After My Fucking Father went on his bizarre lectures about his pottery and setting up a schedule as soon as my parents leave, I now feel it's imperative for me to leave and watch my co-worker/friend's performance in his musical tonight. I'll be in Hong Kong when the show ends, shows begin during the week on Wednesdays, and I'm sure I'll be busy in the middle of the week. I could have gone Sunday, but after what he did today ... eh, it's Saturday, I should be doing shit Saturday, I'll see the show Saturday.
And it just hit me. This musical is at a theater that my parents owned three decades ago. I don't remember when they bought it, but they showed Chinese movies. It was a very odd place for a foreign theater house to show since the neighborhood, at least at that time, was very working class with a Polish bent. They had it mainly for several years. Don't exactly know what happened, but apparently there was a bomb scare or an actual bomb that went off at the theater, and after that business was so bad that my folks sold the theater back to the city or the state. (Don't quote me on this; I may have that story totally wrong.)
It languished in disarray until about a decade and a half ago, where, along with the gentrifying neighborhood, it was refurbished into a performance theater. I don't remember the last day I stepped foot in that theater, but I haven't stepped foot in that theater after we sold it. Till tonight though.
I remember just playing around as a kid, riding around in a chair with rollers on around the lobby and the concessions stand. I'm pretty sure I did that when the theater opened up for movies in the evening. But a lot of the time me, my brother and my cousins would walk up the spiral staircase to the offices upstairs and just play. I remember that the spiral staircase went further up past the office, but since there were no lights we were too scared to go up and see what was up there.
I also remember that my brother and I had these Matchbox cars and we would race them in the office. One of them fell through a hole that surrounded an old pipe, and try as we might, we couldn't retrieve it. I actually think of that poor car once in a while, even now. In the renovation they probably busted down the walls and the pipes and find it -- "What the hell is this?" But I also imagine it stuck inbetween two pipes or wedged in there somewhere, trapped forever.
I didn't realize until this morning that this should be more of an epiphany than I have treated it. As soon as I step through that door I am going to compare what I see to what I remember. Is the lobby floor slanted? Is the concession stand still there? Are there still curtained arches on both sides of the house? Most importantly, I wonder if I'm going to be physically floored by all the memories that might hit me if I see even the slightest similarity to my faint memories of the theater.
I might tell my friend. Heck, I might not see my friend after the show. (That reminds me; I'm going to Messenger him and tell him I'm coming to see his show tonight.) I don't think I will tell him about my history with the production's house tonight. Too ... painful and raw.
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