Where I was

There is a small 50-person theater on the ground floor at the IFC on 6th Ave. I'm not sure why "Stake Land" didn't warrant a larger theater or a wider distribution, but that's where we were watching it. It's Cormack McCarthy's "The Road" except with zombie vampires. And I was watching it with The Ex--which is post-apocalyptic in and of itself (the fact that eleven years have passed since the events that split us, the fact he randomly moved to New York three years ago, the fact he randomly happens to work in the same building as I do, forcing us to face each other). Being in each other’s presence after everything we've been through, after eleven years of not speaking, is always an out-of-body experience, a testament to the flexibility of human possibility, the comedy of life. On the screen, a vamp/zombie attacks a Southern family and sits in the barn rafters feeding off a baby before dropping the small body to the ground. The guy next to The Ex nudges him and shows him his cell phone. Why was this dude looking at his cell phone in the middle of this movie and why was he showing it to the stranger sitting next to him? There is blood and guts, gore and staking. The Ex leans over to whisper to me, “Osama bin Laden is dead.”