Risky Business

This is a really personal blog entry so it may get a bit longish, just to warn you ahead of time.

I was probably maybe seven or so years old when I first caught Risky Business late one night on HBO. I have been an insomniac at times for most of my life. Stress has been a constant bedfellow--but most of us have discomforting events that truly sneak away bits of our happiness. That's not what this is about, I promise you. Christianne had mentioned in a review for Friday the 13th that HBO used to show a lot of their saucier, more adult features later into the night, early morning, and I happened to know this all too well, all too young. I think there is that specific moment, for man and woman, that we first experience arousal. A woman or a man comes across the screen, whether heightened by movie magic, a wind machine, music that has the right type of theme that resonates alongside the image, but primarily by how they project a certain sexiness, their body with the right type of figure that appeals to you, and arousal awakens something in you that only continues into those hormonal teenage years. Teenagers and sex. Risky Business, like a lot of movies in the 80s, looks at the marriage of teenagers and sex, the awkwardness of "the first time", how we talk about it, dream about it, desire it, and then the time comes, perhaps not exactly as you imagined. But, I admit that I prefer to delight in the image, because a lot of the time, what is real is never quite as fulfilling as what the fantasy presents.

Rebecca De Mornay. She was my first object of arousal. Oh, far beyond an object, she embodied the lust that overwhelmed me upon first glance. Her first appearance in Risky Business, I won't forget. I don't want to. It is all performance, by De Mornay, by director Brickman, by Tangerine Dream, the movie presents her to a surprised Joel Goodsen, about to have his world rocked. I guess as a teenager, like so many others, I wanted, desired, the same kind of experience. It is all performance, though, Risky Business, the very next morning, grounds Joel back into reality as he must now come up with the moolah to pay for such an experience.

This co-worker was riding to work with me. She is a liberal Mohawk from Canada, and found herself down here in conservative bible-belt Mississippi. She was refreshing to talk to because her point of view isn't shared by many I know. We were talking about movies and sex (trust me, these are topics I don't normally discuss with anyone around these parts), and she told me that why I find petite blonds of a certain type arousing in particular stems from my first glimpse of De Mornay as a kid while sneaking a peek of Risky Business.

We were talking about this movie and I mentioned that while for many years this related to me more as a upheaval of events in the short time parents are away on this teen, and how amazingly he survives by the skin of his teeth. Mostly, it wasn't about Tom Cruise, for me personally, it was how all-encompassing De Mornay's spell cast over me.

What we talked about was something I pondered while watching the movie more recently. I noticed that De Mornay had all the power, using her feminine wiles, her sexual prowess to escape from Guido, the pimp so she could go into business for herself. Cruise was, I guess, her way out, you could say. I found an image of "sex on a train at midnight" that speaks volumes about who was in control. Cruise doesn't look like he's even doing anything while De Mornay seems to declare him as the greatest lover ever. Who ultimately has control in the bedroom? That what really arouses me, though, the woman in control. Who really was in charge of the pimping business that left Guido for a bit? Was it Cruise? Or was it De Mornay? Damn, I loved her outfit, in the hat and coat, walking around Goodsen's parents' house as if she owned the place, completely in charge. When Goodsen was led to the train...who was in charge? She was.