"Why I Watch Groundhog Day on Repeat" by Mairead Robinson

Spent Sunday morning fucking a hot guy and we were exhausted by sex and uppers and all-night drinking, and he said, ‘what’ll we do?’ so we mooched to the ABC to see Groundhog Day, just released, and what I recall is not the film, but a guy called Dan from work, sitting alone on the front row and me thinking, awww, poor Dan, all alone like that, not knowing that within days I’d be a curled furry ball in a tree stump of, it’s not you, it’s me and all that schtick I’ve heard a gazillion times, again and again, like time-looping Bill Murray looming huge and ass-holey in front of Dan’s blue-lit face, right there on the first row – I mean, why sit so close to the screen? 

Basic premise is that dead-pan Bill, beyond the initial confusion, sardonicises his way into a reckless hedonism of one-night stands and eat-drink to excess, because time’s standing still with no consequence, so you can take a shot at banging Andi MacDowell night after night, you can take that slap in the face again and again and then some, because even if at first you don’t succeed, you’ve got forever for her to think you a through and through jerk, until you spiral into a depression whereby you know all the answers on Double Jeopardy, but repeatedly fail at ending your static, meaningless life.

You always wake up. And it’s always the same.

I discuss this with Dan over curly fries in the work canteen. He’s a film buff, bookish too, and really, okay; kind of wry, despite splinter-bitten nails and a glancing away when I meet his eyes. Brown eyes.

We go on a date but Dan’s tee-total. His pockets rattle pills but he doesn’t share, and he claims he can’t dance, so we walk through the snow of our own Punxatawnie, and I teach him some steps to a faraway sax as the slow stars waltz overhead. I lean in to kiss, but Dan pulls back.

He doesn’t have long. Months, a few years. He can’t say.

In Groundhog Day, Bill Murray’s journey out of fuckwittedness manifests itself in carving angels from ice and playing bluesy piano in a late-night bar. He can catch an ingrate kid falling from a tree, but learns that no amount of hot soup and CPR can save a man destined to die. 

I taught Dan that if you sit further back from the screen, you don’t have to feel so small. We went back to the future, busted ghosts, got ourselves a bigger boat over popcorn, and he learned how to tango, but no amount of hot soup and CPR… 

We only ever had today.

It seems a while to the thaw. I’m frozen in my burrow and there’s a chutzpah of small-town folk at my door, saying Are you okay? 

Not yet. 

I need to recall brown eyes, a wry smile, and when I’m done watching reruns of Groundhog, I might go outside. Might meet myself moving forward.

Tomorrow, maybe. 

Mairead Robinson writes and teaches in the South West, UK. Her recent work has been placed in the Bath FFA and Shortlisted for Bridport, and other stories can be found in The Molotov Cocktail, Voidspace, Ellipsis Zine, Free Flash Fiction, Crow and Cross Keys, and other groovy places. When not writing, she is talking about writing to her dog, and anyone else who'll listen.