Summer Fiction
Jane Fonda’s Breast

By Mary Damiano

Barefoot in the Park

“I saw part of this movie once when I was about nine,” Wendy said.  “I don’t know the name of it, but it made me realize I was a lesbian.”

Wendy and I were driving home from a movie one night, when she told me this.

“Who was in it?”  I said.

“I don’t know,” she said.  “There was this man and this woman, and they’d just gotten married, and they were standing by an elevator and all she was wearing was his shirt.  You could just see a little bit of her breast, and I kept trying to look inside her shirt to see more, and all I could think about was putting my hands under her shirt.  That’s when I knew that I really liked girls.”

“Barefoot in the Park,” I said.  “You were lusting after Jane Fonda. 

“How do you know that?” she said.

“Because I know movies,” I said. “And I know Barefoot in the Park.”

“All from that one little thing I said?”

I described the scene to her:  Jane Fonda and Robert Redford play newlyweds honeymooning at the Plaza Hotel in New York.  They spend eight days in their suite, and the newspapers pile up outside the door.  When Redford finally has to leave to go to work, Jane goes with him to the elevator in just his shirt, and when he gets in the elevator, she puts on a little show for the other elevator passengers, to make them think she’s a hooker and he’s her john, just for fun.

Wendy shook her head at each detail, adding her own flashes of memory to my description.  She was thrilled that I was able to solve the mystery of the movie that sparked her sexual epiphany.

It was good to see her happy.  Wendy had just broken up with her girlfriend of fifteen years, Leah.  She and Leah had been childhood best friends, growing up together in a tight-knit Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn.  They had discovered their sexuality together, fallen in love and defied their families to be together.  It was like a lesbian Romeo and Juliet, except in the end there was no poison or daggers, only poisoned words and back-stabbing.  Wendy was devastated that Leah had left, and salt had been rubbed into her wounds a week after the breakup, when she saw Leah laughing and nuzzling a new girlfriend.  I’d pleaded with Wendy to come to the movie with me, telling her that I needed the company, knowing that she wouldn’t let down a friend.

Even though I was eager to lift Wendy’s spirits, the truth was, I wanted us to become more than friends.  But Wendy was a self-proclaimed Ortho-dyke, who only wanted a relationship with another Ortho-dyke.  As a lapsed Catholic, I didn’t feel qualified to apply for the position as Wendy’s new girlfriend.  I’d just about given up hope, and started to settle into the idea of staying just friends. 

But now I was sitting next to her in her car, and Wendy was beaming and laughing, repeating the words Barefoot in the Park over and over, searing the title into her brain.

“Thank you,” she said.  “Thank you so much for knowing that.  She gave my leg a squeeze in appreciation.  This wasn’t going to be easy.

“You know, I have a lot of tapes at home,” I said.  “I think I have that somewhere.” 

“Really?” She was ecstatic.  “Can I borrow it?”

“Sure,” I said.  “I can’t wait for you to see it.”

I remembered too late that the house was a mess, a chaotic mix of my latest photography project and the usual clutter that permeated any space I occupied, but Wendy didn’t seem to mind.

“Let me look through the tapes,” I said, after clearing a place for her on the couch.  I opened a linen closet and Wendy gasped when she saw the bulk of my alphabetized movie collection.  She came closer and examined the titles.

“I haven’t even heard of most of these,” she said.  “Arsenic and Old Lace?”

“You’ve never heard of Arsenic and Old Lace?” I said.  “It’s one of Cary Grant’s funniest movies.”

“Oh, it’s an old movie,” she said.  “We were never allowed to watch many movies when I was growing up.  My mother and father didn’t consider most movies kosher.  That’s why I never knew the name of that movie.  My mother caught me watching it and shut it off.”

I tried to imagine growing up without movies.  My father was a true movie lover.  Sometimes he’d take me to several movies on a Saturday, and that was back in the days before every theater was a multiplex.

“I always wanted to rent an old black and white movie,” Wendy continued, “but Leah always said, ‘What do you want to watch something so old it’s not even in color?’”

I was seriously beginning to question Leah’s taste.

“You must do nothing but work and watch movies,” Wendy said.

“I wish,” I said, running my finger over the titles, looking for Barefoot in the Park.  “I haven’t watched these in years.  I remember when I worked in an office and had sick days.  Sometimes I’d take a sick day, load up on junk food, and lay in bed watching movies all day—my own private film festival.  But ever since I started freelancing, I’m always out shooting something.”  I was seeing lots of titles, but no Barefoot in the Park.  “You can borrow whatever you want,” I said.

“I wouldn’t know where to start,” Wendy said.

Marlene Dietrich

“Well, I don’t see Barefoot in the Park, so start with Arsenic and Old Lace,” I said, pulling out the cassette.  “Oh, and you’ve got to see Bringing Up Baby, and Singin’ in the Rain, and Casablanca, and His Girl Friday…”

I pulled each title and loaded Wendy down with a dozen tapes.  Then I arranged them in the order she should watch them.  “This will be a crash course in classic movies,” I said.  I bagged them up for her, and she gave me a big hug as she left.

“I’m going to watch one as soon as I get home, and I’ll be thinking about you,” she said.

I watched her drive away, and closed the door.  Perhaps movies could be my way into Wendy’s heart.

As I got ready for bed, still high from Wendy’s warm hug, I thought about how lucky I was to have grown up watching movies.  Movies had been my closest friends for many years.  As a kid I loved rainy afternoons, because I could spend them with Katharine Hepburn or Humphrey Bogart, or Bette Davis.  Every July 4^th, when everyone else was outside swimming, I always snuck in the house for a few hours to get my yearly dose of Yankee Doodle Dandy.  I loved the Million Dollar Movie on Channel 9, and the Sunday morning Abbott and Costello double features on Channel 11.  In the days before VCRs, I would set my alarm clock to wake up at 2am to catch Greta Garbo in Ninotchka or just take No-Doz to stay awake for the midnight showing of Double Indemnity.

My own personal lesbian epiphany had come when I was twelve in the form of Veronica Lake.  I was watching This Gun for Hire, but I couldn’t keep track of the plot.  All I wanted was to push that peek-a-boo hair out of her face and lay a big kiss right on those perfect lips.

The summer I was 16 was spent at the Regency, a revival theater in New York, which was running a Warner Brothers Film Festival, featuring some of the best double features around:  Dark Victory with Now, Voyager, The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca, Little Caesar and Public Enemy.  I relished those afternoons alone in the dark.

Somewhere along the line I’d gotten too busy to watch movies, too trapped in the real world to disappear into a celluloid one.  I thought of how lucky Wendy was, to be able to discover these films for the first time.  Before getting into bed, I popped It Happened One Night into the bedroom VCR and fell asleep dreaming Claudette Colbert exhibiting her hitchhiking techniques, only Claudette looked an awful lot like Wendy.

The next day Wendy called me, gushing about Bringing Up Baby.  “I never knew Katharine Hepburn was so funny or so pretty,” she said.  “The only thing I ever saw her in was On Golden Pond.”  That night, I curled up on the couch with a bowl of popcorn and watched The Philadelphia Story.

Casablanca

A few days later, it was Casablanca.  “My God, how could he let her get on that plane,” she said.

“It was the honorable thing to do,” I said.

“But it was Ingrid Bergman,” Wendy said.  “You don’t just let Ingrid Bergman get on a plane with someone else.”

That night at home, I reveled in the seemingly doomed love of An Affair to Remember.

I thought about inviting Wendy over to watch a movie, but it had to be the right movie.  Each night I searched the house for Barefoot in the Park.  I knew that would be the perfect movie to watch together, and I could watch Wendy’s face as she remembered that moment from childhood when she longed to touch Jane Fonda’s breast.  After a few days, when I couldn’t find it, I went to a few video stores, but no one had it.  I tried to buy it but the title was on back order, no longer available.  I had to find my copy. 

Wendy’s cinematic awakening continued over the next few weeks.  Singin’ in the Rain turned her on to musicals, so I fed her An American in Paris and Meet Me in St. Louis.  She shared my affection for Carole Lombard after watching My Man Godfrey, so I loaned her Twentieth Century and To Be or Not To Be.  Whenever I could, I met her at her office for lunch and over kosher corned beef and knishes we discussed Humphrey Bogart’s evolution from bad guy to the classic American anti-hero, or how Audrey Hepburn is still the consummate style icon.  I loved it when she asked me if I preferred James Cagney as a song and dance man or as a hard-boiled gangster.

Still, I searched for the elusive Barefoot in the Park.  Wendy was getting truly primed, and I could see my moment was coming.  She shocked me during one lunch, when she asked me about what I thought of the lesbian subtext in Marlene Dietrich movies.  I hadn’t lent her any Marlene Dietrich movies.  That night, when I dug out my copy of Marlene’s Blonde Venus, I found Barefoot in the Park, which had fallen back on the shelf behind the other tapes.  This was my big chance. I called Wendy.

“I found it,” I told her.  “I found Barefoot in the Park.”

“You did,” she said.  “Oh, I can’t wait to see it.”

I took a deep breath.  “Well, why don’t you come over Saturday night, after sundown.  I’ll pick up some of the kugel you like and some corned beef from the kosher market.  We can make a night of it.”

“That would be great,” she said.  “Can I bring someone?”

“Bring someone?”  I said. 

“Yeah,” Wendy said.  “I met this girl at the video store, Sarah.  She loves old movies.”

“Is she an Ortho-dyke?” I said. 

“No, but I want to give it a shot anyway,” Wendy said.

I stared at the picture of Jane Fonda on the front of the tape box.  “That’s great,” I said.

“I really like her and I’ve been waiting for the right time to ask her out,” Wendy said. 

“Don’t wait too long,” I said.  “Don’t let her slip through your fingers before you even have a chance.”

“Then I can bring her?”

“I have a better idea,” I said.  “You ask her over to your place and I’ll drop the tape off at the office tomorrow.  I think you should watch it alone with her.”

“That would be great,” Wendy said.  “And who knows?  Maybe she’ll be as turned on by Jane Fonda in that shirt as I was.”

We said goodbye and I hung up the phone.  I took the tape out of the case and loaded it into the VCR.  At the moment when Jane appears in Redford’s shirt at the elevator, I tried to see the scene through Wendy’s nine-year-old eyes.  But my eyes strayed to the stack of tapes next to the TV, all the movies I’d watched since Wendy shared her big cinematic moment with me that night in the car.  So maybe I didn’t get the girl.  Bogart didn’t get Ingrid Bergman either.  But like Bogie, I rediscovered an old love.  And one thing was for sure, my movies weren’t going to be walking into the sunset with someone else.

Copyright 2006, Mary Damiano

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