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The Projectionist | Dec 22 2001

I once worked as a projectionist, showing awful films in awful classes at an awful university. It was a fine job as jobs go, in part because half my friends had the same job and in part because my boss was a drug addict, in the best sense of that phrase, by which I mean that he talked in a demented kind of poetry and turned a blind eye to the increasingly outrageous lies we submitted on our timesheets. (A true story: this man once began a job interview by taking a sniff of glue and offering the interviewee the same.)

But all was not bliss, for one day I came into a classroom to show a film (this was before the students appeared) and made a disturbing discovery. Actually, it took me some time to make the discovery, as I first had to wheel the projector to the back of the room and wind the film through the slot and make sure that the film caught properly. Having done these things, I walked to the front of the room and pulled down the screen so that I could center the image on the screen and be completely ready when the students appeared. This is when I made my discovery.

A line of graffiti had been written along the bottom of the screen. It was the work of a friend—I recognized his scrawl immediately—and this is what it said:

AND YOU KNOW OF COURSE ABOUT THE PROJECTIONIST

What choice did I have? I took my seat in the back of the room and waited. The students appeared a few at a time, sat in their chairs, fiddled with their books, looked this way and that, and then, inevitably, caught sight of the screen.

What followed was the same in each case. The student would look at the screen, look at it a second time, think about it, then slowly turn to the back of the room.

What choice did I have? I waited until the moment our eyes met, smiled a big smile, the kind of smile you see on idiots, and waved.