Pink Nope

The prompt was to write about “something that defies reason, or seems to.” At the time, after readings we discussed in class about ghosts and UFOs, I assumed she meant that kind of thing, the paranormal. “She” was our instructor, but also a dear friend, a terrific writer whose workshop I decided to take at the last minute. I’ll call her Sarah because that is her name. After class, at the bar, Sarah mentioned that she had just seen the new movie that also deals with UFOs, so it became even more clear to me that the supernatural, the paranormal, is what she had in mind, as opposed to, say, your parents defying reason when they wouldn’t let you go to the Black Sabbath concert which turned out to be legendary in your hometown and for which you even now will never forgive them not even your mother, now many years gone, even though you know it’s about the most ridiculous grudge ever.

In class, we’d read a Harper’s Readings piece about UFO sightings that happened to be by a writer who joined the MFA faculty just as I was finishing my thesis. I was done with workshops, so I never got to take his, but we got to know each other socially and he ended up on my committee (and read my slipshod manuscript, which mortifies me to this day).

Alex, alongside several acclaimed works of fiction, has written a terrific book of essays more or less on how to write an autobiographical novel called How to Write an Autobiographical Novel that has been a source of inspiration for my semi-autobiographical novel that lurks in this computer, poking at me daily to return to my edits of it instead of, say, writing this little nothing of an essay (It’s very judgmental, this novel.). Alex is also, to my mind, not someone who would prank his readers with made up tales of the supernatural. And yet, he wrote of three UFO sightings he’d experienced over the course of his life, seemingly inexplicable lights in the night sky. The last sentence, “I have not seen any other UFOs since,” dry and to the point, makes it seem as if he’s okay with having seen what he’s seen and that’s that, not that big a deal. I don’t think I’d have let it go so easily after seeing what he saw. I’ve craved an experience like that all my life, something that made me believe in something bigger — no not bigger, just beyond, beyond nature and science and rationality, yes, that’s it, something that “defies” all the killjoy secular humanist “reason” I was raised with. I’m still waiting.

After we finished our workshop discussion, largely focusing on the calm, anecdotal nature of Alex’s description of his three sightings, I was torn about whether to mention that I knew him. I wanted to for the obvious “bad” reason that it’s fun to tell people you know someone who’s someone. But I also wanted to mention it because I wanted to tell everyone that Alex was a trustworthy observer, and/but also to mention my desire to interrogate him further because “I want to believe” and I still didn’t, couldn’t. He probably just saw satellites or something, my mind grumbled to me as I read. I did end up telling the class, and told them that he isn’t the kind of guy to make up such stories, and also that I still wouldn’t believe they were anything but natural or human-made, if mysterious, phenomena, unless Alex told me himself. Hearing it first hand might convince me, somehow. I then joked that maybe I should call and interview Alex and document it for the “defies reason” prompt because I don’t have any story to tell of my own, and this was a nonfiction class, after all, I couldn’t just make one up. Several classmates agreed and Sarah that it would be fun, and I could actually have done it. But Alex and I are not exactly friends. We were, as I said, friend-ish, and we do communicate daily in the form of sending one word at a time back and forth to each other as we obsessively play the scrabble-ripoff word game with the perfectly awful name Words with Friends, but beyond that, we’ve hardly been in touch for a decade, and he is both younger than I and a very successful author, which makes me hesitate to contact him to interview him for a creative writing workshop, as if I were hobbyist writer who’s still taking workshops pushing 60.

“Author.” That’s the top level. First you are starting to write, then you are someone who writes, in cafes, say, then, when you go to grad school or start to get paid for it, you get called “a” writer. At some point later, you might be introduced to the audience on stage or on a podcast or your regional NPR “Books With Bob” segment as just “writer” and then your name and see yourself referred to as “the” writer and then your name now and then in certain publications, and then, someday, if you work really hard and get really lucky, publish multiple notable titles, you become “author.” I have made it as far as “a writer” at at one point, when I was being published and cashed a few tiny checks. But that was a long time ago. At this point I’ve fallen back to the cafe guy level, or, as an insane and rage-filled and admittedly kind of brilliant person described me in an email a decade and a half ago, “a failed wannabe writer poseur fuck.”

***

One weekend this past August, A. and I went to visit my father in Albany for his 94th birthday, which, in itself, Dad and I often marvel at as defying reason, or at least the odds. A fine time was had by all, an evening of take-out Chinese and a rousing game of Scrabble. (I won.) Afterwards, A. and I watched Rick and Morty reruns and other late-night TV in a perfectly acceptable hotel room. The next day, we decided to take the back roads home to Western Mass, hoping to find a new swimming hole or trail to walk. But the weather was awful, hot, muggy, and gray, early August in New England, so we stopped at a cafe and spent an hour or so in air-conditioned relief, tapping at keys and gazing at screens. A bit of rain came and went. I googled “what to do in Bennington.” I didn’t find much, wasn’t excited about going to the Robert Frost gravesite, but the local movie theater was showing the movie with the UFO in it that everyone had been talking about that night in the bar after class, and which was starting in an hour. Neither of us are fans of matinees, but it seemed like the best option.

“Nope” opens in a field on a horse ranch. Everything was tinted a dark, muting pink, giving the film an eerie, milky, surreal quality that felt intentional. I assumed the pink filter would be lifted at some point, and maybe pink would return each time the UFO appeared, something like that. But the first, eerie scene ended, and five, ten, fifteen minutes and a couple more scenes in, all was still pink, still dark, and. A. leaned over to me, whispered, “I think something is wrong with the color.” I disagreed, for a couple of reasons, I probably even said “nope,” ha ha. First, I thought, somehow forgetting everything is automated now even in an old theater in a Vermont town, that someone was likely up in the booth and would have noticed. Second, we were among a dozen or so people in the audience, wouldn’t someone else have said something? In my former lives, in cities, yes, someone definitely would have said something, in New York, maybe even out loud to the whole rest of the audience “YO IS THIS SUPPOSED TO BE PINK?” — you know, politely started the conversation. In New England, land of the silent, that wouldn’t happen, but even here, wouldn’t someone have gotten up and asked out in the lobby? Yes, I had convinced myself, they would have. Last, before we went in, A. and I had each dropped a dropperful of the THC tincture that usually gives us a mild buzz, but that made me both doubt my doubts about the pink being intentional and made me feel like we might feel like idiots if indeed, it was intentional and we went out to the lobby and asked about it. A. whispered again, this time, “I don’t think it’s supposed to be pink,” and I replied “Okay, well …” but I wasn’t about to do anything about it, and neither was she. I’m the one who does the public complaining in this couple, and by that point I’d convinced myself the hue was definitely intentional and had settled into the dark pink movie just fine. We crunched our popcorn and both enjoyed Pink Nope a great deal, we later agreed. When it was over, we gave each other a sidelong look and then picked up our phones. At this point, searching for affirmation more than information, I googled, “Why is “Nope” pink?” which (not) shockingly yielded no results at all, while A., who I’ve neglected to mention is a graphic designer and photographer who even dabbles in video and thus knows much more about when color is off as opposed to intentionally tinted than I, simply searched images from the film. She then passed me her phone, open to several screenshots from the film that were decidedly unpink, and suddenly I remembered the several times I’d seen the preview. I probably would have noticed if it was pink. We sat and laughed, literally out loud.

As we got up to leave, I suggested we tell someone something was off, as there were still two more showings to come that evening. In the lobby, we approached the manager and told him our Nope was pink. He gave us the once over, thinking perhaps that we were trying to scam a refund or were on drugs, which, to be fair, we still were, just a little. He went to take a look while I went to pee. When I got back, A. told me the manager had confirmed that indeed the color was way off; the projector would at minimum need a reboot. He had been embarrassed and apologetic, A. told me. But we had enjoyed the movie more than well enough, even had the unique bonus of getting to watch it in pink. And we now had a story.

We stepped into the muggy, late-afternoon parking lot. I had that disconcerting feeling you get after a matinee that it isn’t supposed to be light out. Beyond that, the sky was somehow bright and dark at the same time, gray of thunderheads creating an almost black-and-white world more ominous than ever for not being pink, likewise the patch of blue sky on the other side of the horizon — we had emerged into noir Pleasantville.

On the drive to the restaurant for dinner, I found myself wondering if others who’d been in the theater were talking about it. We would never know. We didn’t hear anyone mention it as we filed out. Did they all just assume the movie was just pink? Would they end up sitting in a bar with friends hours, days, weeks, years later, and say “Hey, why was “Nope” pink?” and end up in a big argument about it then betting on it, then embarrassed when someone thrusts their phone at them, saying LOOK NOPE NOT PINK, IDIOT and have to buy the next round? Or maybe one of the dozen in the theater with us would soon meet the love of their lives, also something of a film buff, and a year in, out to a fancy dinner, the one who saw Pink Nope is about to get down on one knee, a clammy hand worrying the ring in their pocket, distracted, rehearsing the proposal. But before they can get there, Pink Nope Viewer, the would-be proposer, notices the sunset over his beloved’s shoulder, thinks of Nope, how had they never discussed the film and its odd hue before now? and mentions it to their beloved, who, of course, says that, sweetie, Nope wasn’t pink, which makes the already anxious would-be proposer defensive, and one thing leads to another, it explodes into their first big fight, a dealbreaker, followed by a last drive home in silence. Our Pink Nope hero sits alone in a half-empty apartment and watches and rewatches Nope, often with the sound off, gazing at all those colors. Fade to pink.

A. and I headed out to an overpriced steakhouse-with-salad-bar that we’d had a pleasant time at on another trip through Bennington. When we got there, the place looked kind of the same, but had undergone a big expansion. It was still pleasant enough inside, if larger and a bit more corporate, chain-like. We sat at the bar, had a drink and looked at the menu while we waited for our table. At one point a manager appeared behind the bartender and too loudly told him we had closed our menus and were ready to order. The bartender knew that we were waiting for a table, and seemed to be telling the manager that. Then the manager came over and asked us if indeed we were waiting for a table, the bartender over his shoulder, apologetic look in his eyes, sorry guys, I tried to tell him. We explained that his bartender had it right, yes, we were waiting for a table. Everything felt a bit off, as if they’d just reopened with a brand new staff, and were working out the kinks, it occurred to us later. But it was the middle of the summer, that would have likely happened months ago. But soon enough we were seated. Our waitress was very young, probably in high-school, and, it quickly became apparent, very very inexperienced, fumbling with menus, not giving us set-ups. We asked her if we could taste a couple of the wines by the glass and she didn’t seem to understand what we were asking. We gestured with our index fingers and thumbs, you know, just a taste of the cab and the montepulciano, to see which we wanted. She hurried away. The tastes never came. As we were finishing our salads, I asked the server about it, and she said that the bartender was “working on that.” I think they both had no idea what to do. And, for the second time that day, I wondered if people were thinking we were trying to scam them, this time for a couple sips of wine. Eventually the server returned and nervously placed two glasses with the appropriate amount of red wine in each in front of us. She looked at us, and we looked back, expectant. And then I finally asked, so which is which? The server responded, “I don’t know” in a tone that said How should I know, I’m not even old enough to drink?! A. and I looked at each other, not sure what to do, both of us trying not to crack up laughing, and then we both started to gently explain to her that we weren’t going to be able to decide what wine to order if we didn’t know which was which. The server replied, “Well, he just gave them to me, I can take them ba–” at which point we stopped her because clearly neither she nor the bartender would know which glass was which at this point so we said we’d figure it out. And we did, we were pretty sure we could tell which was which, we liked one but not the other. For a moment we had been a bit angry, as the server had treated us as if we were the ones being ridiculous, but then, as we continued to observe her teen angst, we quickly got back on her side and tried to make the rest of our interaction as straightforward as humanly possible, although by that point it was as if she were a cat we’d just met whose tail we had accidentally stepped on.

I wonder, if we happen to go back there a year from now, and the same young woman happens to be our server, if she will remember the incident. For us, it will remain a memorably surreal hour to end an uncanny but also unexpectedly good day, a day that defied reason, if not in the Close Encounters sense I still dream of. It wasn’t until we got home, and our dogs were our dogs, our cat the same cat, all clamoring to greet us at the door, faint smell of litter letting me know the box needed scooping, that our untinted world became a given again.