Joshua Mattson - A Short Film About Disappointment

Peeling an orange. The peel’s oils perfumed my shirt as she stood over me, examining my face.

She said, You get to use a different set of skills reviewing films. I don’t have to convince people that they are or aren’t sick, but you have to convince people whether a film is worth seeing.

I said, I find the evaluation of films in such a manner to be without use. Why would I care if a person reading my column sees a film or not? If they like it or don’t? A person who trusts what I tell them is stupid. The only way to know is to see for yourself.

She said, But you’re a shortcut to seeing. The reader can get a head start on what is a waste of their time.

I said, Dr. Lisa, when someone comes to you, you don’t attempt to change their whole life. You don’t say, here’s your new diet, here’s your psychiatrist, here’s where you can pick up your cat. You treat the disease. There are so many diseases, you can only treat one at a time. So it is with cinema.

She went to retrieve my test results. Her drawers were not locked. Paperwork, barrettes, a book of crosswords, a socket wrench, toothpaste, a book titled Being the Flamingo: Strategies in Stillness .

Five Hearts . I saw it before I asked her out, so I would know if it was worth her time. Ray, Jay, Kay, May, and Lance desire one another in ways I would need a flowchart to illustrate. Pings to the Slaw ’s graphic design department were not returned in time for publication. The subject of the film was how some points of the pentagram were coming up in the world and others were being left behind, and how this affected which points of the pentagram each felt allowed to desire. It was one of those ridiculous Southwestern Hub fantasies that assumed the world was the upper middle class, and that their concerns were everyone’s. I do not have anything to say about the film but I do have mean jokes to crack, which a second viewing would allow me to refine into something resembling insight.

As Jay and May argued on a crowded railcar, bringing up May’s sex drive and Jay’s self-absorption, the theater howled. To work up indignation for a mediocrity is a sin. It was too bad that after my second viewing, our date, I would have to give a performance, to injure the director’s lazy art with my language, after our date, in order to possibly kiss Dr. Lisa, or at least learn on what convictions she had built the scaffolding of her daily life.

A reason people choose to be alone is because they cannot bear any more humiliation, but I thought I could bear some more humiliation, so I left the film, stopped at a pharmacy kiosk for a calming nasal spray, and entered the hospital. Now that I had prepared myself by seeing Five Hearts once, I could take Dr. Lisa in confidence that the film would distract me from her company.

The hospital raises my spirits. It is one of the few democratic places in our society. No matter their country of origin, their social status, all are allotted an equal share of apprehension, a heaping portion of discomfort, as much waiting as they would like.

In the chair, sweating under my armpits, my stomach gargling, as the nurse asked me the same questions he asked every visit. No, yes, no, no, if I feel good. Why did he measure my height each visit? I was neither growing nor shrinking. He didn’t like me, maybe because he was instinctively loyal to and protective of Dr. Lisa, and sensed my intentions. My hands shook.

He said, Nothing to fear, guapo . Have deep breaths.

As soon as the door closed, I poked around Dr. Lisa’s office to calm myself, for a clue to her life. The east wall was papered with pages from a medieval anatomy book. A replica of a human skeleton, with its feet in a large pot, covered in creeping ivy. Eight or nine mugs sticking out their tongues of tea bags. A cheap notebook filled with her writing. It was very ugly, a wife beater’s script, and all I could decipher was, My ferns are depressed, before Dr. Lisa tapped on her office door, announcing her entrance. Moving around the desk was impossible, so I propped my elbows on her desk, tented my hands, and peered down my nose as she entered.

I was wearing one of her white coats. The pockets were filled with gum wrappers and it smelled like it had never been washed. In the coat, it seemed like I could say whatever I wanted and the listener would accept my words as true. A stethoscope hung from my ears.

Dr. Lisa, smiling, took a chair.

I said, What seems to be wrong today?

She said, What?

When my cowardice is inflamed my voice is a whisper, a mutter.

I said, What hurts?

Wha hurrs.

She said, Well, I am tired. Like so many of us, only sleep, the great medicine, can heal me.

I said, Maybe we can do this another time.

Maebe wae dao thiss aganover thaime.

She said, Nonsense. You’re here, we’ve almost made it through the day. The workweek has ended. What will you do tonight?

Though I may be a coward I am also the culmination of hundreds of thousands of years of genetic information designed to perpetuate itself and this time a man’s voice issued from my chest. Within it were tonalities, reassurances, that I did not recognize in myself.

I said, I have to review Five Hearts for my column. It’s playing at the Handel.

She said, Oh, I’d like to see that. You’ll have to let me know how it was.

I said, Come with. I would value your perspective.

Dr. Lisa with pale violet crescents beneath her eyes. Although I am not among them, I know some people do not mind being asked to participate in social life.

Motioning to the side room, where she performed examinations.

She said, I’m taking the slingshot to the Eastern Hub for a conference.

I said, If your capsule blows up, my day would be ruined.

She said, You get up there, you see the Earth, you apprehend your insignificance, you don’t care if you blow up on the way down.

I lay on the table. She turned her back to me, to cover up the indignity of trying to get on her latex gloves. They were resistant to Dr. Lisa because she washed her hands but didn’t dry them well. Now it was her turn to mumble.

She said, Why don’t you make your next appointment at the end of the day, and we can see something.

I said, It would be my pleasure.

My fear receded, leaving a foam of lightness. I had startled her into an awkward moment. Later I would be suspicious of her promise, but as I was prodded, shocked, questioned, and monitored, I allowed myself contentment.

She put the electrodes on my face and zapped the muscles to test their response.

She said, But you have to take me to something good, not the garbage they play at the Handel.

Zap.

I said, Every film is a game of chance. When we say someone likes this or that subject, that they have this or that passion, we mean they are more willing to squander their time on noise for the thin possibility of transformation.

Zap.

She said, Has a film transformed you?

Zap.

I said, A couple times. Although they were powerful experiences, I doubt it is worth the ire and hatred I have expended on junk. Now that I am a little older, I understand that the only response to mediocrity is to ignore it, but I thought for many years to attack it would diminish its prevalence in the world. Mediocrity accrues more mediocrity to itself, and when you attack it, you enlarge its already considerable mass.

Zap.

She said, Mediocrity is the default state of existence. It can’t be avoided or defeated. It is always pulling and twisting. Without it, how would we measure what was special? Does your own mediocrity bother you?

Zap.

I said, Only at reviewing films. With most everything else, I am content to be average.