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Authors: Maggie Nelson
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characters spoke them. This was tolerable, sometimes even amusing, until a passenger in Travis Bickle’s taxicab embarked upon the following monologue, which the passenger—played by Scorsese himself—delivers while watching his wife through the window of another man’s house:
I’m gonna kill her. I’m gonna kill her with a .44 Magnum pistol. I have a .44 Magnum pistol. I’m gonna kill her with that gun. Did you ever see what a .44 Magnum pistol can do to a woman’s face? I mean it’ll fuckin’ destroy it. Just blow her right apart. That’s what it can do to her face. Now, did you ever see what it can do to a woman’s pussy? That you should see. You should see what a .44 Magnum’s gonna do to a woman’s pussy you should see.
Sitting alone in a sea of young men hollering, Did you ever see what a .44 can do to a woman’s pussy? was not amusing. Perhaps it was not tolerable, or perhaps I should not have tolerated it. I sat through the rest of the movie, but as I walked slowly home down the dark cobblestone streets of Soho toward my apartment on Orchard Street I found myself thinking about my mother, and about Jane, and about Emily, with tears streaming down my cheeks. That you should see.
ON ONE VISIT back to San Francisco in 1996, my mother and I returned to one of our old haunts, the Opera Plaza Cinema on Van Ness, to see a movie we knew virtually nothing about, save that it was a “dark comedy” titled Freeway. In its opening scenes a wayward teen played by Reese Witherspoon steals a car and runs away from her truly screwed-up family. Her car then breaks down on a California freeway, and a seemingly well-meaning yuppie, played by Kiefer Sutherland, pulls over to help. In his car they have a wide-ranging conversation, which takes a turn for the worse when he starts talking about wanting to rape her dead body. She then realizes that he is the so-called “I-5 Killer,” and he intends to make her his next victim.
By this point in the movie—just about ten minutes in—I could see that we were going to have to pack up. But as we started to gather our things, the movie took another turn. Witherspoon gains control of the situation by pulling out her boyfriend’s gun. She asks Sutherland if he believes that Jesus Christ is his personal savior, then shoots him in the neck several times. Then she throws up, steals his car, and leaves him for dead on the side of the road.
I don’t think he actually dies, but to be honest I remember little to nothing about the rest. What I remember is the moment in the small dark theater, right before Witherspoon pulls out her gun, right before we stood up to leave, when my mother leaned over and whispered to me, Let’s give it one more minute—maybe something different is about to happen.
American Taboo
T HE FIRST E-MAIL I receive from 48 Hours Mystery comes a few months before the trial from a producer who addresses me as “Mrs. Nelson,” unwittingly conjuring up an identity held but fleetingly by my mother many years ago. In his e-mail the producer says that he hopes I will consider working with them, as he feels strongly that “my family’s story of struggle and hope” has great relevance to their audience.
I ponder this phrase for some time. I wonder if he is imagining my family as the kind to print up T-shirts with Jane’s picture and a “we will never forget” slogan on them, as I have seen some families on these TV shows do. I wonder if he read the article in the Detroit Free Press in December 2004 in which my grandfather likened the reopening of Jane’s case to “picking a scab.” I wonder what he would think if he knew that after the January hearing, when Hiller asked my grandfather what he thought of the court proceedings thus far, my grandfather said he found them “boring.”
I agree to meet the producer for dinner at a restaurant on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
THE NIGHT before we meet I stay up late perusing the Web site for 48 Hours
I’m gonna kill her. I’m gonna kill her with a .44 Magnum pistol. I have a .44 Magnum pistol. I’m gonna kill her with that gun. Did you ever see what a .44 Magnum pistol can do to a woman’s face? I mean it’ll fuckin’ destroy it. Just blow her right apart. That’s what it can do to her face. Now, did you ever see what it can do to a woman’s pussy? That you should see. You should see what a .44 Magnum’s gonna do to a woman’s pussy you should see.
Sitting alone in a sea of young men hollering, Did you ever see what a .44 can do to a woman’s pussy? was not amusing. Perhaps it was not tolerable, or perhaps I should not have tolerated it. I sat through the rest of the movie, but as I walked slowly home down the dark cobblestone streets of Soho toward my apartment on Orchard Street I found myself thinking about my mother, and about Jane, and about Emily, with tears streaming down my cheeks. That you should see.
ON ONE VISIT back to San Francisco in 1996, my mother and I returned to one of our old haunts, the Opera Plaza Cinema on Van Ness, to see a movie we knew virtually nothing about, save that it was a “dark comedy” titled Freeway. In its opening scenes a wayward teen played by Reese Witherspoon steals a car and runs away from her truly screwed-up family. Her car then breaks down on a California freeway, and a seemingly well-meaning yuppie, played by Kiefer Sutherland, pulls over to help. In his car they have a wide-ranging conversation, which takes a turn for the worse when he starts talking about wanting to rape her dead body. She then realizes that he is the so-called “I-5 Killer,” and he intends to make her his next victim.
By this point in the movie—just about ten minutes in—I could see that we were going to have to pack up. But as we started to gather our things, the movie took another turn. Witherspoon gains control of the situation by pulling out her boyfriend’s gun. She asks Sutherland if he believes that Jesus Christ is his personal savior, then shoots him in the neck several times. Then she throws up, steals his car, and leaves him for dead on the side of the road.
I don’t think he actually dies, but to be honest I remember little to nothing about the rest. What I remember is the moment in the small dark theater, right before Witherspoon pulls out her gun, right before we stood up to leave, when my mother leaned over and whispered to me, Let’s give it one more minute—maybe something different is about to happen.
American Taboo
T HE FIRST E-MAIL I receive from 48 Hours Mystery comes a few months before the trial from a producer who addresses me as “Mrs. Nelson,” unwittingly conjuring up an identity held but fleetingly by my mother many years ago. In his e-mail the producer says that he hopes I will consider working with them, as he feels strongly that “my family’s story of struggle and hope” has great relevance to their audience.
I ponder this phrase for some time. I wonder if he is imagining my family as the kind to print up T-shirts with Jane’s picture and a “we will never forget” slogan on them, as I have seen some families on these TV shows do. I wonder if he read the article in the Detroit Free Press in December 2004 in which my grandfather likened the reopening of Jane’s case to “picking a scab.” I wonder what he would think if he knew that after the January hearing, when Hiller asked my grandfather what he thought of the court proceedings thus far, my grandfather said he found them “boring.”
I agree to meet the producer for dinner at a restaurant on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
THE NIGHT before we meet I stay up late perusing the Web site for 48 Hours
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