Fast Times
I made the decision to watch Fast Times at Ridgemont High last night because I couldn't get to sleep.
I have been sick all week, it started Monday where I was at work and suddenly I felt extremely cold. My hands went numb. I had to pull a blanket out of my desk and wrap myself up in it. I made the mistake of only wearing a flannel to work because I thought it was going to be warmer. It was unbearably cold.
Then, I started to get really sleepy so I set my phones up so that if an alert hit either one they were next to my head and would wake me. This actually happened a couple of times during the day. The people around me kind of slunk off to do their own things elsewhere and I was left to just nap out.
When I woke up I still felt very tired and I went home for the day. On the way I stopped and got some Taco Bell. I had ibuprofen and diphenhydramine HCl left over from my brush with Covid, I took a good portion and fell asleep. Every four or so hours I would wake up in the same routine that had happened two weeks prior: drink a bunch of water, down some more drugs, go back to sleep. It was a long cycle that burned through the day and when I was finally unable to sleep anymore it was some time on Tuesday.
I made it through Tuesday playing video games and just taking the ibuprofen to keep the swelling down. I also camped out on Discord and participated in a few conversations but I was still feeling quite drained. At a certain point in the evening though I was feeling one hundred percent. I had slaked my hunger on the leftover taco bell and that's when it was time to watch the film.
The movie starts with a twenty-six year old man entering a restaurant in the food court and the girls who work there are talking about him, they want to wait on him, a chance to get noticed and maybe date him. Then, they reveal he is sitting in another girl's section. They give her some advice. He orders a meatball sandwich, a drink, and her phone number.
For their date he drives her to a baseball field and they have sex in the dugout, she looks at the graffiti.
The hot head who works for the fast food company, he is in line to be a manager. Getting his friends hired. Thinks he is a big shot. Wants to break up with his girlfriend so he can enjoy his last year in high school in freedom.
His girlfriend breaks up with him and recites his reasons almost word for word.
One of the girls is in a long distance relationship with a man who works for an airline. After repeatedly referring to him and how perfect he is, he doesn't show up at her graduation. She reads a letter she wrote to him explaining that this is not what adults do and that is why she is breaking up with him. Then she resolves that she can date almost anyone and returns to the dance floor, head held high.
This continuous relationship with someone who may well not be real.
Instead of talking to his sister's friend and joining them for the pool party her brother hides in the bathroom and masturbates thinking about her. Then, the friend barges in on him when she's looking for a q-tip to get water out of her ear.
The hot head is later driving to deliver food for his new job and encounters a woman at the stoplight who laughs at him. He throws his work uniform out of the car window along with the food.
The cool guy who gives advice to his shy friend who works at the movie theater. He says he acts like enjoys everywhere that he is. He acts like he doesn't care about the girls he meets. He ends up having sex with the shy guy's girl, premature ejaculation, he says he has to go and leaves immediately. She tells him she is pregnant and he agrees to pay for half and drive her to the clinic but in the end he flakes on her.
She gets her brother to drive her to a nearby bowling alley. Her brother who is also the hothead fast food guy, once fired for blowing his top and also now single. Her brother figures out where she went and waits outside to comfort and drive her home.
There's this terrible desperation in this film. Maybe it's just how I remember that time period. I can only hope that everything filmed has been torn down or fallen over, crushed into the dust that the next generation is built on. One that won't have these kinds of problems.
There is a kind of statement about the generations and how they don't understand each other and the spectacle of Mr Hand and Spicoli, the relationship that grows between them as they each try to figure out the boundaries, culminating in a late night study session on the night of the dance and Spicoli managers to impress him so he lets him go to the dance.
This film came out in 1982. It was interesting to think back to a time when there were no dating apps to send notifications that a new person has found you and will probably not have a conversation with you. You didn't need artificial intelligence bots to comb through your profile and the profiles of those who matched with you and suggest opening questions or catchy one-liners to retain interest. None of the characters that were the love interests in the movie turned out to be a guy in Texas who likes catfishing and conning lonely people using payment apps.
When the twenty-six year old guy got what he wanted from Stacy he stopped calling her. And it was implied that he was never seen or heard from again.
Mike apologizes to Rat and his apology is accepted. Then, it is implied that Rat and Stacy will continue to talk on the phone after the movie ends.
Happily ever after in the eighties.
The same message still stands out to me from when I saw it the first time so many years ago, that if a man is not capable of approaching a woman he is interested in dating and introducing himself and asking for her number he will be forever alone. That's your black pill.
Now that I'm on the other side of the hill and looking at a lonely and short future I can say that I would've been better served taking the approach that I do not care, to make the first move and if I am rejected it is their loss, and focus more on enjoying where I am and what I am doing and not on trying to find someone else.