CLINTON ST. QUARTERLY By Musicmaster “By the time they’d diagnosed extent o f ulceration, my stomach had sent telegrams to surgeons, to catch flight, to f ly in, to remove me immediately. ” Mid-September 1979th we went'to blockaway Esquire, a No Smoking Anywhere cinema with goodwill admission fares and lobby ashtrays as planters. It’s a great neighborhood movie house, nearing landmark or teardown age, and even today it features state-of-the-art shorts like home-style reel changing, projection blackouts, pre-military-school ushers who ask you if you’d do THAT at home (my long-ago indiscretion was leaning against a lobby partition with a shoe heel touching the wall), popcorn with enough unpopped kernels for another batch, and seats which induce rare and exotic coccygeal strains. I love the place. It seems to be a last clean-air, and therefore somehow decent, proponent of child labor; half the times I’ve been there, the kid salivatingly manning the candy counter has been too young, according to code, to watch the films being shown; great, I figure, salivation can be provoked by many different stimuli. 1 love the place. One needn’t fear skidding down the aisles because the floor is too sticky for any potentially dangerous movement past 1 mph snowshoeing. I mean, were it not for this place I wouldn’t have this story now; it is odd that they didn’t usher this tale into print before me, but it’s that very restraint, that very 3-moviedom posture, that very lack of predilection to curlicue or squander amenities, which makes me love the place. Okay. Mid-September 1979th. Tricka, my fiancee (now wife by first marriage) and I went to see Rocky II on its second-run crawl for spare sentiment. We didn’t go to see it because we like to see dumb people get beaten up a whole lot before they finally resign themselves to humbler and more deserving positions, but because, in truth, our taste hasn’t been reupholstered in years. , You know, it’s embarrassing to write a true story (though for factbending “ journalistic scenarios” we do have the vogue escape clause of docu-drama), but that’s what I want to do here. Sort of stand-up facts. So please allow me to explain that our presence at a showing of Rocky II, however criminal an act that may be, was not an intentional wrongdoing; moreover, had we known what would follow on that fateful night, and that that what would dater prompt me to write an article including mention of the film we’d gone to see, we’d ’ve surely selected an artsier film. I prefer to have people think that whenever we do manage to squeeze in a movie that it’s a much-heralded work, of debatable taste, obscure, foreign-sounding, an in-kilterism cult. But in this case, instead of snoring through Battleship Potemkin for the 17th time (note: Battleship Potemkin, not Potemkin-, one of the neatest things about this classic — apart from the maggots getting stagefright on the rotten rations instead of doing their rehearsed formation-number and marching out a spelling of “ Please don’t eat us” — is the familiarity with which it’s addressed by film buffs who call it, high-school-teacherly, by surname alone), we went to see Rocky II. I had no idea we’d be caught. Now back with a plunge(r) to the story. Theater population was on the thin side of sparse, so picking two perfect seats was a cinch. We were equidistant from aisles, no hats nor horns nor, for that matter, people in front of us. Tricia had brown-bagged her own popcorn and I, during the pre-show audio attack of gardening center orchestralepsy, had purchased a soda and an oversized Chunky. We were well positioned and equipped for a non-athletic cross-country see. Had the film been a more esoteric selection, we would’ve been armed with carrot juice, dirt-wafers, and nasal spray. The film began. We laffed, sighed, oh nearly died. Stallone talked like my relatives, the coasters, and we had to nearly, though never at all really nearly or even almost, roll in the aisles (hell, they were half a row away). It was goresville in the American strain — tender, loving, inventive, ambitious bloodbathing; boffo buff; we stared. About a reel and a half shy of Rocky I l ’s tombstone, the credits, a gentleman entered our row and sat down one seat away from Tricia. Since I wasn’t thoroughly captivated by the film I let my mind drool and wonder: 1) why would someone pay to just see the end of the feature?; and 2) from a sea of empty seats, why select one so nearby? I figured, well: 1) hardcore film fan; and 2) rare eye disease story (see Shaw’s Rich Man, Poor Man, page 13), then reimmersed my brain into Gumby- world. The movie ended, time for fog state induced by wearing glasses, refocusing. I had worn my glasses into the theater this particular evening by total fluke; I only wear them for films, putting them on just before showtime, and very little else. I slipped them off, buttoned my sweater, stood up, pocketed my glasses, and yawned. Since the late-arrival was still seated, we left the row via its longer stretch of all empty seats to avoid inconveniencing him by stepping on his toes; but when we reached the aisle and headed towards the lobby, I noticed that this already puzzling gentleman had followed us longways out the row instead of simply heading up the aisle nearest him. Then, quickly, he was right behind us, annoyingly close. Houselights coming up, I was able to glance at him disparagingly. He was slightly shorter than me, casually dressed, blue sweater, jeans, sort of hairdressered mini-afro in blond, and had one of those blonde moustaches which are so pale-skin adaptive that, no matter how well bred or groomed, always look like a cleft palate or an unspeakable series of nose pedicels from a distance. The Soup Thickens My glasses were off, but he was up close, too close, Aryan blue balls under fulgent brow. He was either some pea-brained corporate weedBISHOP COCHRAN Horseshoe Music Co. 2419 SE 39th (at Division: One Southwest Third (corner SW 3rd & Burnside) 223-3438 Portland’s Premiere Gay Disco featuring Sensearound 360° and Portland’s most spectacular lighted dance floor. Three sections of drinking, dining & dancing pleasures. Disco and restaurant sections open to all ages. Lounge section open to 21 and over only. ID. required. 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