A Strand of Memory

Gone are the days of the old movie houses. Even when I was young, they had already seen their best days. Many closed or became porn theaters. Others of them played art films for cheap (3 films for 3 dollars) so I spent many afternoons in the dark watching bad prints of French, Italian and German imports. I didn't care. I was entranced.

In San Francisco I sometimes went to the Strand on Market Street. That theater was the pits, the absolute bottom of the barrel in the way that the strip joints on Market were the worst and the sleaziest, but I went there anyhow. My second husband Randy had worked on a science fiction film script that later became renowned for its abysmal-ness. I can't remember the name of the film, but it starred Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling. Randy said Sean Connery was a great guy and a real gentleman, but Charlotte Rampling was a bitch. She couldn't remember her lines and they had to do rewrites for her every morning.

We watched that film at the Strand, the celluloid crackling as loudly as the stale popcorn under our feet. Bubblegum in the aisles stuck to the bottoms of our shoes. Gay men and transsexuals sat up in the balcony doing unmentionable things. Some dressed in drag, others in bathrobes and hair curlers. Straight men sat alone in the front rows masturbating, talking to themselves, or drunk, snoring under wet newspapers because it was raining outside and they needed a warm place to go. The films played on in a continuous loop like the continuous stripteases in the sex shows, only cheaper. Only a dollar. Maybe two. I can't remember now, but those were the days.