So I will still watch a Papa struggle to love his daughters, and feel mournful and joyous all at the same time, whenever they are on television; once a year I’ll still watch Moses lead his people to safety and be just a little swept up in his determined heroism, despite myself; I will still rock out to that superstar Jesus Christ and keep my eyes open for miracles; I will still feel Daniel’s and Salomon’s pain, and keep it alive as best I can. I’ll still listen out for whatever wisdom and guidance I might find in that resonant, booming voice in the dark. . be it Heston’s or God’s. This is my own way of ritual, of keeping the faith, of asking questions in order to find the meaning of what I am.
18Fiddler on the Roof (United Artists, 1971): screenplay by Joseph Stein, adapted from stories by Sholem Aleichem; music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick; directed by Norman Jewison; with Topol, Norma Crane, Leonard Frey, and Rosalind Harris
19The Ten Commandments (Paramount Pictures, 1956): screenplay by Æneas MacKenzie, Jesse Lasky Jr., Jack Gariss; directed by Cecil B. DeMille; with Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, Anne Baxter, and Yvonne De Carlo
20Jesus Christ Superstar (Universal Pictures, 1973): screenplay by Melvyn Bragg, Norman Jewison, and Tim Rice; music by Andrew Lloyd Webber; directed by Norman Jewison; with Ted Neeley, Carl Anderson, Yvonne Elliman, Barry Dennen, and Josh Mostel
21The Odessa File (Columbia Pictures, 1974): screenplay by Kenneth Ross and George Markstein, adapted from the novel by Fredrick Forsyth; directed by Ronald Neame; with Jon Voight and Maximilian Schell
22The Chosen (Chosen Film Company, 1981): screenplay by Edwin Gordon, based on the novel by Chaim Potok; directed by Jeremy Paul Kagan; with Robby Benson, Barry Miller, Maximilian Schell, and Rod Steiger.
23“Papa, Can You Hear Me?” from Yentl (MGM/UA, 1983): music by Michel Legrand, lyrics by Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman
HOW TO LOSE YOUR VIRGINITY
LEARNING THE MECHANICS AND METAPHYSICS OF SEX
Romeo and Juliet
Little Darlings
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
The Other Side of Midnight
Coming Home
Don’t Look Now
Looking for Mr. Goodbar
All That Jazz
Body Heat
Last Tango in Paris
We needed signed permission slips from our parents for the field-trip screening of Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet in 1976—all that potentially traumatizing passion, after all.24 My friends and I were dying to go; we’d read the play in our seventh-grade drama class, our teacher emoting the text for us, offering an exegesis of Queen Mab’s dream and the more arcane metaphors, but really, it was all about the poster: Two naked teenagers gazing affectionately at each other in rumpled sheets, unencumbered by any literary or historical context. And rumor had it there was (more) nudity and sex in the movie, this was Shakespeare made really hot, and that guy playing Romeo looked really cute. And he was, that tousle-haired Leonard Whiting, in his Renaissance Faire tights and blousy shirt. Olivia Hussey was a total babe as Juliet, too, all rosebud mouth and wide-set olive eyes, a river of silken black hair; at seventeen and fifteen, they were an improvement — and a controversial one — on the thirty- or fortysomething Romeos and Juliets of film versions past, the appropriately seasoned Norma Shearers and Leslie Howards, who, to our eyes, made passion look so boringly, uninterestingly adult: An old-movie, ancient-history, irrelevant kind of love.
But now, on a Saturday afternoon with my classmates at the Nuart Theatre for this educational screening of the most recent incarnation of Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers, Leonard and Olivia, in their wide-screen, English-accented glory, are far, far beyond cute; their beauty is unearthly, gasp-inducing, almost painful to look at. And their physical desire for each other is revelatory; we were expecting a love story, sure, but are surprised to feel the awakening of our own nascent, adolescent lust.
I have a rudimentary understanding of the biological basics of sex and reproduction, of course; when I was six or seven my mother read through the unprurient How Babies Are Made book with me, chapters sequencing in greater sophistication from flowers to chickens to dogs to humans, all illustrated with cartoony paper cutouts; I understand, in theory, about the egg-and-seed workings of fertilization, that Penis A inserts into Vagina B. By now I have been taken to the occasional movie rated R for sexual content, watched late-night TV soap operas, and cringed my eyes away from the gross sex scenes — who wants to see grown-ups behaving like that? And I am, at twelve, a veteran of playtime doctor’s appointments with pantsless and hairless neighborhood boys, of bottle-spinning kissy games and those awkward and giggly few minutes “in heaven” at lights-out rumpus room parties, everyone’s nervous breath both sweetened and soured by candy and punch, many of us secretly hoping indignant parents would snap on the lights and put a stop to all that fun. I have discovered the hand-held shower massager and the perfectly-placed Jacuzzi jet in our pool, and my own clever, dexterous fingers, although these early explorations, while successful, were blank-minded and unimaginative — I didn’t yet have a bank of visual imagery to draw on, could only rely on the instinctive, if uninspired, physiological mechanics.
But I have never really experienced, or even seen, true adolescent arousal before — and now, watching this Romeo and Juliet’s unhinged passion, I am aroused, too, to see these dewy-skinned children feeling a mutual lust, seeking out sex. They fling themselves at each other, they pant and heave and moan with longing, and my popcorn breath is quickening, too. Watching these turned-on sixteenth-century teens, I am made dizzy by a sudden flushing heat. I am both stimulated and a little embarrassed; I glance at my friend Marie — is she feeling this, too? This curious, enflaming, quivering thing?
But there is no actual sex. Spotting each other at the Capulets’ masked ball, Romeo and Juliet flirt “palm to palm,” followed by a brief touch of virginal lips: “Then have my lips the sin that they have took?” she asks. “O, trespass sweetly urged,” he says, “Give me my sin again!” If this is sin, they, and we, couldn’t care less — and how could anything these rhapsodically beautiful creatures do together be a sin? Passion ignited, they continue making out until interruption by that busybody Nurse. In the balcony scene, piqued by the danger they risk, they kiss full-mouthed and ravenously, as if to swallow each other whole. Their shared desire is consuming, and so is mine; by now I am past the initial shock of their exquisiteness and am impatiently, breathlessly awaiting something more. Oh, wouldst thou leave me so unsatisfied? For perhaps the first time I realize the story of sexual love does not end with a kiss, as all those G-rated fairy tale romances with their chaste, happy-ending pecks wanted me to believe; it only begins with one.
And finally, finally, what we have been waiting the whole movie to see, what our parents signed those permission slips for: A sleeping Romeo, lying facedown but breathtakingly peach-skin naked, draped across a sleeping Juliet, whose long hair is arranged artfully across her uncovered, surprisingly full breasts — is that a nipple? I am hoping so; I am as hungry to see Juliet’s naked flesh as I am to see Romeo’s; give me my sin again. Yesterday they secretly married, last night was the wedding night, but Zeffirelli has passed over depicting an off-text deflowering consummation in favor of this quiet morning-after scene, which is simultaneously less frightening, thanks to the absence of any penetrative explicitness, and more astonishing, more disconcertingly alluring in its intimacy; they have shared a vow, have shared a bed, are sharing breath, bodies, and hearts, are fully naked together in the full creamy light of a Verona dawn, and that experience has until now been unimaginable to me. Romeo stands, strolls to the window, and I am overwhelmed by the perfection of his unselfconscious, rear-view nudity. Juliet pulls the sheet over her breasts — audible groans of disappointment from the boys in the theatre, and I stifle mine. But there is more; while they lovingly, iambically debate whether it is the nightingale or the lark they hear outside the window — is it still benevolent night or cruel, discordant day? — Romeo returns to the bed, throws back the sheet, and throws his graceful naked body full-length upon Juliet’s, and I imagine the impact of this embrace, the pressing of my naked back into the mattress with someone’s weight, my someday breasts in someone’s mouth.