Fat, Pretty, and Soon to be Old by Kimberly Dark

Author:Kimberly Dark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AK Press
Published: 2019-07-13T16:00:00+00:00

13. Becoming Travolta

Saturday Night Fever was the first R-rated movie I ever saw. I sat uncomfortably next to my mother during the whole film, knowing that at some point someone would have sex and that she’d have her eye on me.

And there it was: John Travolta and the woman he will dump start to have sex in the back seat of a car. But I was even more uncomfortable when that young woman cried because Travolta hooked up with someone else. I could feel my mother’s smugness. That trollop got her comeuppance. It was her own fault, and my mother wanted me to take a lesson. That’s what I imagined anyway. Later, at home, as she was ironing and I sat on her bed, my mother wanted to know if I had any questions about such an “adult film.”

Good heavens, no! Under no circumstances did I have any questions about that film. I most certainly did not. La-la-la. I tuned out whatever she said next. It was awful. The next time I saw an R-rated film with my mother was probably twenty years later, and it was only slightly less uncomfortable.

When I’m a guy in my mind’s eye, I’m a young John Travolta character. I’m Vinnie Barbarino from Welcome Back Kotter, or I’m dancing in a white suit in Saturday Night Fever. Or, better yet, I’m in all black with my hair slicked back, singing “You’re the One That I Want” in the final scene of Grease.

It’s not that I’m interested in being a guy or taking on a romantic role other than my own, but Travolta was one ingredient in my adolescent stew. He’s really the only male actor I’ve imitated with any regularity—and I became Travolta across a range of characters.

My friends and I loved the music from Saturday Night Fever. The Bee Gees were dreamy, and the Gibb brothers were the hotties of the day. Andy Gibb performed the first big stadium concert I ever attended. Though the film was important, not all of my friends were allowed to see it—because it was rated R—and the nightclub scene it depicted was a little complicated and disturbing for some of us. We mostly listened to the music and ignored the film. The romantic dancing was too hard to imitate anyway. We stuck with hip shaking and that diagonal, up-and-down pointing thing that Travolta did in his white suit.

When Grease came out a year later, however, my friends and I were in our element. Even though those actors didn’t look like high school kids, we accepted them as our own. It was 1978. My friends and I ranged in age from ten to thirteen, and the plot line was easier to understand than Saturday Night Fever. There was no urban grit, just the silly suburban setting in which our plotlines were also played, despite the 1950s being long gone. Grease was a superbly satisfying love story for us. And what did we love best? The transformation of Sandra Dee.

Wow! We all wanted to be her—to have that kind of power over that kind of guy.

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