Heathers: One of the Best Damn Movies Ever

Every so often, I get startled, really deep in my bones, by the passing of time. I know it happens to everyone, and I know that it affects us all differently, but sometimes this bone ache lasts. It lingers. I feel twinges of pain in the different bits and pieces of me that I’ve injured and the minor uprising of my nerves brings all these different elements of my life crusading into view. And it becomes me versus the past, because I don’t want to consider all these priors anymore.

I sometimes wonder how we all make it through years of events that mark us so deeply, mold us to the form, and then we continue on into different eras with different politics and hairdos, where bolo ties and cowboy boots may or may not be cool. And we are marked again, and remodeled or recast in different boots with different hair, and we continue on. It’s shocking, as I said before, because it seems like this constant evolution needs more analysis. But the analysis is too freaky and so we move on.

This all came about because I rode my bike all day and then I watched Heathers as my husband slept on my lap. The movie came out as I finished up eighth grade at a lovely junior high school with a view of the Pacific. I had just learned how to dye my own hair and most of the clothes my mom had bought for me at the beginning of the school year had been altered and reshaped, by hand, with fishnet, black lace and safety pins. I had just completed two rounds of interchangeable boyfriends, both of whom lied to me about their ages because they thought I was in ninth grade. I didn’t like either of them; I found them dumb and mundane. I actually required that one of them make me a certificate and sign it after he asked me if I would like to go steady. I just couldn’t imagine what the point of going steady could possibly be, and I didn’t see any purpose in setting great meaning in my yes or no answer. He did. So I asked for the certificate. That way, I had something to show for the whole transaction.

By eighth grade, I had a decently stable friendship with a defiant and occasionally mutinous friend who was around six inches shorter than I was. In seventh grade, we started a relationship that kind of sort of continues today. On the phone, late at night, he would tell me his fantasies of women and I would read from Byron or Shakespeare or Wilde or Plath, depending on the year. We composed poetry together and then tore each other to shreds just before falling asleep, still on the line. While there is more to the story, it doesn't have to be told. It's enough to say that those times were some of the priors that I don't need to fight, that allow me to move along, that remind me of existence and its fine potential. It is those other things, the ones I barely seem to survive, that wreak havoc on the constantly changing circuitry and try to block the whole damn deal.

This, I suppose, is why JD blows himself up at the end of Heathers. Sorry, spoilers. And though we don't see it in the movie, why Veronica probably starts smoking a lot of pot and takes some time off from college while dating a meth-head before resuming her pursuit of successful endeavors. She'll carry that shit with her when she gets to her 30s, that's for sure.