Originally published by the Clifton Courier, January 8, 2020

I went to the movies the other day as a bit of a treat.

It was a stinkin’ hot Brisbane day so I decided to take advantage of someone else’s air conditioning and, at the same time, get a bit of culture up me. I mean, most of the movie references I make these days are from the likes of Titanic and Dude… Where’s my Car? so I really need to work on my pop culture knowledge. Not that there’s anything wrong with either of those cinematic masterpieces, but they’re a little old. When someone asked me for my TV show recommendations the other day, my suggestions of Cougar Town and Midsomer Murders were met with judgemental guffaws. I’ve suspected for a while now, after years of re-watching the same episodes of Gilmore Girls, Grand Designs and Girls of the Playboy Mansion, my pop culture knowledge is somewhat… niche.

I want to stay with it, remain relevant and, most importantly, get the references in jokes people make on Twitter.

Going to the movies is a good place to start, I figure, and it’s much nicer to go out the picture theatres instead of lying in a sweat patch on the couch for six hours straight until the Netflix message that pops up asking if you’re still watching suggests you’ve lost control of your life.

I decided to go to one of the old-timey cinemas, one that’s genuinely called a picture theatre (and, I like to imagine, has staff that pronounce “film” with two syllables, like “fill-um”).

It was a good choice.

The place had an old Hollywood vibe that was charming, not tacky. They let you drink pints at midday. The seats were more like armchairs, but the kind of armchair you’d never buy for yourself because you know you’d never leave the house if you had one at home.

The popcorn was like no popcorn I’d ever experienced before. I don’t know how they did it, but those popped kernels were twice the size of piddly puffs in the packing material you get at other theatres. I mean, I love the stuff they serve at other movie theatres – that fake butter powder they coat it in is fantastic, like a kind of salty fairy dust. But this old timey popcorn was the way popcorn was supposed to be. I’m not saying I’d pick it for my last meal – at this stage, a hot chippie sandwich still has that honour – but it was easily the best thing I’ve eaten* all year.

* I’d originally said “put in my mouth” instead of “eaten” but changed it because I didn’t want to be unnecessarily filthy

I was really into the movie when I got to my last piece of popcorn, somehow losing it on the journey from the tub to my mouth.

Not taking my eyes off the screen, I felt around the side of my cushy armchair for the divine kernel which had renewed my faith in corn-based snack foods. I began to fear I’d lost it to the floor when my fingers close around a familiar shape.

Eyes still on the screen, I raised it to my mouth and chewed.

Its texture was like popcorn, but also reminded my of the carpet underlay I see people ripping up to reveal hardwood floors on home reno shows.

It tasted like someone used an old newspaper to wipe down a window after a dust storm… and that newspaper had somehow contracted a nasty strain of the flu.

I don’t think I have synaesthesia (which is, as I learned after a quick Google, the name for the neurological condition where sensory experiences are attached to other senses), but I described it to people as tasting like a colour. Visualise a very pale, dusty green with flecks of a bluey black. That’s how it tasted.

Someone else had sat in that seat weeks (or so it tasted) before me and, clearly, they were not as enraptured with the popcorn as I was. Rather than ferreting around for their dropped piece, they left it in the crease of the cushion to fester until it was more mothball than popcorn.

I scraped the cursed kernel off my tongue, slopped it into the popcorn tub and washed the taste out with the remaining glug of cider I’d thankfully saved for myself.

When the movie ended, I left before the lights came on so I couldn’t see what was globbed in salvia in the bottom of that popcorn tub.

Part of me was curious to see if what I tasted was the colour I saw in my mind’s eye, but I decided I didn’t need to see what had been in my mouth.

Some things are best left unknown.