I woke up on Sunday morning feeling a swirl of things I hadn’t experienced since early March 2020. Physically, I was exhausted, sweaty, puffy-eyed; emotionally, I was vulnerable, weepy, and filled with that specific kind of white-hot shame that only comes when you aren’t in full possession of your memories from the night before. Simply put, I was hungover—the kind of hungover you only get after drinking endless rounds out at a bar in the company of friends, something I hadn’t really done since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S. last year.
As much as I’d missed going “out out,” I was totally unprepared to deal with…well, how bad the aftereffects of drinking made me feel. I felt totally exposed, like I’d revealed far too much of myself the night before (even though every friend I consulted with via panicky day-after text assured me I’d been fine). The bad feeling persisted until around 7 p.m., when I finally forced myself out of bed and biked the 10-minute ride from my house to Nitehawk Prospect Park.
I’ve been daydreaming about returning to the movies for months, but to be honest, most of my desire was snack-based; I was never a massive cinema buff. My mind has always been prone to wandering, and the movies’ strict no-phone policy always made me vaguely itchy (after all, what if something terrible happened and my phone was off?) Something happened, though, when I met up with my three roommates to see the 8 p.m. showing of Emma Seligman’s Shiva Baby. I’d spent most of the year with these exact people, watching movies on the TV in our living room, yet when we actually stepped onto the hallowed ground of a movie theater, some kind of linoleum-floored alchemy took place; I forgot who I was and who I was with, melting into the film in a way I don’t remember doing before the pandemic.
Upon consideration, I realize it’s sort of ironic that the movie that reminded me how to lose myself in IRL art was Shiva Baby. After all, the film revolves around an aimless queer Jewish millennial suffering through an endless-seeming family obligation—“big same,” as the kids say. Watching the film in theaters, though, forced me to directly confront its profoundly anxious core, noticing every uptilt in the score and shake of the camerawork in a way I might not have if I’d watched it on my laptop while swiping on Tinder like an ambivalent grocery store shopper.