Talismans

Caution: Blog may contain spoilers for 83 In the Shade (my first novel--but you probably know that by now.  But have you read it?).

I don't know Mr. John Travolta.  I have never met him.  I have never seen him from afar, other than the back row of a movie theater.  But I know I like him.  In fact, I like him so much, I put him in my book.  He's practically a character in it. The book has a lot of references to Staying Alive.  That was a movie from 1983 that John starred in.  It was the sequel to Saturday Night Fever.  It was directed by Sylvester Stallone.  John appeared in a centerfold in Rolling Stone magazine (as well as on the cover) to promote the movie:

When Pauline Kael reviewed the movie, she made an interesting comment: "...Travolta, who's in danger of turning into a laughingstock, if he doesn't put some clothes on and stop posing for magazine covers as though it were Hiawatha night at the O.K. Corral."  She also used the word "flagrantly" earlier in the piece in regards to Travolta.  Clearly, this is her coded way of saying that John is beginning to come off as gay.  But she wouldn't come out and say it.  She was decidedly homophobic, I think.  And I'm not quite so sure she wasn't a little "flagrant" herself.  So, she's basically telling him to get that closet door shut back up tight or it's Star-lights out for John.  But he's proved her wrong.  Time and again.  And again.  And again.
Now, we all know the rumors that have swirled around Mr. Travolta probably since around the time he posed for that cover.  I'm not here to gossip about him (although, let's face it, I am).  I don't know what he does in the privacy of a bedroom.  I don't particularly care.  But a lot of people do; and I understand why.  Especially for gay men.  If a guy becomes a big movie star (and in Travolta's case, cultural icon) and in actuality he's gay; but then he gets married and has kids and says he isn't (although in Travolta's case, I don't think he's ever said he wasn't)--well, the message that delivers to gay men is that it's wrong and it's bad to be gay. This is still commonplace in Hollywood; so for all the talk about diversity and so on; the same message is being sent.  That's why people obsess over it. 

​The concept of the "beard" may very well have been invented by Hollywood.  A beard is usually a woman who dates and/or marries a gay man so that the gay man appears "straight."  There's also the "lavender marriage" wherein a gay man and a gay woman become beards for one another.  Some "lavender couples" (rumored to have been) include Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor, Adrian and Janet Gaynor and Vincent Price and Coral Browne... 

But are any of these people actually fooling anyone?  And why is it okay, generally (although it has famously killed careers) for a "straight" guy to play gay?  And why was it some kind of breakthrough when Neil Patrick Harris, openly gay, was cast as a womanizer on How I Met Your Doogie?

When I watch that show, am I sitting there thinking, "I'm not convinced.  He can't play a womanizer!"  Well, actually, I am.  And it's not because Neil is gay.  It's because I think he's completely miscast in that role.  He's simply not the right type.  If it was a young John Travolta, I'd be all in.  When I watch the old Doris Day/Rock Hudson bedroom comedies (which still, miraculously hold up); am I again "unconvinced" (and here is a case where we now know ALL the beans about the man)?  No. I have no problem believing that Rock's cads and Dads are rocking Doris' van.

I mean, even John Wayne, the face of American male--everything--was rumored to have been to sex orgies at Mae West's apartment with the USC football team.  That would've put him in a room with a lot of naked guys where no one was showering. And only one woman.  A woman a lot of people wondered about if she actually was ​a woman. Here he is many years later with Gary Cooper.  What's wrong with this picture?

Or should we ask, what's right with this picture?  Well, what isn't right is that John Wayne would wear that outfit. And I don't think even the famously polymorphously playful Gary Cooper can pull off those espadrilles. And then they went poster shopping...

A picture says a thousand words, doesn't it?  I remember when I first saw this one: (Please see Enquirer cover below).

It was on the cover of The National Enquirer in the early 80's.  The man on the left is Paul Barresi.  He's originally from Massachusetts.  He's kind of known all over Hollywood for a variety of reasons; many a wee bit on the unsavory side.  I met him once.  He was very charming and had an undeniable animal magnetism.  I was working at a video editing company at the corner of Hollywood and Vine, in the Taft building.  The company specialized in editing "adult entertainment."  Yes, I too did a few things that were a wee bit on the unsavory side.  Paul was a client.  He was himself involved in the "adult entertainment" industry.  A lot of it involving spanking.  You can't make this stuff up.  I was the receptionist (I did a lot of receptioning in L.A.!).  We got to talking; not about John.  Apparently Paul will tell you about everything that allegedly happened between him and Tony Manero with near full disclosure; if asked.  I was more interested in the fact that he was from Lynn, Mass.  I think I'd recognized a bit of a Boston accent and asked him about it.  I mentioned that I was from Saugus, a town that borders Lynn.  Lynn is a bit on the sketchy side.  It even has its own Limerick: Lynn, Lynn, the city of sin; you never go out the way you went in!  He grew quite excited when I mentioned Saugus.  He asked me if I knew a teacher there.  I'll call him Jimmy Marino.  Yes, I knew Jimmy Marino.  He had been a teacher and coach at my junior high school.  I also knew that Jimmy was rumored to be a womanizer.  Or should I say, young womanizer.  Really young womanizer.  There were all kinds of rumors floating around about Jimmy and some of his female students.  I didn't mention this to Paul.  He explained to me that Jimmy was originally from Lynn and that the two had grown up together.  Had been boyhood best friends.  Jimmy too had animal magnetism.  He was also drop-dead gorgeous.  I could easily understand how he could seduce, well, anyone he wanted to.  City of Sin indeed.  Paul, though not as gorgeous as Jimmy, had a perfect physique and was the epitome of the "Daddy" archetype.  Here he is during his modelling days:

Paul is on the right, rocking that pair of...whatever he's rocking.  I vividly remember when I first saw the Enquirer cover.  I think it's from 1982 and my friends and I were in the Purity Supreme grocery store.  We grabbed the paper and pored over the article.  We had zero problem believing the claims of that article.  I mean all you have to do is look at the picture.  As I recall there was a lot of legal kerfuffle over this story; perhaps a retraction--not from The Enquirer but Paul.  Some kind of gag order.  I'm sure the details are all out there in the ethersphere.  It's kind of sad.  They looked really great together.

Myself and my best friend were both kind of "into" older men.  I think we were more envious of John than we were of Paul.  So, I guess I'm rehashing this in a somewhat prurient attempt to point out the simultaneously random and yet somehow collated wavelengths of The Universe.  I mean, looking at that picture in 1982 did I ever think I'd ever meet either of those people?  No.  Of course not.  Or that one of them was from one town over and had grown up with a man who'd actually taught me (well, he never taught me exactly; but he was the moderator of a couple of my study halls)?  No.  But then I did. 
​Or that John Travolta would become a muse that would lead me to writing my first book?
I read once about the "magical artifact."  I'm not sure who the author was or even if that was what they called it.  But the concept was, that in many books and stories and so forth; there is usually some thing that propels the protagonist forward through the book.  For example: the painting of the goldfinch in Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch. Or the ring from Lord of the Rings.  There's, of course, "The MacGuffin"; which is a device which merely pushes the plot forward.  The magical artifact is deeper than that.  Like the tree, in A Separate Peace.  I guess the "magical artifact" is perhaps maybe a little more spiritual.  A bit more symbolic.  I see now that John Travolta himself is the "magical artifact" in my book.  Near the end of the book; the protagonist receives an answer to a fan letter that he and his friend had sent to John.  John sends back one of his armbands from the movie.  

Curious, I did a websearch.  I typed in "John Travolta armband."  Sure enough, a link popped right up (see the first image above).  There it was.  Why?  What was this little scrap of cloth still doing in the world?  I mean, at the very least you would think it would be somewhere at the back of John Travolta's closet.  But it's not.  Someone had the foresight to keep it.  Why?  ​The movie was only a modest commercial success.  Today it's remembered as a flop and a turkey.  Why is that piece of costume still around; coming from an industry that is notorious for throwing away its history.  Its history from even its greatest successes?  And it wasn't even a very good costume.  And yet, there it is.  Did The Universe know that some day I'd look for it.  Did The Universe collate it for me?  Is The Universe saving it for me so that one day, if it comes up at auction, I can put in my bid.  And tap into the wavelengths that it still pulsates with. 
​I'd like to think so.