<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Saturday Night Fever<\/em> by Jim Harrison<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n My date for opening night<\/p>\n\n\n\n of Saturday Night Fever<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n at sold out Southgate Theater,<\/p>\n\n\n\n an eighth grader named<\/p>\n\n\n\n after a queen in the Old Testament<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Wavy brown hair<\/p>\n\n\n\n past her shoulders,<\/p>\n\n\n\n a long chiseled schnoz,<\/p>\n\n\n\n gorgeous trademark<\/p>\n\n\n\n a mother would<\/p>\n\n\n\n surely amputate today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lissome,<\/p>\n\n\n\n long distance runner’s body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A long distance runner,<\/p>\n\n\n\n mediocre,<\/p>\n\n\n\n but I always watched her<\/p>\n\n\n\n finish her races on the cinder track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Parents dropped off four junior high couples,<\/p>\n\n\n\n left to drink, smoke, carouse<\/p>\n\n\n\n in a Chinese joint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Movie rated R,<\/p>\n\n\n\n how did we get in?<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was 1977, that’s how.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Couples scattered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The queen and I sat<\/p>\n\n\n\n in the front row,<\/p>\n\n\n\n the only time I have sat<\/p>\n\n\n\n in the front row of a movie theater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She wore a loose, silky,<\/p>\n\n\n\n vertically-striped shirt,<\/p>\n\n\n\n white, mauve, violet,<\/p>\n\n\n\n reaching a millimeter below her navel,<\/p>\n\n\n\n top two buttons unbuttoned,<\/p>\n\n\n\n bottom two buttons unbuttoned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When she leaned back in the seat,<\/p>\n\n\n\n angled upward to the screen,<\/p>\n\n\n\n shirt slithered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I saw her stomach,<\/p>\n\n\n\n flat, soft, soon lit by strobe lights<\/p>\n\n\n\n flashing in the disco<\/p>\n\n\n\n where Tony tore it up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She held a jumbo box of popcorn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cup of Coke rested on the sticky floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The opening sequence,<\/p>\n\n\n\n the greatest one in American cinematic history,<\/p>\n\n\n\n began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I placed my right hand on the stomach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I felt heat, perspiration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her breathing changed,<\/p>\n\n\n\n stomach twitched;<\/p>\n\n\n\n she didn’t look at me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The opening was that great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My hand remained there the entire movie,<\/p>\n\n\n\n (I hated popcorn, never drank Coke.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n gravitated upward once, not very far,<\/p>\n\n\n\n never downward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We were in the front row after all,<\/p>\n\n\n\n surrounded by adults<\/p>\n\n\n\n who didn’t give a shit then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We couldn’t make out in dark corners<\/p>\n\n\n\n or empty balconies,<\/p>\n\n\n\n like we always did in the weekend matinees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I never saw a frame of Superman<\/em> or Heaven Can Wait<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why am I writing this poem about an incident<\/p>\n\n\n\n that occurred in a now razed theater a half century ago,<\/p>\n\n\n\n the paradise they paved over to put up a parking lot?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because I was reading a novella by Jim Harrison<\/p>\n\n\n\n and the incident slithered through my mind<\/p>\n\n\n\n like her shirt did that night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jim Harrison’s fiction makes you recall such moments,<\/p>\n\n\n\n and he deserves a poem in the afterlife about Saturday Night Fever<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n inspired by his immortal writing<\/p>\n\n\n\n describing the fabrics that once clothed female bodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n First Journal<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of those useless in-service days for Oregon City teachers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No school Friday for sophomores in the fall of 1979.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My mom was a teacher,<\/p>\n\n\n\n so no one home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She came over, the rally girl<\/p>\n\n\n\n with long, brown, feathered hair,<\/p>\n\n\n\n endless curious eyes,<\/p>\n\n\n\n curves like the Clackamas River.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think we’d been going out for two weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We retired to my tiny downstairs bedroom<\/p>\n\n\n\n and its appointment: Sports Illustrated<\/em> covers stapled to the walls, ceiling,<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dallas Cowboy comforter,<\/p>\n\n\n\n junior high sports trophies,<\/p>\n\n\n\n piggy bank,<\/p>\n\n\n\n my beagle snoozing on the rug.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A kid\u2019s room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She noticed my journal,<\/p>\n\n\n\n the classic black and white composition book,<\/p>\n\n\n\n resting on my desk, open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I had started the first journal of my life,<\/p>\n\n\n\n an irritating requirement for Beginning Journalism,<\/p>\n\n\n\n on the first day of school two months ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She was intrigued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She’d never known<\/p>\n\n\n\n anyone who kept a journal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She wanted to read it!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I had material about her!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I said yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She wore blue disco jeans,<\/p>\n\n\n\n and a red hooded sweatshirt<\/p>\n\n\n\n over a white bra.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shoes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n We tumbled down on my twin bed<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first girl ever on that bed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We began making out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She directed my hands under the sweatshirt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I explored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The slats snapped, crackled, popped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We fell with the mattress to the floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The beagle never woke up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We laughed as we untangled our bodies from the bedding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How was I going to tell my mother about the broken bed?<\/p>\n\n\n\n She wasn\u2019t ready for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She still isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The rally girls left and took my journal home for the weekend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I walked to a construction site across the street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I didn\u2019t see any workers around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I sneaked into the house,<\/p>\n\n\n\n stole scrap wood,<\/p>\n\n\n\n brought boards home,<\/p>\n\n\n\n measured,<\/p>\n\n\n\n whipped out a saw,<\/p>\n\n\n\n sawed,<\/p>\n\n\n\n replaced the slats,<\/p>\n\n\n\n righted the mattress,<\/p>\n\n\n\n made the bed,<\/p>\n\n\n\n swept up the sawdust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Within seconds, the beagle jumped on the comforter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She returned the journal Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She had written in it! Three pages!<\/p>\n\n\n\n The only time in the 249 journals written since<\/p>\n\n\n\n that anyone else but me wrote in one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An excerpt:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now that I’ve met Matt, I don’t see anything without him. If he decided he didn’t like me, it would totally rip me apart. I have given him my heart and all of me. It would totally destroy me if he left me.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n She dumped me two weeks later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I never wrote about it<\/p>\n\n\n\n or the broken bed slats in my journal,<\/p>\n\n\n\n but I am writing about it now,<\/p>\n\n\n\n almost a half century later,<\/p>\n\n\n\n consulting that first journal for reference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Coin Toss<\/p>\n\n\n\n We always went to the Oregon City bowling alley on our dates<\/p>\n\n\n\n although we never bowled a single frame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I always flipped a quarter,<\/p>\n\n\n\n she always called it in the air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I caught it, called it out,<\/p>\n\n\n\n and our fates began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If I lost,<\/p>\n\n\n\n I had to sneak into the bowling alley,<\/p>\n\n\n\n sneak into the men\u2019s restroom,<\/p>\n\n\n\n slide a quarter into a condom machine,<\/p>\n\n\n\n turn a silver knob<\/p>\n\n\n\n until a three-pack dropped to a tray below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If she lost, same story in the women’s restroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Always lubed,<\/p>\n\n\n\n no preposterous purple pricklers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We sure went to that bowling alley a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What else was there to do in 1982?<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the purchase,<\/p>\n\n\n\n She fired up her brown Pinto hatchback and drove us to<\/p>\n\n\n\n the parking lot of a stone church near the John McLoughlin House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No AM radio playing<\/p>\n\n\n\n because we always talked when she drove.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The police never rousted us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Saturday Night Fever by Jim Harrison My date for opening night of Saturday Night Fever at sold out Southgate Theater, an eighth grader named after a queen in the Old Testament Wavy brown hair past her shoulders, a long chiseled schnoz, gorgeous trademark a mother would surely amputate today. Lissome, long distance runner’s body. A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9966,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-poetry","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9964"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9968,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9964\/revisions\/9968"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}