became obsessed with TV. I’m sure anyone reading this would argue that my TV obsession came way before this point, but this was when I became aware of it. We would beg for extensions to our bedtimes just to watch more TV. Because Josh was younger, his bedtime was earlier. We would barter time from upcoming days so he could stay up later. “Mom” I’d plead, “if you let Josh stay up a half hour later today then I’ll go to bed a half hour early tomorrow”. My begging was laughable, especially because in my mind, my mom somehow benefitted from me going to bed a half hour early. She usually let us do it. Sometimes we would rewatch a stale episode we’d already seen, but what we really loved was popping in a Disney tape and reciting each line of the movie, singing and performing the songs. My mom frequently bellowed “I’M ON THE PHONE!!!!!” when we got too enthusiastic. Our throats were sore nearly every night just from reciting the lines. When we opted for watching TV episodes we’d already seen a million times, we’d talk through the entire episode about plot points and do our best impressions of the characters. I became infatuated with the idea of being a voice actor. I would mimic the voices and inflection and do my lines in the mirror. My mom informed me that voice acting “wasn’t a real job.” I still do great impressions.
As we got older, Josh and I felt the gravity of certain personal freedoms. We’d walk to Rite Aid at the corner and look at the new candies on the shelves, but we didn’t buy any. We didn’t really have our own money, and even if we did, we wouldn’t have spent it on candy. Soon, we started venturing to Discount Drug Mart. The inventory was so stale at Rite Aid that I could no longer derive any kind of joy from looking at a bag of sour skittles or rows of off-brand tubes of chocolate chip cookie dough chapstick. Discount Drug Mart is a chain exclusive to Ohio. Some stand-out locations have delis in them, selling packaged products like pickled eggs and haphazardly-stacked plastic tubs of antipasto salad. They also had movies. They had rotating stand-up displays with plastic-wrapped DVDs spinning and glinting in the light. We always knew Drug Mart had movies, but we didn’t have a lot of time to look at them when we came with mom. Now, we were free — our arms linked We hadn’t discussed anything beforehand, but as we walked there for the first time, excitedly yapping and purely running on adrenaline, I could tell we had the same plan: Movies.
The first trip was incredible. By this time, I was working at Dollar Tree and Josh was mowing lawns for cash. We had two sources of income and mental lists of every movie we’d ever wanted to see. The DVD rentals were .59 for older titles and $1.99 for new releases. They didn’t have tapes. “They’re trying to erase the past!!” I exclaimed. “You can’t rewind a DVD!!” There was also the option to purchase movies, but although we had two incomes, we certainly weren’t rich. I signed up for a loyalty card, which was required to rent movies. I was so excited I could hardly print my name correctly, each letter in its own painstaking box. Josh and I agreed — we would rent an even number of movies and pick a variety. The rules were simple: we had to watch what the other person picked. No argument. It was a fair enough system, and we started with 4 movies. We graduated to double digits in no time. Soon, we were planning ahead enough to know that we’d want to watch one movie a night during the week and two or three on Friday and Saturday nights. We were in the big time now, baby! One night, Josh made plans with his friends on a Friday night after dinner. His friend picked him up and they went to the mall. I’d resigned myself to watching MTV or some other bullshit alone that evening, but Josh came home at 9pm. I looked at him, confused, and said “I thought you were sleeping over Jakob’s?” He looked back at me, equally confused, and said “But Aly, it’s movie night.”
When I went to college, I didn’t watch TV. I had an arsenal of shows I watched regularly at home, but when I had classes and work-study jobs it was hard to maintain a consistent watching schedule. Watching movies with other people wasn’t the same. We didn’t have the bond that I personally require to enjoy the experience. People would get copies of whatever movie was newest and bodies would huddle into a tiny dorm room, with hardly any room for anyone to stretch out. During one viewing of V for Vendetta, a blonde Republican with a removable fake tooth looked at me and said “You’d be hot bald.” I transferred schools after sophomore year and moved back home. The day I moved back, my mom and (now two) younger brothers gathered in my room and put on American Idol. My mom and Josh got into watching TV together when I was away and he somehow convinced her, despite the fact that she hates musicals and public displays of emotion, to watch. I fell asleep while we all were piled on my twin-sized bed watching TV. I was home.
My home life fizzled out after about a year. I moved to Columbus and started a relationship with a guy named Dan. I was insanely lonely and lived in an apartment by myself in an isolated part of town. I got a couch and TV from Rent-A-Center. I bought a Roku for $10 off Craigslist. I slept on an air mattress for 8 months until I got my tax returns and could afford a bed. I would come home from work nearly every night, put a single personal-sized frozen pizza on a baking sheet, and turn on the TV. I made friends with a guy named Christian at the call center where I worked. He reminded me of Josh. We worked the same exact schedule, and he would give me a ride home after work even though I lived on the other side of town. We started going to the mall together on the weekends and we would give each other relationship advice and shop. Sometimes we’d split up and go into different stores and pick out stuff for each other. At the end of the day we would go back to my apartment and watch a movie or two. As our respective relationships picked up steam, Christian and I saw each other less, and our mall weekends ended up being spent arguing with our significant others.
After awhile, Dan and I started living together. I was hosting at one restaurant and washing dishes at another. We fell into a schedule of going thrifting every Monday, when VHS tapes were fifty cents each. He already had his own movie collection and a VCR, so we started adding to it. We cycled through classics like Out of Sight and Scent of a Woman. We had piles and piles of VHS tapes. It eventually became a compulsion, and we were buying more movies before we’d watched the ones purchased the week before. We moved back to Cleveland, and at first we would trek to the thrift store on the west side on the train or invite a friend along to shop with us. Then the thrift store closed. There was a CD/Game Exchange within walking distance, and we went there together a few times until our schedules didn’t allow it. The trips were staggered and it mostly consisted of one of us going and grabbing tapes and DVDs for us to watch together. TV series were more popular on these trips, and the reward of finding seasons of Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm we didn’t already own was enough to thrill us both. I don’t remember when, but these separate trips stopped too, and we settled for staring at a laptop in the middle of the bed while we streamed something off Netflix. We fell into comforts like Sopranos when we couldn’t agree on anything else.
One day during the summer, Dan came home from hanging out with friends. On his way home, he texted me, “Wait until you see what I got.” When he got home, he plopped a bag of VHS tapes on the bed. I tore into it and glanced over tape after tape, looking for what it was he knew I’d love. It was the last one in the pile and my eyes immediately filled with tears when I saw it. White Men Can’t Jump. We popped it in and I marveled at it the entire time, I laughed at every outdated joke, chuckled when they made fun of the white boy. This was it. This was what my dad loved. And now I had the experience.
That same summer, Dan and I broke up. I moved into the guest room, and we made a point not to talk to each other or even pass in the hallway. We communicated, sparingly, through email. I drafted an email that was simply “What about the movies?”. It took me days to send. He responded and said he didn’t care what I took. I think he was trying to make the process easier on me, but it didn’t help. We dated for 8 years, and the movies we acquired were undoubtedly important to both of us. I waited until he went to work the next day and I went through the stacks. It was a mix of DVDs and VHS tapes, and while some selections were obviously mine (Clueless and The Wizard of Oz), some were just...ours. What about Out of Sight? His, I decided. He liked it just as much as I did, and it would hurt too much for me to have it. I packed up my selections and moved them to my new place.
After Dan and I broke up, there was a messy push-and-pull, but we landed on friendship again. It wasn’t hard to do. We always joked that he was the Jerry to my Elaine, and it felt more natural to be friends than nothing at all. We excitedly swapped watch lists long distance, as he’d moved three hours away. But we didn’t miss a beat. In March of 2020, right before lockdown hit, Dan took a bus to Cleveland to give me a birthday present. It was obviously a wrapped VHS tape. “I gotta go catch my bus. Don’t open it until your actual birthday!!” he yelled as he jogged off. On my birthday, I opened it. It was Out of Sight.
Dan died three months later. I went to help his family pack up his things, which is probably the hardest part of someone dying. Yes, their actual death is painful, but figuring out what to do with the pieces and parts left behind is an entirely different experience. Everything they touched or breathed on feels precious. I helped fold clothes and packed up dishware to donate. Then my eyes settled on all the tapes and DVDs. “What will you guys do with those?” I asked, pointing to the shelves. “We’ll probably throw them out. They’re just junk. Nobody watches tapes anymore,” was the collective reply. I tried not to be insulted, grabbing large cardboard boxes as fast as I could, tears stinging my eyes as I stacked tape after tape inside. “I’ll take them,” I said. “Which ones?” they asked. “No,” I clarified. “I’ll take them all.”
So, now I have them all. Every single tape and DVD that we painstakingly created a collection out of. There are some doubles, a result of the fact that despite being apart, we were more in sync than ever. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, but this is how it is. I still shop for tapes, reveling in my little treasures of the past. Every time I bring home more, I take each one out of the box, feel its heft in my hands, and look for the inevitable sticker.
beautiful
You write so well. This was completely compelling. Thanks for sharing!