Fucking hell, I love Mindhunter so much

Maybe I love Mindhunter so much because I loved The Silence of the Lambs so much.

Here’s how I remember it:

It was Easter Sunday. I feel like I was 5th or 7th grade…I was 10, or 12, maybe. But it was close to when The Silence of the Lambs was released. And I was at my grandparents’ in suburban Chicago, a single story 60s ranch with a fireplace that extended from the first floor in stone slate splendor and found another home for itself in the shag-carpeted basement.

The basement was where the good stuff happened. That’s where the men and the scrappy under 12 year old set would steal away to play pool, throw darts, blast FM radio on a 70s Pioneer. There was Michelob and a little cursing. The women would be upstairs, trying to get along, two trying to not insult one, the two trying to impress the other, ensure they stayed in whatever will was around.

Margaritas in a blender, and gin and tonics. The smell of these unfinished Georgian style cabinets (it doesn’t make sense but trust me on this) filled with Dr. Pepper, Mr & Mrs T Bloody Mary mix, Diet Coke, me always thinking I’d find hidden treasure in those recesses. A book, a cool painting, a forgotten Easter Egg.

The book, the only place I could have found it was in the bedroom where me and my brother would stay. That’s where books were, and they were nothing I was ever interested in.

I feel like it’d remember finding Stephen King at my grandparents’ house. I bet it was spy and detective novels, some Mary Higgins Clark. The Cholesterol Diet. If it was Bosch now, I’d be into it. Then? I don’t even know.

But I found a copy of The Silence of the Lambs. Whether it was before or after mass, had me and my brother slept over or spent the weekend, I don’t remember. But Easter Sundays, we always spent there. Grandma’s eggs, bacon fried in the grease, bagels, German jam with the seeds, English muffins, Total, grapefruit juice, terrible coffee (I only learned later - I was none the wiser to Maxwell House at 11). Mass in the morning. They’d read the Chicago Tribune cover to cover, matching recliners, grandma on the right, grandpa on the right.

I like to think I finished it that Easter Sunday. It was a fucking page turner, you know, a small paperback, and I have vivid memories of being curled up on floral couch in my grandparents’ living room dressed in a seafoam green and cream jumpsuit really meant for a divorcée four times my age, but was probably on sale at JC Penney’s on a flammable fire sale, God I had No Fucking Taste then.

I’m pretty sure I wrote a book report. Maybe even did a presentation on it. And now, that I’m firming up the details, there’s no way this happened in Catholic school. It had to be 7th grade. Public School. There’s no way I could talk about a free babe like Clarice in the presence of a man dying in the corner on a cross, above a pencil sharpener, something drawn with the chunky crayola markers, the PA speaker where Sister Marilee said announcements. What a bizarre ritual. Announcements read through a loudspeaker. We might as be illiterate and need news from the coasts.

The details I remember: she had a strong friendship with her roommate, and she would squeeze a stressball (or something else?), that would strengthen her hand muscles so she could pull a trigger faster.

My dad, bless his heart, after I said I wanted to watch the movie, made a “Dad Edit” of it. I didn’t know about the cunt smelling part, or the face ripping off in the movie until my 20s. I had a PG-13 VHS dad edit that I watched All. The. Time.

I’m going to take a bet and guess that no other friends shared my obsession. “Hey you wanna come over and watch Silence of the Lambs: Dad Edit with me? I have some sick pizza bagels and granola bars my mom got from Market Day, my brother won’t fart a lot.” I probably kept that shit to myself. I’m positive I started to say things in Jodie’ Foster’s fake southern accent. I really, really wanted a shot at the FBI.

But in my later life? People quoted it. I made a liver slupring sound to try to make a joke at my sister’s wedding. I think they all think I have serious developmental problems. I danced to Goodbye Horses in basements, watched Jonathan Demme-directed films from Storefront Hitchcock in a college movie theater in Minnesota to a matinée Rachel Getting Married in a local single movie theater in rural Virginia. He’s a legend. Uncompromising. And that Howard Shore score? I can hear that thick, blood-prickling opening music without even having seen the film in probably 10 years. You done fucked me up Howard Shore.

And what the fuck does Mindhunter have to do with this post?

Mindhunter makes me remember reading and watching The Silence of the Lambs. The muted colors, the subtle, parallel performances of Jonathan Groff and Jodie Foster. They’re bookends. Focused, early career, tragic, close to breaking. Obsessive. Right.

I want to mainline Mindhunter to carry with me into sleep, wander through a tiled basement, where it might as well be my office or a morgue, to sit at a desk, press play, slip on oversized headphones, and concentrate on an interview of someone who has done far worse things than me.