Smoking Bag

Susan Sarandon came to the cinema where I was working in Manhattan and watched a matinee. She was barely recognizable in her all-black garb of high-top sneakers, tight leggings, a waist-length cape, and floofy knit cap that covered her hair. As she was leaving, I happened to be standing in the back of the theater waiting for the house lights to go up. We made eye contact as she passed then said to her Tim Robbins look-a-like possible-beau, "My bag is smoking." Why was her bag smoking? Did she forget to extinguish a partially smoked joint before exiting the theater? Did she mean that her bag was hot to the touch because she'd been using it as a cushion through the long foreign film that we'd screened that afternoon?  Alas, I'll never know.

I was in the lobby as she and her man made their way outside. I noticed that his jeans weren't pulled all the way up in that annoyingly "hip" sort of way usually associated with boys the age of Susan's own sons. Why, I thought, would she be sleeping with some dude who can't properly cover his backside with denim? 

With an eyeful of the young man's BVDs, I thought: dammit, Janet, please get a clue!