What’s more terrifying than being turned into a vampire? Being turned into a Twilight fan.
God bless the production designer
Last week my mind was consumed with job hunting, with missing my fiancé, and with work-related dilemmas that show no sign of being resolved anytime soon. I’ve been…scattered, stalled out, frustrated and impatient—all of my most charming attributes blended into a sour margarita of annoyance with a bitter, salty rim. Fabulous.
Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of things crossed off the “stuff I’ve been putting off” list I made last week and I’m happy about that; lots of progress was made. I was surprised I wasn’t more hindered by the fact that I’m reasonably certain I gave myself food poisoning last Friday by eating leftover Tuna Helper from my own fridge. Yes, Tuna Helper–seriously. My avoidance of grocery shopping had dire consequences; a whole new low for my poor, neglected kitchen (and digestive system). Clearly last week’s “I need to take better care of myself” epiphany came a bit late. And clearly–a word to the wise–Tuna Helper doesn’t keep for even a mere 2 days.
Feeling awful led me to order up an OnDemand movie. My selection? Twilight. I’d seen it once before, but that was after a night out with my best friend and we only half paid attention to the movie. It bears mentioning that she and I don’t have a great track record with late-night movie watching. When she was in town a year or so ago we stayed up late talking and drinking wine and then we both fell asleep sitting up while watching Reality Bites. I have no doubt it’s situations like these that led one of her old boyfriends to refer to us as “hetero life partners”; we’re destined to be old-lady friends. I welcome wrinkles and purple hair if it means I’ll be knitting on a porch somewhere in a housecoat and curlers next to her as we offer shamelessly honest commentary on each other’s good ol’ days and drink martinis at utterly inappropriate hours of the day. But alas I digress…
Watching Twilight this time, in my weakened Tuna Helper-infused state, I saw something different in it, and not just because the dreamy Robert Pattinson 
totally brightened an otherwise icky day (but he did–meeeeyow!). I finally grasped the appeal, the reason that millions of teenage girls *and* their moms, not to mention the countless other people like me who stumbled upon it unintentionally, are so utterly enraptured by the story. It’s not that the books are especially well-written, but the story is so engaging and so universal; it speaks to what we imagine love could be, what we dream about it being before we have life experience that will inevitably poke holes in the plausibility of it all. And whether your boyfriend is a vampire or not, it captures the rush of being in love with someone so much that they’re like oxygen to you. For as terrifying as it is to share something in common with the hordes of shrieking 14 year-olds of the world, getting immersed in Twilight this week was an incrediby welcomed escape from all the things weighing on me lately.
What I didn’t expect was that seeing the movie at last (was I the last one in America? possibly) would spark a desire to intellectually dissect this pop culture phenomenon. I invested a whoppin’ $5.98 at Half Price Books in the interest of “cultural examination” and to evaluate how the book to screenplay adaptation worked out–or so I told myself. I had no clue that I would burn through the book at an alarming rate and that as I read the words describing the intense moments of Bella and Edward’s sparking romance all fraught with impassioned complications that I would have flashes of boys from my adolescence who made my heart stop when they walked in the room. I didn’t expect for it to remind me of the weighty decisions about when and how I wanted to lose my virginity and to whom. I didn’t expect that as I read, I would be so completely reminded of Jane Austen’s writing and that Stephenie Meyer would actually come out and give a nod to one of my all-time favorite writers right there on the page. Holy crap! Was there actually a shred of substance behind what I assumed would be young adult fiction drivel? Flashes of being referred to as a Twi-hard made me cringe. No, no…this was a purely scientific exploration. I am not 14, goddamnit. Then again, I read Shakespeare and Austen and Dickens and Entertainment Weekly, so maybe this was all inevitable.
Meyer totally captured the essence of being a teenage girl in love, the heady recklessness that makes the entire world slips away when the object of your affection leaves the room. I saw how Bella’s awkwardness and loner tendencies were endearing and relatable. I saw how Edward’s character embodied the unattainable perfection we want to believe exists when we’re young and inexperienced in love, how that even as raging hormones make you want to tear your clothes off for the boy of your dreams, the allure of being able to sleep in his arms actually sounds more appealing than sex sometimes. And I loved that Jacob’s character embodied what real guys are like–flawed and jealous, but loyal and lovable all the same.
I had to know where the story was going and how it would end, so as my roommate and I rolled up to Third Place Books on Monday night so that I could buy New Moon and Eclipse, I had a sense of urgency to read the whole series. I tried to laugh it off, though K knows what a nerd I am and thus didn’t seem remotely surprised by this turn of events. Still, I felt like I should closet my new guilty pleasure in public. How would I explain this fixation of mine to my PBS-watching, NPR-obsessed friends who read really *good* books all the time?
I walked to the cash wrap and was suddenly hit over the head with a subconscious reminder of why there are certain books and albums I buy on Amazon instead. I just can’t handle having to look the clerk in the eye, like a teenager buying their first condoms or feminine products at Walgreen’s (remember the world before self check-out lines? not pretty). That feeling has washed over me many a time, especially at Easy Street Records where I know the too-cool-for-words hipsters behind the counter sit in silent judgement of my purchase. And I know that’s what they’re doing because in my college radio days, that’s exactly what my friends and I would do.
With books in hand, it took everything in me not to look the clerk in the eye. I knew if I saw even a hint of amusement at my selection, so much as a raised eyebrow and I would’ve shrieked in my 3-octaves-higher-than-usual voice, ”DON’T JUDGE ME! I’m having a hard time and this helps, okay??!” before launching into a 10 minute diatribe about the abysmal state of the California job market and it’s recent impact on both my personal and professional life. Thankfully, the dude was nice. No silent judgment alarms went off. No big whoop.
I spent 4 days immersing myself in the Twiverse while questioning my sanity for listening to the soundtrack on repeat as a coping mechanism to get through my workdays. I thought I’d wait until Breaking Dawn came out in paperback as I discussed with my old-lady-friend-to-be on the phone that day, but when I left the office after 8:30 p.m. on Thursday on a day punctuated with more drama and nonsense that I can tolerate, I realized I needed a fix real bad. I had to go pick up a copy of Breaking Dawn and I couldn’t run the risk of the Ballard Fred Meyer not having it in stock. So I went downtown and paid more for 9 minutes of parking than I did to buy the first book. Given that I’ve taken to calling the series literary heroin to friends and colleagues, the irony didn’t escape me. When I got there, I saw an empty shelf where the book should’ve been and I had to ask a B&N clerk for help to track it down, I couldn’t help but hear the phrase,“hey kid, the first one’s free” echoing in the back of my mind. We wound our way through the aisles and I noticed then that I’d missed the endcap display plastered with a lovely bit of signage that read “undying love” dedicated solely to Twilight. I guess the B&N marketing team either hasn’t read the books or decided that “undying addiction” was inappropriate or too literal for their target demographic.
So here I am in the wee hours of the morning, after blazing through 2,344 pages more than I’ve read in awhile, listening to an unfathomabe amount of rain dumping from the heavens layered over the sound of the New Moon soundtrack (review to follow) and I can’t stop thinking about the fact that for all the craptacular books that get published every year, at least one of them should be mine.
For last 5 years, I’ve dumped every bit of energy I have into my work. My writing, my music, and my creative outlets have been evaporating before my very eyes and I’m only just now seeing it. I don’t know if I have it in me to create a pop culture phenomenon of epic proportions, but I know I have at least one good story in me. So I’m taking a new perspective on this job hunt–maybe I will look into something less demanding so that I still have something left in me when I get home to put on paper.
In the meantime, I’m steering clear of Tuna Helper and will pick up Twilight on DVD tomorrow. After all, it wouldn’t be very scientific of me to not watch all the features on the 2-disc special DVD set, now would it?
