A couple of days ago, my friend Clarissa was telling me about an argument she had with her husband. “I was about to rent Milk,” she said, “and then Frank says, why would you want to see a movie about some gay guy getting shot? And I said, God, honey, you did not just do that! I mean, what’s the point of even watching it after he gave away the ending? What a jerk.”

            Clarissa is scary when she’s angry so I decided against telling her I couldn’t believe she didn’t remember the assassination of Harvey Milk and George Moscone. It was easier to agree that Frank was a jerk and leave it at that.

            Then, yesterday, I called my friend Ann. She asked if she could call back because she was watching Milk. “Another five or ten minutes,” she told me. “It’s almost over.”

            “Did he get shot yet?” I asked.

            There was silence on the other end. “No. But thanks for wrecking the surprise.”

            Surprise? This was unbelievable. Ann, Clarissa and I are around the same age. How had the Milk assassination managed to slide beneath their radar? I assumed that Milk was like Titanic, where the tragic inevitability of the iceberg collision and subsequent watery grave made the movie no less entertaining.

            I felt bad, and I told Ann I was sorry, but even as I apologized, I couldn’t understand how one wrecks the surprise of the recorded past. I’m not the spoiler here. History is.