Fan Fiction, A Mem-Noir by Brent Spiner

Author:Brent Spiner [Spiner, Brent]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

A black-and-white movie is playing on the store TV monitors. The Brooklyn Bridge very late at night, the black-and-white contrast so stark, it feels like opposites attracting. I know this movie well. Somebody Up There Likes Me with Paul Newman, Pier Angeli, and Sal Mineo. Came out in 1956. I was about seven. I saw it three times in one day. The first time, my day-care counselor, Bob, took me and the rest of the kids in my group to the ten o’clock morning show. He parked us in the first three rows, then disappeared into the balcony with his girlfriend until the movie was over. The other kids grew bored and threw popcorn and Milk Duds at each other, but I was transfixed. There was something about this movie. Later, I convinced my mother to let me go with our next-door neighbors, who were taking in an afternoon showing. And that evening after supper, we went on a family outing to the movies. My stepfather was pushing for Battle Cry with Aldo Ray, but my mother didn’t think it was appropriate for kids. She wanted to see the Paul Newman movie, though it was also probably not appropriate for kids, and that afforded me my third viewing of the day.

Watching the TV monitors in the video store, I realize that I haven’t seen this movie since that day. And yet I recall perfectly the scenes of a young boy being given boxing lessons by his brutish father. The man wears a wifebeater undershirt just as my stepfather did, and shouts at the boy. “Come on, fight me back, come on!” He punches the son in the face and knocks him down. Blood drips from the boy’s nose. “I don’t like crybabies,” the father says. I recall being hypnotized by this father/son dynamic and how I saw myself in that boy. I wonder if my stepfather saw himself in the father character as he watched the film. Probably not. Though he never struck me with his fist, only a belt or a board, his lessons were equally severe. I never saw the fathers of my friends lay a hand on them. Until I saw this movie, I thought it was only me and my brother who suffered this indignity. And I no longer felt that we were alone. Suddenly my thoughts go to the kids that Dr. Sacks spoke about, how they see themselves in Data. “I suspect we all have a bit of everything inside of us,” he said. Indeed, Dr. Sacks. Indeed.

The owner of the store, Jeff, comes out of a back room and greets me like an old friend. “Hey, Brent. What’ll it be tonight?”

“I don’t know, let me look around,” I reply, gravitating to the thriller section.

Browsing through the available films, I take one from the shelf, something called The Fan. I read the description on the back of the VHS box: “Lauren Bacall is a Broadway actress terrorized by a dangerous fan who becomes enraged when his letters are ignored by her.

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