When Harry Met Sally
But Have You Seen It High?
But have you seen it high? Every New Year’s Eve I watch 3 movies: The Apartment, When Harry Met Sally, and Sunset Boulevard. It’s a tradition I started, I don’t know 5 years ago? The movies usually played in the background, the soundtrack to my attempt to deep clean my apartment, and later for going out. As I sorted through clothes, C.C. Baxter served up spaghetti and meatballs:
As I clean my bookshelf, Bruno Kirby confidently declares:
I sort things I need to give away or throw away as Norma Desmond begins her journey back to Hollywood stardom:
New Year’s Eve is one of those nights where there’s so much pressure to DO SOMETHING and the idea of staying in is so lame, but one year it just kind of happened? I had a couple plans and then it got late and I was just at home and I figured cars are expensive, the surge pricing and just— imagining being at a party, listening to comedy friends shout bits over each other…
I thought maybe it was totally a-okay to just stay in and do the things I want to do, which is get high, watch movies, and drink some bubbly. The first year it felt like “okay, yeah, this isn’t so bad.” I think also I was sick with a cold so I drank a lot of orange juice with my champagne. The next year it was amazing. And then…
And then there was covid. And then there was me being (really) sick. And then it was not choosing to be alone on New Year’s Eve but being forced to be alone.
I can do alone—very well. I enjoy my company. I worked really hard to get to a place where I could be alone and not feel lonely. But doing alone too often gets draining and covid isolation plus pancreatitis isolation had taken a toll one me. After years of needing to stay in on NYE for either want or need had left me feeling disconnected, and for the first time in years, I actually wanted to see people and “party”.
But in the process of spring cleaning my apartment on December 31, I actually made it messier and now, still, there’s just piles everywhere…doom piles that I promise I will get to. I am only letting down myself. As the cleaning went on, it got later and later and even though I had an invite to the perfect NYE party (close by, small, all people I enjoy), I started to feel the urge to stay in. My cat, Clawdette had just undergone surgery the day before, and as she sat next to me on the couch, leaning her cone head on my lap, the little scar on her stomach pulsating as the anesthesia wore off, I felt like an asshole for even thinking of leaving her. And then I wondered, am I being too much of a cat lady? No, Clawdette was recovering from surgery and Trixie my other cat was wide-eyed with fear of this weird new smell Clawdette had brought into our home. I am a lady who owns cats, I am not a cat lady. Although, I’m not really sure how else one defines a cat lady.
So, rather for want or need, I was once again home alone on New Year’s Eve. I settled in to watch my movies. Figuring out the order is hard. It’s probably best to start with Sunset Boulevard, to get the most depressing one out of the way, but I decided to start with When Harry Met Sally, a movie that basically lives inside me one of the movies I used to watch daily, envisioning myself falling in love with someone who was already my best friend, because that storyline is my own fantastical romantic fantasy — how to make two lovers, out of friends? I didn’t want grand gestures of romanticism, I just wanted someone to figure out that they *did* have feelings for me, confess them and make a commitment to our relationship.
Usually I’ve scoffed at people who say Harry and Sally wouldn’t end up together. To me, because they are best friends —of course they should be together!!! Your partner is supposed to be your best friend! And I think both characters show growth and I do believe that when Sally says “and I hate you Harry, I really hate you.” she actually is saying I love you. And I love that his confession of love is loving all of her, all the weird and neurotic, and just knowing they already have this solid friendship and they make each other laugh, which are two key components I want in my relationships.
I almost had my own Harry and Sally romantic comedy IRL. At first it seemed like this perfect fairy tale. Someone I’d always “connected” with — we shared similar interests in comedy and movies, and in your early 20s, well that was all that mattered. Without further ado, here is my own When Harry Met Sally:
Harry and Sally had been friends through mutual friends, well I should clarify. Harry’s best friend’s older brother was my older brother’s best friend. My older brother’s best friend is my “Broseph”, I call him that cause his name is Joseph and I love him as a brother. I also love his younger brother Matt as my own brother, but Matt has not taken up the nickname “Bratt” as much as I’ve tried. Anyways that’s how Sally knew Harry, so their lives had been sort of intertwined. But Sally moved away and only saw Harry when she was home and hanging with her friends, but they both loved comedy, and the same television shows and talking about philosophy and life and they just clicked. And finally they started to hang out on their own. Sally was back home for a bit before heading back to NYC and while there, she and Harry grabbed drinks. What was supposed to be a quick hang turned into playing cards and laughing until almost 2 am. Harry told Sally about someone he was kind of/sort of dating but his hesitancy to continue that relationship while he was being deployed to Iraq, or Afghanistan or somewhere they were sending troops in 2008. Sally told Harry she didn’t think it was a good idea to start a relationship while you are deployed. Harry went off to basic training and Sally and Harry texted each other frequently, one-upping each others jokes. Harry called Sally the night before he was to be deployed and asked her to write him letters. Of course Sally agreed! Sally wrote Harry soon after so he would have mail soon. Sally got a call from Harry, while he was overseas, telling her that he got her letter, but in his excitement had ripped through her address and needed her to send him an email with her address. The letters flew back and forth, a whirlwind of updates and stories and jokes and poems and book and song suggestions. The letters grew more intimate, confessing how much they’d always wanted to get to know the other person. How they’d always felt this *connection*. Harry thought Sally was really funny, and as comedian, that goes a long way to winning her heart. And he won it through impassioned letters, speaking of how much she meant to him, how he could “count on one hand of a bad shop teacher the number of people who mean as much to him as she did”. He shared songs he would put on a playlist for her. He signed one letter quoting the Dashboard Confessionals song “Stolen”, “You are the best one, of the best ones” — a song which goes on to say….”You have…stolen…my…heart”. Sally was on cloud nine at the idea of this love story growing.
But then in January, Sally opened one of four (!!!) letters Harry had sent to her, and read a line that shook her to her core and started a path down an intenesely dark period where Sally lost her trust and faith in all things romantic. It read:
“I can’t wait until I’m back home and you and I can be together and making each other and our friends laugh. [KIND OF SORT OF DATING] and I are moving in together and I can’t wait to have you and all of our friends over.”
WHAT?
Sally was really confused and felt really stupid. Sally and Harry had a long conversation on the phone, where Harry apologized and told Sally she was the “last, last, last person he would ever want to hurt.” Sally has heard this a few times in her life, from men who have VERY MUCH hurt her, and she thinks if she was really the last last last person these people didn’t want to hurt, then…they wouldn’t hurt her?
[KIND OF SORT OF] sent Sally a very mean message on Facebook, accusing her of being a whore who waits in the sidelines to pounce on another woman’s man. Sally didn’t respond because, to quote Destiny’s Child, “I’m not gonna diss you on the internet…cause my Mama taught me better than that.” (which is exactly what Sally’s mother said when Sally told her about the message. “did you respond?” “No.” “Good, I taught you better than that.”)
[KIND OF SORT OF] knew about the letters because for some ungodly reason, Harry told her? I know honesty in relationships is important, but I also think there are some things you can just not let another person know, for the sake of everyone’s sanity. Harry and Sally planned a phone call to discuss “the plan”, which was that Harry was no longer allowed to talk to Sally, but when Harry got back, he would have Sally and [KIND OF SORT OF] and himself all go out for drinks and hash things out. But that, Harry was not going to act like this is highschool and not go to parties where our mutual friends would be at. (*arrested development narrator voice*: He did, in fact, treat the situation as if they were in high school.)
Sally was hurt and confused and honestly cried every day for about eight months. There were days she would get home after work and drinks with friends and she would think I made it! I didn’t cry today…and then the tears would just start. Sally and Harry tried to talk things out and in one of the times they talked, Harry told Sally that he told [KIND OF SORT OF] that “he wished he had the connection with her that he has with Sally”. Which is hurtful. To her. To me. If we have this connection, why force it with somebody else?
Harry and [KIND OF SORT OF] obviously had a very strained relationship. Sally and Harry eventually met up and hashed everything out, and slowly began to go through the motions of being friends again. Harry eventually left Sally a voice message saying “I’m tired of pretending there isn’t something between us, and I want to talk with you about this.”
But then next time Sally saw Harry, he was already talking to someone else. And then dating that someone else. Once Harry had over Sally and they were drinking white wine and listening to Grizzly Bear in his room with candles lit and Harry asked if this was normal, for friends to sit in a candlelit room, drinking white wine and listening to Grizzly Bear. “Oh well,” he sighed. “If she doesn’t get how important you are to me then she’s not the one for me.”
Spoiler alert: New GF got very jealous of Sally and Harry’s closeness and forbade Harry from talking to Sally. While Sally recognizes that Harry was the culprit in all of this and anger should have been directed towards him, she understood where the new GF was coming from. Sally, again was betrayed because Harry was seemingly so easily able to just end their friendship, taking all true meaning away from any of the things had ever said to her. His words “Oh well, if she doesn’t get how important you are to me, then she’s not the one for me.” hung over her head and every situation hanging with everyone was so painful, she was almost relieved when she was forbidden from talking to Harry. Harry and new GF got married. And then divorced. And then Sally and formerly new GF/current ex-wife talked and realized they both had similar experiences with Harry’s manipulation and potential narcissism. And they bonded about how so many of their friends could see him hurt women over and over and just still be friends with him.
And all of Harry’s friends, who are some of Sally’s best friends, reassured Sally she had probably dodged a bullet, and that Harry was “just really bad at interpersonal relationships”. But Sally learned some stuff about Harry from his ex, stuff that really concerned her, how mean he was to her, how manipulative, learning that something Harry did to her while they were married was actually criminal. And Sally wonders what her friends knew about Harry. And although Sally reached out to Harry during the pandemic, she felt awful about that because she knew how much he had hurt her and others. And now she felt sick because there’s a stark difference between “just being bad at relationships” and “My ex-wife could press charges against me”.
And still Sally misses that “connection” she had with Harry, whether it was genuine or not. I guess I miss the *idea* of that connection. I miss the friend I thought I had. I wish I could pause time at the Pawn Shop in that May of 2008, before the deployment, before the letters, and just live in that moment before this roller coaster began.
So clearly, my When Harry Met Sally…could have ended where the first break up happened, after “I’m tired of pretending there isn’t something between us” and we could have built on that alleged “connection” we had. Sally had always felt that *IF* Harry was telling the truth, and meant what he said in the letters way back, about their connection, about the “best one of the best ones”, then Harry and Sally would still be friends, and Harry wouldn’t be so easily able to throw their friendship aside for romantic relationships that ultimately did not work out.
But was any of it real? Was Harry just lovebombing Sally and manipulating her into thinking there was something there so he could have his cake and eat it too? Did Harry only tell Sally he was “tired of pretending there isn’t something between us” because he’d recently broken up with his girlfriend and he knew he had Sally trapped in that place of longing? Sally wonders if she and Harry would have worked at all? For years it felt that Harry just kept dating these women that he just wasn’t compatible with, when Sally felt their connection had to be different. Wasn’t it?
So, who wants to watch that movie? A movie where Sally falls in friendship love with Harry’s friend group, where she is so implanted within the group that Harry can never escape her, which sometimes feels like a strong curse she put on him. It’s been years since Harry and Sally have spoken to each other, outside of group hangs and parties, but Sally lives in a different city now, and the pandemic ended the one yearly gathering they always saw each other at.
And trust me, Sally is tired of thinking about this “movie” and this weird saga but she will say she is finally in a place where she can talk about it without feeling emotionally in that place. Thanks, EMDR.
So sometimes rom coms hit hard because I’ve never had that happy…beginning or ending. Where something grew out of a friendship, and wasn’t a quick make-out at a bar that leads to hanging out incessantly and then being sick of each other 3 weeks in.
I (famously) hate romantic comedies. They often use manipulation tactics and pass them off as “flirting”. They set unrealistic expectations. And I don’t get how cis-hetero men only pick up on the weird stalker-y aspects of rom coms, showing up at places they know you’ll be at, incessantly harassing them til they give in, and not the things like…sincere apologies, taking accountability for your actions…wait nevermind that makes sense.
But When Harry Met Sally is still one of my favorite films. The writing is perfect, Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan have this incredible chemistry and both do excellent eye-acting which is the hallmark of any great theatrical performance. And RIP Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher.
I will never not yell “Baby fish mouth! Baby fish mouth!!” when playing Pictionary —also vision board: more When Harry Met Sally style parties in 2023.
And each New Year’s I’ve had to spend alone, the last fifteen minutes of the film always comfort me. Sally trapped laughing at a bad joke, dying for a cab.
Harry at home in his bedroom, alone on New Year’s Eve, realizing he’s got Dick Clark -that’s tradition and:
…and then he bricks.
And the Knicks still haven’t won a championship which I will now be touting that there is a When Harry Met Sally curse on the New York Knicks. I’m really into curses now, apparently? (Also the Pacers still haven’t won a national championship — and that curse is that the motto of Pacers fans is “It is our lot in life to suffer).
Harry’s voice-over as he wanders the streets of New York, the loneliest overcrowded city in the world, walking aimlessly when he realizes what has been right in front of him all along, the music swelling and you know that this incredibly love story is ready to begin.
There’s maybe something not great at Harry sort of accosting Sally at the NYE party, because that’s a weird place to confess love and emotions are high, and also how could they hear each other? But I still find it endearing. I like the idea of realizing who you want and love and wanting them to know that right in that moment. And then committing to them, not like marrying the next person you date and ending your friendship with someone who supposedly is “the best one of the best ones”. And, this wasn’t someone he’d just met, or dated for a brief time. This was his best friend, who he knew, truly knew and that even the annoying things about her he loved because he knew her.
And isn’t that love? To truly know someone, to be truly known. The other day my friend was grieving her ex and she said “I just want someone to sit here, not even with me, but just in this apartment and accept all of my madness.” And I said, “You live in Queens and my cat is recovering from surgery.”
But I am always available to accept someone’s madness.
Substack is to the 2020s what LiveJournal was to the 2000s.