We’re at a university theatre department awards ceremony that’s hosted by the students. They are SERIOUSLY DECKED OUT. Student uniforms: Sleek little cocktail dresses and sky-high heels for the young ladies. Savvy suits, sportjackets with a hip Miami Vice retro edge for the gents. Professor uniforms: General forgettable professorial frumpage, including us—everyone save the costume design professor, who looks fab and sparkly.
In my defense, the Miami Vice thang fools me into thinking I am back in the 80s. It’s an era I would not wish to relive, not even for several billion dollars and a healthy dollop of world peace, but it’s a place where I can get around without a map.
One of David’s students, a most affable fellow—M.—volunteers his services as one of the designated drivers for the awards afterparty. I am charmed and impressed. I always tried to look out the window or tie my Birkenstocks whenever the subject of volunteering to be a designated driver came up at college.
When M. comes over to bid us hello and goodbye, I smile broadly and say—start your walkers, GenXers!—”Lloyd Dobler! That’s who you are!”
[insert long but polite pause]
I press on, thinking the volume level in the room is to blame, not my geezerly pop-culture reference.
“LLOYD DOBLER! YOU KNOW!”
[more smiling, some nodding—not too confused, as the guy's polite AND a good actor]
I feel my smile faltering and my entire bottom row of teeth crumbles to dust. Winged GenX tooth fairies zip in and fit me with dentures. “LLOYD DOBLER! YOU KNOW! JOHN CUSACK? SAY ANYTHING?”
Lightbulb! Dusty, faint, low-wattage! But I will take it! “Oh, yeah,” says M. “Right. The guy with the—” He gestures as if holding a boombox over his head, which is EXACTLY WHAT I WANT HIM TO DO.
“YES!” I scream as if I’ve just won my round of GenX Bingo at the rest home. “THAT’S RIGHT!”
I am talking very loudly and very precisely to make sure I am un-der-stood. “LLOYD DOB-LER! YOU’RE THE KEY-MAS-TER! GET IT? DE-SIG-NAY-TED DRI-VER? THE KEY-MAS-TER?”
M. smiles and nods. He is a kind soul. Meanwhile, David pops another cheese cube into his mouth. “Keymaster! The Keymaster. I love Rick Moranis! Rick Moranis! Love him!”
M. looks really eager to head off on his night of carting drunk puking undergraduates around town, suddenly. M. nods again. “Sure. Rick Moranis, right. Was he—”
David is chowing down cheese cubes like there’s no tomorrow, and at the rate we are aging, there may not be. “Absolutely! THE KEYMASTER! Ghostbusters! Who you gonna call?”
“RICK MORANIS?” I yell. “WHAT?” Now we are having a GenX Shared Senility Moment.
“GHOSTBUSTERS!” yells David. We have become completely hard of hearing within the span of three humiliating minutes. We have entered a Cheese Cube Time Warp that sent us hurtling into pop culture dementia. “THE KEYMASTER!”
“NO! LLOYD DOBLER! JOHN CUSACK! HE’S THE KEYMASTER!”
“RICK MORANIS! SIGOURNEY WEAVER! THE KEYMASTER! GHOSTB—”
“RIGHT! BUT! LLOYD DOBLER!”
M. inches away from us, grinning and nodding. He really is a dear chap. He will read this. Hi, M.! You are graceful in the presence of doddering old GenX farts! Bless you, my son! May you live long and prosper and steer clear of the Miami Vice look that D. and B. were sporting!
On the way home, snarfing down a hubcap-sized platter of fruit we stole from the underfed students, I say, “Dear Lord. That’s how old we are. There it is. Right in our faces. Say Anything and Ghostbusters. Terrific. Way to blend in.”
David squints, trying to fight off the onset of a migraine, because OLD PROFESSORS AND THEIR WIVES ARE SUPPOSED TO HAVE MIGRAINES. I have made him drive, because I DON’T LIKE TO DRIVE AT NIGHT and I AM AFRAID OF DRIVING ON HIGHWAYS. I reach down to adjust my support hose, then realize I’ve forgotten to wear support hose. But my contacts have shriveled up on my DRIED-OUT EYEBALLS, so I pry them off of my corneas and flick them onto the grapes.
David says, “Man, I mean, come on! Say Anything was like, what? 1981?”
I punch his arm. “Are you nuts? Say Anything came out after Ghostbusters! Ghostbusters was like, totally 1984! Say Anything was 1987 or so. You are SO more out of touch than I am. By like, three years, at least. And RICK MORANIS? RICK MORANIS?”
“Rick Moranis is a genius.”
“John Cusack is more classic than Rick Moranis.”
“No.”
“Yes.” I eat a strawberry and possibly one of my dried-up contacts. “The problem here is that neither one has stood the test of time. More classic is not classic enough. Face it. We are totally over the hill. Done. They laughed because you took your pants off in that wacky professor bit on the video. They apologized to us for slipping out of PG-13 mode. They actually apologized TO. US.”
“We told them you rented Shortbus.”
“Still,” I say. “It was like a one-way mirror. It’s very strange.”
“Mirror.”
“Like the Law and Order police mirrors. We can see them—and us in them—but I don’t think they can see themselves in us. You know what I’m saying?”
“Mm.”
“Maybe the police mirror is a bad metaphor. But I’m aged. I’m entitled to bad metaphors. It’s just…we were them. We still are. Just chubbier and with much less leisure time.”
“Mm.”
I sigh. “They’re all so beautiful. Even if they puke tonight they’ll still be beautiful doing it. Were we that beautiful? Sometimes? Are we now? Does anyone see it but us?”
“You’re ageless. I swear.”
“Here. Pull over and mush up these blueberries and feed them to me lovingly. Then we can hold hands and expire simultaneously in the backseat.”
He keeps driving. Presumably because HE CAN NOT HEAR ME.
Lloyd Dobler, you will not be forgotten. You either, Lili Taylor.
LLOYD 4EVER
JOE LIES
AND THEN
JOE CRIES
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