Writing with Rox WEEKLY—Night Fever

It seems like every ten years or so I am hit by a sudden need to watch Saturday Night Fever. Perhaps it's because my son Jude just turned eight, the exact same age I was when Ma took me to Westwood Village to a ten pm show with her boyfriend Jay. 

In all fairness, I begged. I pleaded and moaned. I got down on my scabby roller-skater girl knees and shouted. I didn't get that is was inappropriate. It didn't matter that it would give me nightmares.  This was a matter of disco. It was 1978 and disco was everything. It was disco or die as far as I was concerned. If only I could convince Ma to take me, I'd score major points with peer pressure. The older kids would accept me into their roller clubs, friends would revere me, and surfer Jered would take me out on a date to 7-11, ogling over my maturity.  As it was, everyone was already jealous that I had such a cool mom. 

"But I already got you those fucking satin pants, Roxanne. And look? You ruined them already."

Sure enough there were holes in my Starburst Orange satin disco pants within a week of purchase. She didn't believe me when I told her the holes were caused by my brother Ben farting on them so many times, with such putrid blasts, that several holes were burned into them. "I don't see how else it happened, Ma."

"No way, Roxanne, " Ma huffed, leaving a trail of smoke all over my disco moves. "And I don't see how your roller skating teacher could assign a movie for homework. We're not going. Now turn that down!"

"Well... it's more like she suggested it. Come on, Ma. Even you think John Travolta is cute. You said yourself you wanted to go see it!"

I don't know how or why Ma finally caved; perhaps my incessant begging eroded her common sense. Though I suppose it may have had something to do with Jay, who like many of Ma's boyfriends, considered me a pain in the ass, worthy of consequences, given he worked in corrections. Or possibly, likely, because both of them weren't too far away from youth themselves, remembering what it was like to crave the wild night like a child, the same way I did. 

Perhaps it is that same rush of adrenalin that calls me now—older  than each of them at the time, at least by ten years—back to that movie time and time again. That calls me to exclaim "let's go dancing!" to whomever I happen to be watching with. Less often I disclose my intense craving for a smoke, not so much because it caresses some unfulfilled hole inside (it used to!), but because it looks so damn cool. That's the danger in movies for me. I know better, but my young body, my wishful, longing, Hollywood body, is still vulnerable to the tricks of the trade, which for memories such as this, had its place in the sun. Or the hot seventies night, as it were.

And that night was a dream. I vividly remember walking up Westwood Boulevard, heading toward the theatre just south of Wilshire on that late summer night. I bounced between Ma and Jay, decked in their best everyday disco clothes, me with the patched up satin pants, matching yellow shirt with orange satin star in the middle, disco's stamp on modern clothing. There was talk of dance moves and the coolest movie there was ever was. There was an unspoken ecstasy in the strut each of us walked up the city sidewalk that night, a smug understanding that we were the coolest people on earth, Ma and Jay looking fancy and fine with their Marlboro Reds dangling off their lips. 

The memory is encased in disco, sirens and night lights spiraling around me as we hustled in with the crowds just in time. We shared a huge tub of popcorn smothered in butter, large drinks, feet propped on the seats ahead of us. "Oh cool..." I said, as the opening credits unfolded over JT strutting those disco streets I craved so deeply in my young body, the momentum of cool. 

"Cool!" Ma echoed, and at that, I knew I was exactly where I needed to be. I belonged. And one thing I knew for sure, enhanced by the Bee Gees beat pounding with rhythm and momentum, the soundtrack to this forever night: I am special. For that night, I was part of the scene, among the adults with the world (and dance floor) at their feet. 

And that feeling lasted until disco had it's huge backlash a few years later. Things went downhill between me and Ma. Jay left. The eighties came. We learned to dance real lame. Poor John Travolta was exiled from the new wave. Friends and I TP'd houses all over the neighborhood, writing "disco sucks" in egg yolk and shaving cream all over LA's manicured lawns.

As I watched SNF again this past weekend, it occurred to me about that backlash. Why did everyone suddenly detest disco? I remember it being violent, the hatred, as though disco was some writhing disease in bell bottoms. And in the height of peer pressure, I went along with the hatred, agreeing to reject a deep part of myself in the face of Culture Club, aloofness, and androgyny. Running scared from myself in a feral city that broadcasted its utter hatred toward disco, I was reborn a depressed, motionless adolescent, never questioning the death of a pulsing era. Too young to understand at the time,  I can't help but wonder now where all that hatred came from. Why a seemingly good thing was shot down from the starry heavens, no longer cool, all dressed up in satin with nowhere to go. 


WRITE WITH ME?
Where were you the day (year? era?) the disco died? What are your disco days memories? Saturday Night Fever stories?