He didn’t understand why people watched Disney movies when they were depressed. He supposed it was because they were cheerful, or maybe because they reminded people of a time when they were a child, and therefore life was easier. Paris thought the cheerfulness was almost painful, as if the happy critters and smiling princesses were mocking him, and he definitely didn’t like thinking about his childhood any more than he had to.
He sat on the couch in his father’s darkened living room with his feet propped up on the coffee table and a half-eaten bowl of popcorn in his lap, and Sassy curled up against his thigh. Two empty cans of beer sat beside one another on the end table. A third sat mostly full on the coffee table by his feet.
His father was sleeping, and so he had the television all to himself. It flashed through the darkness, the only light in the room, in a continuous stream of moving figures and all too familiar music.
Sleeping Beauty had always been his favorite Disney movie because it had always been one of his favorite ballets. Even if it wasn’t nearly the same, it still had the music, and Aurora was lovely and Phillip was so charming and the three good fairies always made him smile and Maleficent was the best kind of evil. Once when he’d been little, his father had even talked to him about it, joining him on the couch – drunk, he was sure now – and going on and on about how beautiful the art was and how they didn’t make animated movies like that anymore.
Now, in his misery, Paris couldn’t find any enjoyment in it at all.
Aurora was just a dumb little girl who didn’t know any better than to talk to strangers and touch a stupid spindle because some evil witch-fairy put a spell on her and told her to. Phillip was just some perv prince who liked to prey on dumb, innocent peasant girls, making them believe in such stupid things as love at first sight so that they’d tell him where they lived and he could visit them later. The three good fairies were horrible guardians who let their charge disappear right under their very noses because they left her alone when everyone knew that when someone was that depressed you shouldn’t leave them alone, because they’d probably end up doing some pretty dumb things.
Maleficent was still good, though. She was just angry because the dumb king and queen hadn’t invited her to the party. Paris could understand. He’d be pretty pissed, too.
He grabbed his third can of beer to take a swig as Aurora and Prince Phillip frolicked around in the forest together, singing about love and dreams and nothing that was real. If any of it was real, Maleficent would have won in the end, because that was how life worked.
Everything always fell apart, and what was there that was left?
Just loneliness.
Just pain and suffering and heartache.
Disney movies were the worst things to watch when one was miserable and drinking themselves into a drunken stupor, he decided, while their sick, alcoholic and dying-from-it father slept in the next room, and their ex-boyfriend moped across town and threw lamps at the walls because he couldn’t come up with a better way to release his anger.
Fairytales were a joke. He’s always known it. Just stories adults told to little children to give them false misconceptions that love and happiness were out there somewhere, just waiting for them to stumble across it in a beautiful forest.
He knew better.
Dreams might be better than reality, but they faded away as soon as you woke up, and then there was nothing left to do but sit on the couch and cry your eyes out over a bowl of popcorn.
******************************
The following day, Monday, Paris woke up, still on the couch, and dragged himself to the shower. He skipped his morning jog, and washed, dressed, and left without breakfast, opening the shop and going throughout the workday on autopilot, empty and dead inside. He left in the afternoon to go to his dance lesson, but he was dull and listless and the waltz from Sleeping Beauty kept playing in his head, over and over until he wished he were sleeping so that he wouldn’t have to hear it, and if he did at least it would be better because he’d be dreaming, and he could escape from all the horrible feelings that weighed him down in the waking world.
After his lesson was over, he didn’t return to the shop as he normally would. He stayed out for a few hours, hit up one of the local bars, had a few drinks, and then went elsewhere, to do something for himself, numb and wishing he were smarter, wishing he weren’t as dumb as Aurora, who should have known better than to touch that spindle.
He was back on the couch again that night, with beer and potato chips and his feet propped up on the coffee table, and Sassy curled up against his thigh.
And on the side of his left foot, positioned to be perfectly hidden by his dance shoes, was a set of four words inked in ornate black script, next to a tiny blue rose in full bloom, whose stem curled elegantly beneath.
’Once upon a dream…’
Aurora danced on the screen with her fairytale prince in the woods.
Paris cried his eyes out again and thought maybe this was why people watched Disney movies when they were depressed.
Because sometimes people needed to cry and hope for better.
