The Drive-In

March 19th

Tonight, we're going to a movie. I bike over to the warehouse after work, excited because it's been ages since I've been to the cinema. Doesn't even matter what we're going to see.

Jeremy and a friend are fussing over a website they've been working on all day. I ask what movie we're checking out.
"Dunno, some superhero thing. The... Watchmen?"
My reaction -- a bouncy jump-half-kick with some manner of exclamation -- receives a chuckle.

David comes downstairs to check when it's playing. And hey, it's showing at the drive-in!
Oh man. Yes, please.

Now, of course, drive-ins are open nearly year-round in Australia. But I have yet to experience the drive-in. And it's not for lack of trying. Plans have been made almost every summer since I was 16 and every time, something comes up. Enough so that tonight, when the drive-in decision is made, I get the sudden feeling we won't get to the movie.
We wait and wait for Jeremy and his pal until they tell us to go on without them. Dave, Justin, and I head off in Dave's harvest-gold Valiant, listening to the blues ("Appropriate, huh?" he says with a smile).

We pull up to a light beside a silver hatchback full of girls listening to dance music. Dave rolls down the windows, cranks the blues, and peels off the instant the light changes.
"Yeah, that's right..."

***

Justin has put in a request to stop at the bottle shop [beer store]. The shop is on the corner, but the street that the entrance faces onto happens to be closed on our lane. Dave turns anyway, pulling into the proper lane after the barricade. An oncoming car blows its horn. Justin, indignant at the offense, yells something out the window. Dave seems more surprised than anything: "Woa, ya Captain Planet?"

***

The movie is not to Justin's liking. About a half hour in, he gets out of the car in a bit of a huff and disappears for a while. He later tells us he was watching a different movie playing on another screen and that even without sound, it was 15 times better than The Watchmen.

He comes back to the car about an hour later, gives it maybe 20 minutes before, "Oh come on! No. That's it. Call me when it's over."
"Where you goin'?"
"Don't know. Call me, pick me up."
And he's gone.

***

For my part, I wasn't a huge fan of the movie, doubly disappointed because I enjoyed the book and was mega-excited. But sitting in the Valiant was so luxurious! Infinitely better than the theatre. (The car also has a killer sound system. Essentially, it's a Drive-In-Mobile.)

We pick up Justin outside a pub. He has one of the drive-in's Exit signs, taken because he "needed to get something from the evening."

***

It's late by the time we get back to the warehouse. Dave and Justin insist I stay the night, bike back to St. Kilda in the morning. I say no, it's fine. Justin reminds me that yesterday they kicked out a pair of couch surfers who were staying there on grounds of lameness and here they were, asking me to stay, so declining the offer would be plain rude.

Best arm-twist ever.