Free Tripping on Tears by Day Rusk Page B

said.
    “What’s the worst that could happen if they knew where you were? Who you were with? Would it be the end of the world?” I asked.
    “Probably not, but I’m not quite ready to go there yet. It’s just easier this way.”
    “I guess. But I feel like a leper, or something.”
    “I’m sorry, it’s just complicated,” she smiled. “But I promise you, one day you’ll have the opportunity to straighten up the magazines on my parent’s coffee table, they’re a mess.”
    “How am I supposed to enjoy my meal, knowing that?”
    “And, if I’m not mistaken, my sister is a non-peeler when she buys books.”
    “It looks like I met you just in the nick of time,” I said, holding up my wine glass in a toast. “To the potential for happiness the future may hold.”
    “To the future,” she said, as we both stared into one another’s eyes while sipping on our wine.
     
    It’s a little quirk of mine, but the first movie I see with a girl I want to be special – something memorable. Some people have their first songs, I have our first movie, and normally that movie isn’t playing in a movie theatre nearby. Actually, it’s hard to find a good current movie that you’re willing to call your movie; you need an old standby, a classic, if you will.
    “So, what are we watching,” Safia asked as she settled into a comfortable lounge chair in my movie room. Yes, I’ve dedicated an entire room in my place for the sole art of watching movies properly; a big screen, Blu-Ray, surround sound, track lighting and comfortable chairs. Collecting movies is a hobby, so I invested a little in my hobby so I could do it up right.
    “A romantic comedy,” I replied. “But not just any romantic comedy, a classic, starring John Wayne.”
    The look on her face said it all.
    “John Wayne in a romantic comedy?” she asked.
    “You see, you’re like everyone else. As far as you’re concerned he did nothing but Westerns and War movies.”
    “Didn’t he?”
    “He made about one hundred and fifty movies, you know. I’ll bet you didn’t know about Trouble Along the Way co-starring Donna Reed, a wonderful romantic comedy set in the world of college football, did you?”
    She shook her head. “Is that what we’re watching?”
    “We will, eventually,” I replied. “No tonight we’re watching The Quiet Man , a 1952 classic directed by the legendary John Ford and co-starring the divine Maureen O’Hara. Of course to make this film, Wayne and Ford had to give the studio another Western, but it was well worth it.”
    I pulled my Blu-Ray copy of the film off the shelf and started setting it up.
    “In the film, Wayne plays an American boxer who returns to his ancestral home in the Irish countryside. He is haunted by the fact that one of his opponents died during a boxing match, and has sworn off ever engaging in fisticuffs again. Yes, I did use the word fisticuffs.”
    The movie was in. It was time to cue it up. “He falls in love with Maureen O’Hara and sets about courting her and then marrying her. The only problem is her brother, played by Victor McLaglen, a big bear of a man, won’t pay her dowry, and Wayne, now her husband, being American, doesn’t care; it’s an Irish custom, not his. This causes problems for their marriage; it’s a wonderfully funny film that leads up to the question, will Wayne finally break his vow and fight Maureen’s brother for her dowry.”
    “Sounds like fun,” she offered.
    “I should warn you, that as a young man watching The Quiet Man for the first time, I fell in love with Maureen O’Hara. The initial scene in the movie of her in the fields, her hair a blazing and beautiful red, caught my attention and I quickly formed a crush.”
    “You’re not planning on dating her any time soon are you?” she asked.
    “No.”
    “Then I think I can live with it.”
    The Quiet Man was a classic and one of my favorites; surprisingly, Safia was the first woman I actually shared this film with.