Xanadu: Nashville, 1980
| XANADU: NASHVILLE, 1980 a short story published in Transfer |
VIEW PDF AND READ THE STORY "This particular Saturday in Nashville was like the rest: all the neighborhood girls were inside their garages, roller-skated and barelegged in hot pink leotards, hair blown and sprayed into wings, holding flashlights and circling the washer-dryer in precise formation. Sitting spread-legged on the dryer, curvy and beautiful in the flashlight-lit disco murk and the garage door opener clipped to her leotard, Angeline had all the macabre beauty of an executioner on her podium. Angeline had considered the situation from all sides, and her sides had won with no contest. I didn't even have a side, not now, not ever-what I had was something more similar to a hole, and Angeline was going to grab onto my feet and hold me down as I tried to crawl back inside it. I wasn't at all sure what kind of bizarre initiation she was offering. I'd been living across the street for several months, and was finally smart enough to realize the danger I faced whenever Angeline became bored. AUTHOR'S NOTE: The summer Xanadu came out was a fateful one. My mother didn't allow me to watch the movie, so at first I tried to extrapolate a narrative from the song lyrics and album photos. As the weeks progressed, actual events within Nashville garages began to overwhelm even my own lurid imagination. I wrote this piece when I was living in Australia. Olivia Newton John being a national icon, the film screened nearly every day, and I saw it for the first time. I was shocked to discover it was a romance, and not a horror movie. That shattering realization prompted me to write down my adolescent version of the movie, before it vanished. - QAW |
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