i couldn’t help but wonder 30 May 2008
It is past 3:00 a.m., and with the weekend I have ahead of me (bachelorette weekend! wine! friends! catching up!) I should be asleep. But for good reason I’m not tired.
Just saw The Sex and The City Movie, and it is perfect. It is all that I hoped it would be, and I can’t wait to see it again with any and all friends who would like to.
Leaving the theater, chattering with 2 girlfriends of mine, I was caught up in the buzz of excited voices, 100 other friendships blending together in the hallway. The EXPERIENCE of this movie is every bit as enjoyable as the movie itself. The moments of spontaneous applause. Collective shock. Full House soundtrack-like “ooooh”s. Delicious.
At a scene near the very end (which I can’t reveal, for fear of spoiling) I was crying, for reasons bigger than the movie…and that’s when I realized a bunch of different things at once.
This movie IS bigger than the movie. For me, what makes this whole thing meaningful is so much more than shoes and romantic plots and snappy dialogue.
I feel like these characters are friends, in a way, in that I can see bits of myself in each of them. In their flaws, their failures, their friendships, their f*ing things up, their figuring things out.
Sitting there, tearing up in the theater, I realized this moment and this show are about friendship. Hokey as it sounds. Not the friendships in the show, though they are fun to watch, but my friends. The episodes we’ve watched over glasses of wine, the trivia games, the ex-boyfriend comparisons, the “that reminds me of the episode…” moments. It’s all silly, I know, but it’s also REAL. This show is something I’ve shared with many of my friends, and thousands of strangers.
The show is about so much more than shoes.
It’s about how men can do terrible, unforgiveable things in relationships.
It’s about how women can absolutely do the same.
It’s about how sometimes two people can seem to have it all together, but inside be falling apart.
It’s about how sometimes two people have every reason to fall apart, but find a way to stick together.
It’s about making the same mistake until you finally learn from it.
It’s about second chances.
It’s about PUNS. Glorious, snarky, eye-rolling puns.
It’s about WRITING.
And yes, it’s also quite a bit about shoes.
So I cried, feeling all those things in one split second, and realizing also for all the 100s of reasons that are more complicated, this is perhaps the most easy to explain: Jason and I will never work because this is a moment (this movie, these feelings) he wouldn’t understand.
I recall a fight we had A LONG time ago (long enough ago that I would’ve been defending Spongebob Squarepants. Oh, 19-year-old me…) when we weren’t getting along, and I was making friends with a boy who got along with me quite well. I liked Spongebob, as did this friend, and Jason did not. I don’t remember any details really except for him saying, “you would break up with me over Spongebob F*cking Squarepants?!”
And I didn’t then.
But I would now.
