Watching 'Slacker' on a summer afternoon

Slacker is playing on my DVD right now. Maybe a dozen, maybe twenty, films in a lifetime are remembered not only as films but as experiences--day, time, theaters. Watching Saturday Night Fever at the age of twelve with my mother and youngest brother was one; Slacker was another: a brutally hot summer day in Houston when I slipped into the cool, dark, nearly empty main theatre at the River Oaks 3 with Mary Pettice.

Since the summer of 1991 I have taught summer school at Houston Community College. Also, every summer throughout the nineties and into the early part of this decade, there was been one woman whom I casually knew casually who stuck around in town in July and August, each year a different woman, and for two months this woman and I would become nearly inseparable, as if we'd been friends all our lives. From the Fourth of July until August 20th this woman and I would be soulmates, and then boyfriends and girlfriends would trickle back into the city and divide us again, though not without good feelings and memories on both sides. Make no mistake: My gratitude for these women has no bounds. Mary Pettice, Martha Serpas, Julie Chisholm, and forever Leslie Richardson, the only repeat offender in the bunch.

Anyway, the woman who showed me kindness in the summer of 1991 was Mary Pettice. She had no reason to; she abhorred my politics and probably my manners. She was going through a terrible divorce and was wonderful company; I was going through a bad break-up and was certainly intolerable company. That summer, I taught at eight in the morning and eight in the evening, leaving my afternoons free. It was this time that Mary suggested we utilize to see a few movies. So we went, Mary and me, sitting in a theatre with thr sort of fiftyish men who populate such theatres in the afternoon. We listened first of all to whatever sandwiches these men wanted to furtively unwrap, then to the movie itself. Quite an experience.

So: Mary Pettice, here's to you.