Reality vs. the Movies: A hypocritical love story

You know, our society, it's an odd one. Victorian at best, Puritanical at worst. We pay $10 to sit in a big, dark room surrounded by strangers, with popcorn on the floor and bubblegum stuck to the seats beneath us. We watch a storyline on a gigantic screen, created by another person's imagination, about how the world is at war, or life is boringly mundane, or meteors are going to destroy the earth. Yet despite the fill-in-the-blank cliché, two people fall madly in love and live happily ever after. But when the real thing happens in front of people, they freak out. They get, all, uncomfortable! Out of breath! Like they're going to! gasp! panic!

Isaias and I, we've had some real memorable experiences confronting the world in our short (yes, one year, as stated below) time together. First, there was the time at the quaint Berkeley coffee chateau, Le Bateau Ivre, at 10pm on a Saturday night. We were giddily giggling with each other, our faces maybe, hmmm, a foot apart. Ok, six inches. But by no means would our behavior be labeled as excessive PDA (public display of affection).

"Excuse me..." we heard from the bistro table behind us.

"Can you guys, like, stop making out?"

We turned around to see a slight man and rather non-descript woman looking at us with a self- righteous glare in their eyes. Isaias and my lips hadn't locked since we stepped foot in the place, so we stared back at them in astonishment, managed to stutter out an "uh, ok," and went about our desert eating, making sure to keep a ruler's length between us lest we further offend slight-man and non-descript woman. "Only in Berkeley would people be so self righteous," I commented to Isaias after the couple exited the bistro 10 minutes later.

Evidently not.

There was then was the 20-something aged-girl behind us in the airport ticket line who announced loudly to the other people standing in the line behind her remarks to the tune of "god!! get a room!" and "can you believe these people?!"

You'd think from her comments that we were having sex right there in front of the Delta reservation counter instead of hugging each other as we waited for the ticket agent to confirm our flight. A hard stare from me shut her up, but it didn't stop her from huffing and puffing under her breath. My guess is she needed to huff and puff alright, but more so in a horizontal direction.

And then there's the anonymous comment left on this blog yesterday, under my "disgustingly cute interlude" post. You can go take a look, since I approved it merely for the sake of blog fodder. My guess is the anonymous post-er thought to themselves (he or she, we'll never know), "can you guys, like, stop make out?" and "god, get a room!" when they saw the picture of Isaias and I—a couple more in love than say, um, Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler will ever be (re: Independence Day, duh).

My guess is the anonymous post-er would be friends with slight-man, non-descript woman, and airport ticket line girl. They would have tea together, they'd likely go to church and—I’d put my money on this one—they'd pay $10 to sit in a dark room, surrounded by strangers with popcorn on the floor and watch a movie about love. Too bad they just can't handle it when it's smack dab in front of them. I guess the only question that begs to be answered is not how prude and hypocritical can America get but really, does life imitate TV/film or does TV/film imitate life?