I posted to Twitter about this just a little last night. I will definitely go into this even more with a video post sometime this week. My wife and I went out last night on a date, something we rarely get to do. I am often away on the weekends and have a 9-5 during the week. So when we venture out of the house for dinner and a movie it’s a big deal for us personally, even if that meal is somewhere cheesy and the movie is about the zombie apocalypse.
She and I are like any other couple with ups and downs and trying times. We are actually working through some pretty trying stuff lately and are settling in to new parameters and understandings of each other and our relationship…a good thing. This particular night out was supposed to be a reconnect for us and it was, but there was an additional unexpected element to the evening. If it weren’t for the fact that my wife and I were so excited about seeing Zombieland (for free!) and she was so happy to have an evening out I would have just gone home like I started to. I didn’t want my principles to ruin our night.
Here is what my wife wrote last night regarding the incident. How this went from me asking for a business card to this guy threatening to call the cops on me so very quickly is something I am trying to map out still. In the mean time, take read and see what you think. I’ll get back to you with my version sometime soon.
**For those who aren’t aware, my wife is white, from a middle class background and grew up outside of the fair city of Charleston, SC. Well you know what I look like and I grew up in the housing projects in Columbia, SC. Our life experiences are vastly different, but injustice of any kind is something neither of us tolerates well.
* * * * * * * * * *
All it takes to turn “Date Night” into “WTF Night” is one old white rent-a-cop who’s scared to death of black people. Especially black people of whom he doesn’t understand the presenting gender. He almost had Q walk right out during the prescreening’s* seating with his presenting attitude of misogynist, homophobic racism at his “check” at the door.
It’s not unusual for someone not paying attention to say “sir” instead of “ma’am” to Q’s various patronages. But upon correcting his mistake, the guard’s entire attitude instantly deteriorated. He asked her to completely turn off her phone, and as she held out her open gadget she said “I can’t shut it off because I’m on-call, but it is on vibrate.”
He said, “Are you a nurse?”
“No.”
“Well, if you’re on-call I guess you shouldn’t be here, huh?”
“What?”
And as he gave a cursory glance into my purse, Q had spun on her heel. After the guard waved me in, I turned and ran after her. We almost didn’t even make it IN to the movie at that point, and as we did eventually pass through the doors, the guard was heard saying over his shoulder, “Keep an eye on her.”
And during the movie, we did notice a little extra attention — but the movie was fantastic, and fuck them, right? When we left the theater, I saw Q turn to the guard and as she asked him as politely and non-threateningly as possible for his business card; I was swept then with the crowd outside, where I took a position against a glass door and watched. I expected it to be a brief, uneventful exchange. But then the guard was backing away, and Q was beginning to gesture. Not menacing gestures, just gestures as though an unexpectedly bad turn had taken place.
I went back in the door and somehow fit flawlessly between the ropes to stand by Q’s side. The guard had backed himself — BACKED HIMSELF — Q WAS NOT MOVING TOWARDS HIM — into a corner and was on the phone with his boss asking for permission to call the police.
“I’ve got an irate woman — or something — here, and –”
“What?!”
“I SAID YOU WERE A WOMAN.”
Verbatim. And he said into the phone “to his boss” (like we knew if that was who he was actually calling) “I AM CALLING THE POLICE.”
A upper-management usher who was standing beside us said in a quiet voice, “We are not calling the police.”
Q said again, “Sir, I just wanted to know your name and your company.”
“I GAVE YOU THAT INFORMATION.”
“Okay, please let me verify –” Q flips open the little notebook that’s always with her. More hostile yelling of his information, and more even-toned Q verifying it.
“If I ever see you here again, I’m not letting you in!” he shouted as we walked out.
…Now, he wasn’t a theater employee. He was just a hired old white man in a white shirt who had zero professional skills — a loss VERY specific to Q. She was one of maybe seven black people in the upper-crust theater of hundreds, and she was “super extra” dark-skinned, mohawked and dykey. “Or something.”
My wife is understandably livid and if you’re attached to her I have to say the only reason I posted first is because she is still on the phone over this. There will be some repercussions over this for [name redacted] from [company redacted].
*Zombieland was really terrific. If you liked Shaun of the Dead, prepared to be out-entertained, and no less invested in the characters. And I say that with reverence, having adored the aforementioned enough to put a full movie poster of it in our office.
