Balloon Phobia

My boyfriend took me to a screening of Bam Bam and Celeste, which is the feature film written by and starring Margaret Cho. We saw it at the Castro Theater, which is this very large, very old and beautiful theater in San Francisco. It has an enormous vaulted ceiling with some kind of spiky art deco-looking chandelier at the apex.

Because it was Gay Pride weekend in San Francisco, there was a happy party atmosphere in the theater and everyone was boisterous. There were several giant candy-colored round balloons being batted about, not regular balloons, but the ones that look more like yoga balls. People would push them high into the air with their fingertips and the balloons would float up and then drift gently down. Some people had fun trying to get balloons to go to the people in the balcony seating area. Meanwhile, a musician played happy circus music on this fancy cream-colored organ that rose from the floor.

All well and good. Except that I have balloon phobia! I've always had an unnatural dislike of balloons. I like to see them from a distance, but not touch them, and I absolutely feel sick when I see people stretching them, pretending to pop them, or horsing around with them in general. I had a job a few years ago where we had to do some STUPID team-trust-building exercise with balloons (and WHY? there was nothing wrong with our team, except that one woman was sleeping with several of the men. But so what? Why should their drama make the rest of us have to play stupid balloon games?). In this exercise, you had to blow up a balloon and then pinch the top closed and hand the balloon off to the person on the right, and then the left, and the third person clockwise, etc, and the point was something really stupid like, "The moral of the story is that unless you rely on your teammates, you will end up holding too many balloons and air will get out of the balloons!" For this, they paid some consultant actual money?! Anyhow, with all the stupid ex-frat boy types pretending to pop their balloons and letting their stinky breath out of the balloons, I got really phobic and freaked out. So I left on the pretense of going to the bathroom and didn't return.

Anyhow, that's how much I fear balloons.

There we were in this lovely theater with a lot of people playing balloons, and also there was that sharp-looking chandelier at the top. My boyfriend told me, "I'm pretty sure those are the kind that don't pop."

Okay. It seemed reasonable, since they're so huge, and they looked kind of thick, and they seemed as though they were made for batting into the air. I actually got happy and hoped a balloon would come floating toward me so I could floof it up into the air. I watched the balloon game for a while, and then suddenly !!!POP!!! - a goddamned balloon popped!

I gave my boyfriend the dirtiest look I could. "Oops," he said sheepishly. He pulled his wallet out of his pocket and handed me a $20 bill. "Why don't you go to the bathroom and get some popcorn?"
I snatched the bill in silence and stormed off.

But the movie was hysterically funny, campy and good. It's being released in September, in the major cities. You'll have to bring your own horrible balloons!