Back in the World

Our apartment number is in the 2000s, so we assume that means there are at least 2000 apartments in our complex.  Okay, okay, probably not that many, but it is an exceedingly large complex nonetheless. Somehow, out of all 2000ish apartments, we received the one with the least amount of privacy.  We have three windows in our apartment (thankfully they are all quite large windows), and all of them face the same direction: out to the parking lot.  We realize that as the weather is cooling down and we are starting to keep our windows open permanently, our in-home privacy is basically gone.  Everyone going to or getting out of their cars can see and hear what we are doing inside our home.  To be fair, though, there are many other apartments in that same predicament.  What makes ours especially unique are the apartments directly across from and below us.  There is a nice, single, older man who lives below us.  He likes to keep his front door wide open to get the optimal breeze through his tv-room.  He sits on his couch or laz-e-boy chair all day long (apparently he doesn't work) and all night long (apparently he doesn't sleep) and watches us go in and out of our house.  He is a very friendly fellow, and likes to say hello every time he sees us.  We don't mind too much, but good grief, sometimes I just want to be able to leave my house without someone knowing every single time!  Even worse is the big-haired sullen guy who lives directly across from us.  He doesn't seem to work or sleep either.  He's not content to sit inside his house though.  He sits out on his front porch, smoking and staring directly into our bedroom window.  Throughout the day.  Throughout the night.  It doesn't matter.  He creeps us out.  

We figure that situation is basically unchangeable.  We like our apartment in all other respects and I am just grateful to have a home of my own again.  There is something else, though, on which I would love to receive your advice.  This weekend I am facing an extraordinary dilemma, one I have not encountered since middle-school.  

I came home from work with an R-rated movie in my bag yesterday.  I choose not to watch R-rated movies.  I hate (hate) watching man-to-man violence (the qualifier was added because I never had much trouble watching storm-troopers or orcs fall in battle...) and I really don't like watching other people's intimate moments either.  Before I went to college I could count the number of PG-13 movies I had watched on one hand, and even now I am fairly discriminatory about which movies I watch, regardless of rating.  Somehow, though, my movie choices have never really inhibited friendships.  In high school, my friends somehow knew about my beliefs and choices, and we weren't much of a movie-watching crowd anyway.  In college, I watched far more movies than I probably should have, but no one ever tried to press an R on me.  At Cambridge, my roommate forbade me from watching even the trailers of some of the movies she really enjoyed, automatically appointing herself guard over my movie choices without any prompting from me.  But now I'm living a real life, working a real full-time job for the first time in my life and spending lunch breaks with co-workers who don't know much about me.  I want to be friends with these people and already feel at a slight disadvantage because I don't go partying with them on the weekends.  

On Thursday, they were asking me what I was going to be for Halloween.  I told them I hadn't given it much thought, especially since last Halloween I was in England, where the bigger autumn holiday is Guy Fawkes day.  As soon as I mentioned the British holiday, all three girls lit up and said "V for Vendetta!  That movie is soooooo good!"  I have heard that the movie is good, actually, but I've never had the slightest desire to see it.  When they found out I had never seen it, they insisted that I do so immediately, one of them chiming in that she owned it and I could borrow it from her.  I think I gave a non-committal smile, which ended up not being enough to dispel their enthusiasm.  The next morning, when I walked into the break room for some water, my co-worker held the movie up with excitement.  I somehow made it out of the break room without taking it from her, but about ten minutes later she was laying it on my desk for me.  I didn't know what to say.

I'm sorry to admit that my first desperate response was, "Dave, do you think we can find it edited this weekend??"  My second response was....nothing.  I have no idea what to do now.  How do I explain my choices?  I have a sneaky suspicion that they will be completely aghast.  No drinking they can understand perhaps, even if they don't agree.  But not watching certain movies not because of genre taste, but because of content?  

I think my insecurity derives from self-reflection post-middle school.  When I was younger I was just as confident in my beliefs as I am now, but I wasn't afraid to declare them loudly.  I have thought about this a lot, and I genuinely believe, still, that I did not mean to boast or come across as holier-than-thou.  But I think I did come across that way, and some of my closest friendships suffered as a result (something I still regret).  Now that I know how potentially arrogant it can sound when I say "Sorry, I don't watch those things," I have lost all of my ability to say anything at all.  I'm stuck.  Any ideas?