Reel Ottawa:

A Memoir…With the Movie Theatres We Loved

It had buttons the size of chocolate chip cookies and went down past my knees. It weighed more than I did, and as a result, no doubt contributed to my already slouchy appearance.

Its best feature, though, was hidden to the eye.

If you slipped your hand into the left pocket, your fingers would continue past the torn lining. If your arms were long enough—and no one’s, excepting the then popular Harlem Globetrotters’ maybe, were—you might be able to touch the very hem of this extremely long coat. And if you were dexterous enough—and again, nobody was—you might be able to bring your hand from that particular area all the way round to the bottom of the coat’s middle, a deep, dark no man’s land not even a speck of lint had ever found its way to.

Whether or not this coat had this accidental feature when I first inherited it, I don’t remember—only that its existence seriously furthered, by way of fattening my book collection, my love of movies.

For if, say, you were a poor, movie-struck kid with a touch of the juvenile delinquent about you, you could sneak a thin, glossy novelization of the latest cinematic hit into that serendipitous receptacle, where it would silently drop to the bottom. Then, by fastening your coat a little too jerkily, you could nonchalantly work the book all the way to that special spot at the rear, where no store detective, should he have framed you in his eagle eye, could find it, even if he put his hand through the hole.

Don’t get me wrong. I did not like the idea of stealing things. It was simply the easiest way I knew to get my fix, to enjoy, in some semblance, the movies I could not afford to go to, or that were restricted to me by virtue of the censorship of the times.

It was also, I thrillingly discovered, a great way to meet intelligent and sexually curious girls.

It started when I spotted one on a bus, reading the new edition of Looking for Mr. Goodbar, the one that tied-in to the then just released movie version, and going over the choicest passages.

Inspired, I swiped a copy, read it, and had basis for conversation with a class of female hitherto completely out of my league. In time, this became a ritual repeated over many a controversial female-themed movie.

Winters came and went. I eschewed my wanton ways, I tried my hand at menial jobs, I earned money.

I outgrew the coat, too…or maybe I just ditched it. I hope not ungratefully.

Every now and then, however, the grown-up me finds himself light on spending cash, and sees an intriguing young woman reading a risqué movie adaptation on a bus.

I curse my Old Navy-purchased pea coat and those bastards behind bar codes.