Clerks II

Getting older isn't easy, but it doesn't have to suck.

At the end of Clerks, Dante appears to have his romantic situation sorted, and we're left with a shred of hope that he might get his life together. Randal and Dante appear to have patched things up, and though they both have to work the next day, we still get the vibe that their station in life is temporary.

At the beginning of Clerks II, Dante pulls in to the same old QuickStop, steps out of his car wearing pretty much the same outfit and sporting the same goatee, and finds the store on fire. Then Randal shows up. He still works there, too. As the store burns down, reality dawns on them: after more than a decade behind the counter, Dante and Randal are forced into the world. They end up down the street, flipping burgers. The complacency just relocates.

I know about lost time and complacency. I taught at my alma mater for five years after I graduated. I don't consider those years wasted because I wrote a ton and got loads of teaching experience, and I really (re)discovered how much I love both. However, I often wonder how five years went by so quickly. I finished my undergrad degree in 1999. I was 24. I finished three grad degrees before I turned 30. Then what happened?

I got comfortable teaching at my alma mater. I knew the campus. I knew the people. I liked the students. I had my own office with an actual door, window, and mini-fridge. I was 15 miles from the house where I grew up. I wasn't really working toward any goals, though, and I was banging on a glass ceiling. Contract faculty are second-class citizens in a university.

I got some writing done, but as far as moving my life forward, I barely moved at all. Each academic year was a rerun of the previous year, with different faces and similar departmental drama. I came home mad almost every night.

Every day at Ball State was a reminder of how far I never went. My friends were in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago. I was in Muncie. I couldn't bring myself to attend graduation ceremonies because I couldn't leave town with the graduates.

During this phase, there were two women on my radar who were more successful than I, and I had a hard time reconciling my station in life with their successes — not because of some sexist baloney, but mostly because I was holding myself up to other people my age and feeling inferior. (I did the same thing with my friends. I couldn't get past the fact that my friends grew up without me. I mean, they were right here, and then they were someone else. I still can't get my head around how fast everyone moved, even if I'm catching up.) Anyway, both women read me the riot act about how life wasn't going to come to me and that I had to do something to improve my situation. My response was to lose interest in them and keep doing what I was doing. Go figure.

Not long after, my wife and I started dating. Things with her made sense. They moved at the right pace. We soon figured out some goals, but we weren't in a hurry. Four years later, I'm out of that job, out of that town, married, and a homeowner, and I'm writing, which completes the picture. Life is never perfect, but this is pretty good compared to five years ago. I no longer feel like a failure when I see my students graduate and I can't follow them. I'm in a better teaching job — one that affords me more opportunities and a future. I no longer envy my friends or feel terribly alienated from them in the same way. I still feel like I lost a lot of friends in the last few years, but I feel more certain about my own thing now.

Thing is, getting older sucks, and you do lose friends along the way as people move on with their lives. You think you'll be friends for life, but shit happens. People move. People get resentful and petty. People bail on you. People have kids and forget all about you. We're left to figure out things on our own. That's life. Not everybody is along for the whole ride.

Clerks II came along right in the middle of that evolution. I had crazy thoughts after watching this film. "Maybe there's nothing wrong with being a 'lifer.'" "Maybe if teaching doesn't work out, I could open a record store in Muncie." I would've been perfectly happy staying in my hometown, running a little record shop, and writing.

Wait, what? No. I would never want to do those things, no matter how good they sound. I hate my hometown (even though I love my hometown). I don't want to be there, but I always feel pulled back. Such is the duality of the southern thing.

Despite a complacency that traps them in a convenience store for 12 years, Randal and Dante don't ever truly communicate until they're locked in jail together. Randal finally admits to Dante what makes the most sense: "I'd buy the QuickStop and re-open it myself. That's what I would do. That's what we should do." The idea sounds perfect. I find myself wishing them well through the TV screen, and wishing this place really existed so I could stop by and take comfort in the stability for a little while.

I love that Jay and Silent Bob give Dante and Randal the money to buy the store. I love that Randal drops his guard and begs Dante to stay. I love that Dante proposes to Becky at the drive-up window, the most unromantic place in his life — and to the woman who doesn't believe in romance — and that turns out to be one of the most genuinely romantic scenes Smith has ever put together. I love that the last time we see Jay and Silent Bob, they're outside the QuickStop again, where we met them.

But best of all, I love that Smith backs away from Dante and Randal behind the counter, goes to black and white as he pulls back through the store, brings up Soul Asylum's "Misery," and somehow still had the good sense to avoid an overly maudlin or pretentious ending with one last, loving joke — the milkmaid, ransacking the cooler, looking for that one gallon of milk that doesn't go bad for a decade. What a perfect ending. Just perfect.

More than a decade after spouting "I'm not even supposed to be here today," over and over on that truly awful day in Clerks, Dante finds himself exactly where he is supposed to be, and surprisingly, I feel good for him.