Life Goes to the Movies by Peter Selgin

They say it’s been humming that one note
since 1971, since the day I signed a piece of paper solemnly swearing to defend my country against all enemies foreign and domestic. Right up
there,” he pointed, “in the Armed Forces Recruiting Station in Times Square, that’s where I signed on the dotted line.”
    “Why?”
    “Why what?”
    “Why did you enlist?”
    He shook his head. “I don’t know. Because my father dared me to. Because I was sick of him calling me a pussy. Because I wanted to be John
Wayne in The Green Berets. Or maybe it was the OM that drew me there, like a snake charmer’s flute. It still draws me to this day.
Listen.” We both listened. “They say that OM is all that’s holding this city together. Supposedly if it should ever stop for any
reason the forces binding civilization together will dissolve and the citizens of Gotham will go wild, rampaging, screaming bloody naked in the
streets, tearing each other’s throats out like werewolves. Someday, babe, OM or no OM, it’s gonna happen, the other shoe is gonna drop. And
when it does, man, right here—that’s where you’ll find me.”
    “Here?” I asked.
    “That’s right, babe. Here.”
    “In this hole under the city?”
    “You call it a hole now. But when the time comes it will be the closest thing on earth to Paradise, relatively speaking.”
    “You’ll be here all by yourself?”
    “Most likely.”
    “And you still won’t be lonely?”
    “On the contrary, babe, I still will be lonely, but again I ask you what that has to do with the price of fish in Kentucky?”
    “Wouldn’t it be better if you had someone with you?”
    “What for?”
    “I mean some company, some companionship.”
    “Oh, companionship. No, it wouldn’t be better,” Dwaine said.
    “Why not?”
    “Because there are certain things that should be experienced in private, alone. A walk on the beach is one, a good bowel movement another,Last Tango in Paris a third. The end of the world is one of those things. I wouldn’t miss it for the world, and I won’t share
it with anyone, if I can help it. Least of all with all those murderous motherfuckers up there. As for being lonely, George Orwell said that loneliness
is just another word for being part of a very small minority. And that’s just what we are, babe, you and I. We’re part of a very small
minority. We don’t fit into the system and we never will. We’re type-B cells swimming around inside a type-A bloodstream. Of course
we’re lonely! Would you have it any other way?”
    I shook my head; I wouldn’t have it any other way.
    The candle spluttered. Through the overhead grate I saw the gaudy Times Square colors shifting and swirling, like St. Elmo’s fire. We lay there
listening to the OM humming discretely below the sounds of fireworks of jubilation being set off high above our heads. The countdown began; the bright
burning ball of auld lang syne or whatever the hell it was descended. When the moment arrived Dwaine took the half-finished bottle of champagne
(asti spumante) and two plastic cups from the satchel he’d been carrying.
    “To us, babe, the Two Greatest Artists in New York.”
    We toasted with Dixie cups of ersatz champagne, with me feeling as though we’d passed over a threshold, that Dwaine and I had at last entered the
sacred space of true friendship. Sure, there were things wrong with him; there were things wrong with everybody, especially with artists; especially
with great artists. And I believed Dwaine was a great artist, or would be someday, as soon as he saw fit to generate some great art. I needed to
believe it in order to believe that I might myself be great in some way, which beat the hell out of believing that I was wasting my life.
    “This will be our year,” Dwaine assured us both. “Count on it.” He held up his pinky, as inWe’ve got more talent in our pinkies than most people have in their whole bodies.
     
    22
     
    Later that morning, as I drifted drunkenly