Before they met on the subway, before the opening of the Union Square Virgin Megastore, before Paul’s path to the Smashing Pumpkins concert, and before the blizzard that was ruining her evening, Meredith began collecting horror tapes. Born in 1980, the first movie she ever saw was 101 Dalmatians; the first movie she ever saw in theaters was The Black Cauldron; but the first movie she really loved was Gremlins, Joe Dante’s 1984 kids classic, a mid-1980s kids movie developed for toy tie-ins made as disturbing and violent as possible by its smart-aleck director. Just a few weeks earlier, her mother took her to the new Indiana Jones movie, Temple of Doom; both of these films were so “intense” that they inadvertently inspired a new rating, PG-13, one which wouldn’t go into effect until the end of the decade. Like Charley Varrick and other violent, adult American films of the 1970s, Gremlins and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom were rated PG, parental guidance suggested.
After that one-two punch, Dorothy rarely took her daughter to the movies. Meredith started going with friends and their parents, and eventually by herself; in 1987, she snuck into Ishtar while her friends watched Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol—later, at the birthday party, everyone asked her where she went during the movie: “Morocco.” In 1989, she fell in love with Ariel and Sebastian in The Little Mermaid; two years later, she snuck into The Silence of the Lambs when another friend’s parents took them to see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. It was the first horror movie she ever saw, and when it swept the Oscars a year later, she convinced her mother to take her.
They sat through the whole thing, and then Dorothy sat Meredith down at home and had a very important talk with her. “I don’t want you going to those movies anymore. I don’t want you to see that. It’s not proper. It’s disgusting. Homosexuals and their sheer gowns… kimonos… I won’t have it.” Dorothy futzed with her doll collection and sent her daughter to bed. What she didn’t know then, one night in New York City, February 1991, was that her daughter had already started stocking up on videotapes, spending what little money she had at garage sales and shoplifting from the Tower Records by NYU. People thought it was cute—an 11-year-old girl spending hours in the HORROR section at Kim’s Video. And they’d probably be impressed and grant Meredith some grudging respect when they discovered just how much she stole.
Not just tapes—she lifted a VHS player from Toys ‘R’ Us in Union Square, perhaps the only “video store” where the employees watched her closely. By the time she met Paul, Meredith was an expert at the five-finger discount, along with her specialty: the baker’s dozen sale, when she’d take an empty pillowcase, fasten it under her shirt, and fill it with tapes, discs, and accessories until she looked like a pregnant child prostitute. It was a whole ordeal, but always a big payday: the pregnancy satchel gave her Carrie, Christine, Halloween, Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning, The New Yorker Ripper, and Napoli Cosi’ Nuda Cosi’ Violenta, directed by Enzo B. Bucci. After her dad died, her mother got her a TV for her bedroom, and pretty much left Meredith alone when they weren’t together. As uptight and demanding as she could be at times, she was checked out, exhausted and disappointed that she ended up alone so young.
Dorothy thought about all this over countless glasses of wine while Meredith watched countless Italian horror movies upstairs, somewhere in New York City, all by themselves.
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