Woman Alone: Experiment #1: The Movies

Woman Alone: Experiment #1

A few months ago I was talking to my friend Sami on the East coast, and somehow I brought up how I would be terrified and embarrassed to go out to see a movie by myself. “Mel,” she responds, “I go by myself all the time!”

Maybe that’s why she is a self-possessed and independent woman that I like to think of myself as. Or maybe she IS that, which allows her to go to the movies by herself without burning cheeks.

My cousin, also a young woman in her mid-twenties, recently went alone for the first time. It was a Sunday evening somewhere near UCLA – She went to see “The Duchess”, with Keira Knightley. When she walked into the theatre, there were previews playing but the entire place was empty. She was worried that all that electricity would be wasted only on HER. Then, another single woman walked in quietly, and another one after her as the movie began. They both looked like young professionals in their mid to late twenties. Maybe solo-movie going is not only for creeps and weirdos! thought my cousin, relieved. At one point one of the women picked up all her belongings and left – but apparently she was just going to the bathroom and didn’t want to leave her purse there unattended. When the movie ended, all three of them got up from their respective chairs and feigned busyness and un-aloneness, checking their cell-phones and texting. WE have lives, people who love us, we're not really alone!!!

I wanted to stimulate some writing and not become stagnated in my lived experiences, so I called up mi amiga Linsomar and she agreed to do at least ONE agreed upon alone-experience a month, and write about it-although apparently she had beat me to the movies a week ago! She too happened to go to a movie populated by solo-watchers. As she walked out she was surprised at how normal and nice looking the other people were, and wondered why the heck they were by themselves at the movies…

Before today, if I had somehow gone to a movie by myself (which I wouldn’t have), I would have walked to the theatre looking straight ahead and walking briskly with feigned purpose. I’d probably be sweating like crazy. I’d have my phone and check it while waiting in line, before entering the doors, and as I approached the ticket-taker, as though I was waiting for “my friend to call who was going to come meet me there”. I would’ve walked out doing the walking-by-groups-of-men-in-Latin-America & walking-in-the-mission-district-late-at-night thing with my eyes: Looking at everything around me to appear aware of my surroundings, but not actually making eye contact with anyone or anything. I probably would’ve had my hoodie pulled tight over my head like a safety blanket.

On the drive to the theatre, the fear had already dissipated from me. The fact that other friends and family of mine had done the same thing, our shared experience, had liberated me from my fear at feeling lonely or looking weird as I walked alone. (Though later, I realized that the process was probably made much easier because I was going to a theatre in downtown Ventura, where there is a diversity of people – my Asian monster that attracts attention didn’t walk with me tonight.)

I decided I would also see “The Duchess”, in part because nothing else looked good, in part because my cousin had gone to see that same movie by herself. I didn’t take my cell phone, or a bag. It was a fortuitous movie pick: beautiful cinematography, a story about a woman’s life that is controlled and manipulated even as she fights against it; all the themes from The Duchess set in 1700’s are still so relevant to the woman’s experience in this day that it was like watching my internal emotions and experiences put on a period-piece play (no pun intended!).

When it was over, I found a bookstore and bought a small book with lined pages. I even got a free pen out of the bookstore owners, walked to Taqueria Vallarta, ordered a burrito (much, much better than ordering at Subway) and wrote down some of the quietly and patiently gestating thoughts:

October 17

“Loneliness is the luxury of the loved.”

It (*being alone) became meditative. When I walked out of the theatre, I was resigned to the point of a pleasureful meditation, which I quickly challenged was savorable only due to the fact that I had a purpose and a co-partner in discovery-even if she was 100’s of miles away. I hadn’t arrived truly alone.

Many times in the past two years, I have been in similar situations- “aloneness” in a downtown on a Saturday night, though I’d never gone so far as to kick the loneliness eating away at my insides, nor overcome the anxious restlesness, to actually revel in it.

Tonight I almost didn’t want to sit down to write, for fear I would miss out on the silence where creative lines and observations swirled like a stew taking it’s time in the comfort of the pot.

I used to wander the night alone, frantically trying to conjure reasons for a made-up destination to legitimate my presence, observing the world with a desperate intentness, drawing although uninspired in order to validate my state of aloneness and give me a right to be out in public. I was compelled to walk quickly as though I had a purpose, although I had no purpose.

Now that I’m validated (“I’m researching aloneness! But who the hell cares! That shouldn’t even matter!”), I feel completely at ease with myself and need none of those things. I’m completely ok with appearing alone, because I know I’m not alone. My sisters, though far from me, accompany me in this experience. Ok. So I’m ok tonight with being alone, because I’m not alone. Or, because I’m not lonely. I am alone, after all.

Before, on nights like these, I judged others’ togetherness thinking –They all NEED someone else to make them feel ok- Weaklings! They have come out with others because they are afraid with being alone with themselves. (Not like me! I’m a strong independent woman who doesn’t need anyone else!…Oh gawd…I hope no one I kind of know sees my by myself…damn, why doesn’t anyone answer their cell!!!)

Tonight I feel at one with everything around me, without having to be either “of it” or “not of it”.

But then again, the loved aren’t lonely. They can be alone and they will not feel alone.

That’s why every human being wants to love and be loved-and when you know you are loved you can say Y QUE? to everything else-including criticism.

I don’t think about the potential judgement of others, of the fact that I’m walking and eating and going to the movies by myself tonight, because I don’t feel lonely.

Tonight I’m experientially learning Lonely vs. Alone.

I revise my initial line:

“Aloneness is the luxury of the Un-Lonely” (not as poetic or alliterative, but I think more true to what I learned tonight).

There’s probably 100’s of books, some famous poem, a cliché saying and a bumper sticker about this already, but would it really have mattered until I’d gone out and learnt it myself?