1993, Denver, Colorado

By Justin Marshall

When I was in college, summer vacations always felt like a strange, unsatisfying limbo. The magical three-month period I had always loved as a child suddenly felt empty and unstructured. I was too old for summer camps and family outings to the pool, but too young to take on anything of true value — like a “real” job. In short, I just found myself wishing school was in session.

It was this dissatisfaction that led my friend Jim and me to hatch a plan for the summer after our Junior year: to bring college home with us. Not the textbooks, the buildings, or the professors, but the parts we loved most — communal living, late night parties, and an endless supply of beer. At the time, it seemed like the most brilliant idea two 21-year old college students had ever devised.

We drove to Denver, rented a cheap place, bought our beer, and began a search for the perfect mindless summer job to fund our extracurricular activities. Our only requirement was that we could work together. After a few days of searching, however, it became clear that this requirement might be hard to achieve. We both had different skills, different employment histories, and different definitions of “mindless.”

And then we found it, the job both of us could agree on: The local art house cinema was hiring summer staff. We both liked movies. We could both tear tickets. We knew how to scoop popcorn into enormous cups and add fake buttery topping. And the fact that it was an art house theater gave the job an air of intellectualism. Hell, it would be like getting paid to take a film theory class. Maybe we could even get some college credits.

We went to the theater the next day to get applications. We sat side-by-side in the lobby and filled them out, making sure that we looked almost identical on paper to increase our chances of getting hired as a pair. A few days later, we were both called for interviews. We were in!

My interview was first. I dressed up a bit, combed my hair, and prepared answers to the obvious questions on my way to the theater. Once there, I met the manager and her assistant.

“Would you like something to drink?” they asked as we headed over to a table.

“Oh, no thank you,” I replied politely. I had heard somewhere that making the staff run off to get you a beverage was not the best way to begin an interview.

The interview went well. I was raised by a British mother who had taught me to always be courteous and well-mannered. I gave some serious thought to the questions, no matter how pedestrian they were. Sure, I was overqualified for the work, but I didn’t want to seem cocky.

I got home just in time to hand off the car so Jim could go in for his interview. I couldn’t help but notice he hadn’t dressed up at all. His hair looked like a wild bird’s nest. I wasn’t sure he had even showered. As I watched him drive off, I became worried — if he didn’t take the interview seriously, our hope of working together could be ruined.

Jim came home about an hour later, saying his interview went fine. I asked if they offered him a drink. He said they had, and that he replied, “No, thanks — I’m already drunk.” I cringed. Yes, it was funny. But getting the job was more important than the joke.

A few days later, Jim got a phone call. It was the theater. He got the job. We celebrated with a beer, then sat by the phone, waiting for my call to come. It didn’t. By the end of the night, I realized the inevitable: Jim had gotten the job, and I hadn’t.

Jim went in for his first day of work. He promised to put in a good word for me and see if he could find out why I had been overlooked. I sat at home, watched TV, and tried to figure out what had gone wrong. Jim returned later that night with a very simple explanation: They had liked Jim more than me. The theater prided itself on being a fun place to work, and Jim seemed like a fun guy. I, on the other hand, seemed stiff, serious, and uptight.

I spent the next week trying to find another job and forget about being called “stiff” and uptight.” I had little luck on both fronts. Jim, meanwhile, loved the theater. The work was easy, the coworkers laid back, the boss a stoner. In short, it was paradise.

Jim also announced that on Saturday, the theater staff was having their annual “prom” — a raucous get-together inside the theater after business hours. Since employees could bring a guest, I was invited to come. I was a little hesitant to join a party thrown by people who had recently rejected me, but I reasoned that the only way to prove I was not “uptight” would be to swallow my pride, go, and try to have a good time.

We arrived at the “Prom” at midnight, once the theater was closed. There were about 30 employees and guests in attendance, all in a festive mood. Drinks were served at the concession counter. Music blared from the loudspeakers as people mingled and danced in the main theater. I drank lots of cheap wine, met Jim’s coworkers, and tried to pretend I belonged in this very “laid back” environment.

At some point in the evening, the manager took the stage in front of the curtain. She announced that this year’s “prom queen” was Debbie, the assistant manager I had interviewed with. Just then, Debbie came racing down the aisle.

In my interview, she had seemed quiet and withdrawn, but now she was an animal. She yelped as she raced to the stage, dressed only in a translucent, multilayered cellophane body-wrap. As ABBA blared over the speakers, Debbie proceeded to dance and remove the cellophane in a very bizarre striptease. People cheered her on, laughing and taking pictures.

I was standing toward the back row during Debbie’s performance, next to a few women. As they watched Debbie strip more layers from her body, nearing full nudity, I overheard one of the women tell the other, “You know, every year someone strips. And every year it’s a woman. We never see naked men!”

Somewhere within my now drunken brain, a light bulb went off. It may have been the cheap wine. Or the unique location. It may have been pity for the two women next to me, who never saw nude men on this, their annual party. But more likely than not, it was the sting of having been labeled “stiff” and “uptight.” And what the women said suddenly gave me an idea of how to set the record straight.

I raced out into the empty theater lobby and began removing my clothes. I couldn’t help but giggle at the prospect of what I was about to do. I had streaked a couple times in college, but it was always outdoors with a few other people I knew. This was to be a much different matter.

I finally removed my underwear, and stood buck-naked for a moment in the lobby. Was I going to do this? I was.

Wearing nothing but a nervous, drunken smile, I burst through the theater doors and began racing down the aisle. For some reason, skipping felt like the appropriate mode of transportation for my jaunt, so I began to skip. As I passed the two women I had been standing next to in the back row, I heard one say, “Oh my God!”

I soon reached the front of the theater, where everyone in attendance could see me. Cheers and applause began to ring out, as well as whooping. Everything went into slow motion as I skipped across the stage, passing Debbie, who had now stopped her bizarre dance to see who had upstaged her. People whistled. Music blared. And then flashbulbs began to light up the stage — something I hadn’t noticed previously. I continued to the other side of the stage, then made a mad dash back up the aisle, hoping the cameras weren’t catching anything too hideous.

I finally burst back out of the theater and caught my breath in the lobby beside my clothes. I could still hear cheers and applause ringing out. I put my clothes back on, then went to the concession stand for a much needed drink.

The night eventually came to a close, and people began to leave. It seemed that each and every one of them stopped to thank me for my wild display before leaving. I smiled, said goodnight, and begged everyone not to print any of the pictures they had taken. Jim, meanwhile, laughed throughout the rest of the night, even after we returned home. He thought my act was the single funniest thing he had seen in a long while.

I awoke late the next morning with a nasty hangover and much embarrassment. Jim had already left to go to work. I turned on the TV and watched a few game shows in an attempt to postpone the job search I had tried to avoid for so long.

Just then, the phone rang. I picked it up.

It was the manager of the theater. She offered me the job.

I took it, of course. The wish Jim and I shared to work together over the summer had panned out after all.

On my first day at the theater, I was taken on a tour of my new workplace. The manager opened the door to the projection booth and smiled. I followed her gaze to where a handful of pictures had been taped to the door. In the dead center was a photo of me. I was naked. I was skipping across the stage of a movie theater. I laughed. I was going to like this job.

Justin Marshall is a rather large and hirsute freelance writer who lives in Brooklyn, New York. His educational book, “How To Write An Essay,” was recently published as part of the Sparknotes “Ultimate Style” series. He is currently considering a number of other “How to” books, including “How to count carbs using fuzzy math,” “How to get back at your sworn enemies with 32 guinea pigs and a stapler,” and “How to turn drunken mistakes and lapses in judgment into literary gold.”

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Tuesday, February 13th, 2007 | Email This Post

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