Here the Whole Time(22)
Dreamgirls (2006): One word: Beyoncé.
Footloose (1984; for god’s sake, do not watch the remake!): A super-young Kevin Bacon moves to a city where, believe it or not, it’s forbidden to dance. He breaks all the rules, everyone dances together, and in the end there’s glitter rain.
We’re all in the kitchen when my mom explains the dynamics of Musical Wednesdays to Caio. At first, I can’t tell if he’s excited or desperate.
“Since you are our guest, you get to choose tonight’s movie!” she says.
He flashes a smile. “Are there any rules?”
“It has to be a musical. And it has to have a happy ending, because today I don’t want to cry,” my mom says, and Caio looks to be consulting his mental list of movies with happy endings.
“Can I make brigadeiro?” he asks.
“No need to ask twice!” my mom answers, handing him a pan.
Caio picked Hairspray—the 2007 version with John Travolta as a woman and Michelle Pfeiffer with all that Botox. Of course, I’d watched this one before. It’s fun, the music is amazing, and Zac Efron looks really cute. My mom, who had never heard of Hairspray until tonight, was all excited. She danced in her spot on the couch, but when the last song came on, she pulled me up and we danced to “You Can’t Stop the Beat” together. I was dying of embarrassment, but Caio got up, too, and the three of us danced until the credits rolled up on the screen.
It had been a while since we’d had such fun on Musical Wednesdays. And I can’t believe I just used that name as if the day were something official, and not something my mom made up.
By the time the movie ends, it’s already late, but I need to shower. I turn on the water and start thinking about Caio’s choice of movie and our humiliating conversation in the dark this afternoon. Hairspray is an incredible film about the fight for civil rights during segregation. It’s about conquering prejudice and opening spaces to all. It’s also a film about a fat protagonist who, in the end (spoiler alert!), ends up with Zac Efron!
The part of my brain that loves to come up with unlikely theories starts whirring, and I wonder if this could be a sign. Caio might be sending hints that he wants to be the Zac Efron of my life. Earlier today I told him I’m embarrassed to talk to him during the daytime. Because I’m fat, I said out loud. Then, a few hours later, he picked a movie with a lot of nice morals, one of them being It’s okay to be fat. And that makes me feel a little happy.
When I go back to my room, properly dressed in my sleeping shorts and an old Felix the Cat T-shirt (always very sexy), Caio is already in bed. He’s on the phone, talking to his mom. From what I gather, he’s trying to convince her that he wasn’t out in the rain in the last few days and that he doesn’t see how she got the idea that he sounds like he has a cold.
He hangs up and turns off the light, and we both lie there in the dark. I feel that little flutter in my stomach because I know now is our official time to talk. I’m afraid that things between us are going to be weird, or that Caio will start suggesting different ways for me to accept my body or, worse, get thin. So, as if our weird conversation earlier hadn’t happened, or as if Caio hadn’t picked a Musical Wednesdays movie that definitely was intended to be a message for me, I start a conversation in the most casual way I know how.
“Wanna play a game?” I ask.
“What kind of game?”
“It doesn’t have a name, because I made it up. But for now, we can call it The Best and Worst in the World.” I proceed to explain how we play, trying not to make it sound silly. “It works like this: One player names a category, and the other has to give both the best and the worst in the world in the category. But it’s only fun if you pick very specific categories to make the other player really think. You can’t say, like, fruit. Or color. Or things the other player will have a favorite and least favorite of already.”
I did my best to explain, but Caio still seems confused. I don’t know how to make the rules clearer because I’ve never had to say them out loud. It’s a game I usually play by myself.
“You’ll start to get it as we play. We can start with easy categories, and then make it harder.”
“Okay, can I go first?” Caio says, a little disinterested. I say yes, and he gives me the first category: “Movies with aliens.”
“Easy peasy,” I say. “The best in the world is E.T., because it has aliens, friendship, and adventure. The worst in the world is The Invasion, because it features Nicole Kidman in one of the worst roles of her entire career, the poor woman.”
Caio laughs a little at my answer.
“Nice ones,” he says. “But I think I’d pick Space Jam as the worst in the world, because it has aliens playing basketball against Bugs Bunny. Who thought that would be a good idea?”
“Basically everybody?!” I say, aggravated, because Space Jam is wonderful, and I feel an unreasonable need to defend it as a cinematic masterpiece. But seeing as I rarely get into arguments, I move on and change the subject by giving Caio a new category. “Girl bands with four members or fewer.”
“Impossible!” He answers almost immediately. “Because the best in the world has five members, and the worst has two hundred. The Spice Girls and the Pussycat Dolls, if you were wondering.”