Entering The Cage, Part 1.

“Nicolas Cage?” She spits the words through her teeth. “Ugh, why would you do that to yourself?”

“For precisely that reason,” I reply. “Everyone I mention this to has that response, and it’s ridiculous. How has he, how can anyone, get to the point where the general, non-film nerd public, cringe at the sound of your name? Especially when you think of how highly he was regarded before. Roger Ebert called him one of his favorite actors of all time. The man won an Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas, remember?”

“I’ve never even heard of that movie. And  that seems like a really long time ago.”

I rise up in the seat, anxious for battle.

“That’s exactly my point. You can basically track his rise and fall on a chart through time. It’s like a perfect arc with a drop-off at the end. No other actor has that. It’s fascinating.”

“But his movies are so bad!”

“You’re just not watching them the right way. Nicolas Cage throws himself fully into the most ridiculous roles. You can’t tell me that Nicolas Cage has ever failed to entertain you in a bad movie. Speaking strictly from an entertainment perspective, Cage at his worst is better than say, Jeremy Irons, at his best.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

I try not to sigh too obviously as I sip my coffee. Slumping back into my chair, I mutter “Scar from The Lion King.”

“Ohhhh.”

I look across the counter into the kitchen, hoping to track the status of our order through the window. She breaks the silence first.

“So, you’re gonna like, watch all of his movies and write a book about him or something?”

“Well, it’s not just about him. It’s about me, too. About where I am in life and what I go through while I’m doing it, my journey. It’s kind of a Julie and Julia-type thing.”

“I like that movie” she says.

“Me too.” I reply. I have never actually seen Julie and Julia. It occurs to me that if I’m going to continue comparing my project to it, I should eventually make an attempt to rectify this. Like so many other films, I kept meaning to see it, but my Future Ex had an irrational hatred of Amy Adams, which effectively ended that plan. In telling this story, I feel it’s important to point out that the previous sentence is the closest I will come to speaking ill of my Future Ex.  I don’t wish to, and I never will. I still think she’s a wonderful human being and friend, and it is honestly only through her love and support that this project, or any of my projects, is possible.

This is normally the point where people, particularly people who are my father, ask why the Ex exists then, and the truth is I have no real answer. “Married young” is basically all I ever have to give, and it seems to sum up the situation well enough. I’ve discovered that when a relationship ends, the first thing people try to do is answer “Where did it all go wrong?” I am of the belief that if you can answer that question with a single event, a precise moment, you don’t really need to end. You just need to forget that moment. Most of the time, you won’t have a definitive answer for what happened, just the knowledge that it did. In our case, it mostly boiled down to being different from who we were when we married. Once that was accepted, a weight was lifted, and we were able to get back to the important business of actually liking each other as human beings again. She’s since found a steady boyfriend whom I approve of heartily, while I spend my spare time in a diner explaining who Jeremy Irons is to Poly Sci majors. In any case, I will still probably never see Julie and Julia. It doesn’t have Nicolas Cage in it.

The real eyebrow-raiser of my situation with Future Ex is that we still live together. It turns out that all the time we were fighting over acting more like roommates than spouses, we actually got really good at being roommates. It doesn’t make much sense to anyone else, and it’s bizarre, unorthodox and almost certainly bound to end in pain, bu for right now it works. That sentence could basically apply to any aspect of my entire life, so I’ve kind of gotten used to it. So there I was on the edge, a newly single perpetual student who was constantly falling further behind on that degree and further in debt while working a night job in retail, living with a woman to whom I was still semi-married, and nursing a man-crush on an actor whose career had devolved into a bad joke. I could tell from across the table that all of this had dawned on her at the same time it occurred to me.

I realize that in order to tell this story, I will eventually need to give Future Ex a name. However, her, the Poly Sci major, she doesn’t get one. Even with my limited experience in dating, I was able to tell that she would not be in the story much longer.

“Did you see The Wicker Man? That movie sucked.”  She observes.

I sigh. “Yes. Yes it did.” Still no sign of the food.