I Want To Know What Love Is
A foreigner to this journey
In 1999, acclaimed Swedish film director Lukas Moodysson released his debut feature, Show Me Love, an affecting, teenage lesbian coming-of-age story. The film’s original title was Fucking Åmål!, named after the town the story took place in, where the two lead protagonists lived and desperately wanted to escape from. The title was changed for the US market for obvious but unfortunate reasons.
I remember seeing it on closing night at the San Francisco Gay & Lesbian Film Festival with my friend Liz. Both of us (along with the packed audience) left the theater on a high, invigorated by having just watched one of the most honest, unsentimental portrayals of young love in recent memory.
I was reminded of this film, of this memory, with the appearance of my latest earworm, Foreigner’s 1984 hit, “I Want To Know What Love Is.”
During one of the most emotionally powerful moments in Show Me Love, the two protagonists sit in the backseat of a stranger’s car. The driver had picked the girls up while hitchhiking. When the car breaks down, he gets out of the car and tries to fix it, “I Want To Know What Love Is” playing on the stereo.
I was going to say “plays in the background,” but after 10 seconds or so, the music gets louder and louder, becoming the entire soundtrack, swelling and crescendoing along with the teens’ building romance. The camera stays on a 2-shot of the girls nervously holding hands but by the next verse, they are making out in the backseat.
Foreigner’s hit song works perfectly for this scene, both from the perspective of the viewer, who most likely was old enough to remember when this power-ballad was radio omnipresent in the mid-80s, and also because it deftly captures the all-consuming infatuation that so often accompanies young love.
What I’d previously considered a supremely cheesy 80’s love ballad had been transformed into a paean to vulnerability, of following the heart instead of the head. The lyrics work perfectly to describe first love, even if the song was written from the perspective of an older person closing themself off because of being hurt too many times.
I want to know what love is
I want you to show me
I want to feel what love is
I know you can show me
So simple, so trite, yet when Lou Gramm sings those words with his powerfully emotive tenor, it transforms from cheesy to heartfelt. And then, 1 minute 40 seconds in, when he’s accompanied by the New Jersey Mass Choir (featuring Jennifer Holliday!!), it’s as if the whole world is encouraging Lou (you, me, the stars of the film) to let down his armor and allow this new person to show him what love is. Do it! Do it!
In this powerful scene in Show Me Love, I saw how a song that by all rights should trigger the gag reflex can reach into the solar plexus and tenderly pluck the heartstrings. It reminded me of my own first love experience.
Her name was Rori and I met her at a Jewish Family Encounter weekend in the summer of 1981. I was 14 and she was almost 14. I remember that Rori wore checkerboard Vans and had the Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith and Queen logos drawn into the rubber trim on the sides of her shoes. Those were three of my favorite bands! And she was cute too. Long, wavy black hair that Rori alternated between pulling back in a ponytail and letting hang loose, covering half her face. She was short, like me, and carried herself with what I interpreted as a confident shyness — qualities I also attributed to myself.
She was there with her parents and younger sister, and I met them all at the same time. Though really, in my body, I was only meeting Rori. I remember feeling my stomach churn, my vision blur, my head grow dizzy when Rori and I first made eye contact. We’d both looked away almost immediately, trying to seem casual about it while attempting to steal furtive glances at each other.
Family Encounter was an offshoot of Marriage Encounter, which my parents had been regular members of for several years. Marriage Encounter was like a form of group couples’ therapy. One couple would serve as the “lead” and facilitate each gathering, proposing questions for everyone to contemplate and then write down their thoughts and feelings into spiral notebooks. Then, each couple would find a private corner of the house or event space and read aloud their words to one another. It was thought to be an effective way to deepen one’s marriage/relationship.
My parents would host annual “retreats” at hotel conference rooms for new couples to learn the Marriage Encounter way. When I was 13, my family was recruited to lead the West Coast expansion of Family Encounter, where entire families would gather and write their feelings down in spiral notebooks and share with one another, ostensibly deepening the familial bond. My younger sister and I, along with our parents spent the next six months putting together our presentation for the very first Family Encounter Weekend we would lead the following summer. We prepared talks on topics like: “deep listening,” and “empathy,” and “expressing your feelings.”
It was on day one of this retreat that I met Rori.
I don’t know if my status as lead family member made a lasting impression on her, if I was just a kid from another attending family whether Rori would have ignored me completely. Maybe it was my own wavy black hair, white Vans and wisp of a mustache that attracted her. I think the fact that I sat at the front of the room expressing my feelings via a well-practiced and prepared family script did the trick. I mean, what 14 year-old boy proudly talks about love and sadness and expressing feelings in private let alone in front of a conference room full of strangers? It had to have earned me some extra karma points.
During a meal break, Rori and I snuck out and talked about music and school and how completely odd the whole Family Encounter weekend was. We exchanged phone numbers and snuck back into the conference room. I rejoined my family to talk more about feelings, while trying to hide the heart-pounding ones I was having for Rori.
Our first date was finally set to happen a month after the Family Encounter retreat. Rori’s mother was VERY apprehensive, but agreed to my mom driving us to the Northridge Bowl for a couple of hours.
On the drive to the bowling alley, Rori and I sat in the backseat, both of us clearly nervous and excited about the date. My sister sat in the front passenger seat, as she and my mom were going to the mall while Rori and I bowled. The radio on my mom’s Chevy Citation was playing KIIS-FM and after a couple minutes of chit chat, the car filled with music.
The band Journey had just released their multi-platinum selling album Escape, and “Don’t Stop Believing” was all over the radio. But it was “Who’s Crying Now,” their new single, that began to play on our drive to the bowling alley.
As Steve Perry fervently sang “Two hearts born to run/Who’ll be the lonely one” Rori and my fingers slowly found each other at the hump between the back seats. The car didn’t break down and we didn’t end up making out while my mom tried to figure out what was wrong with the engine (my sister would have told on us anyhow), but I could have sworn that the music had begun to swell louder and louder, filling the car with its intoxicating soundtrack.
Like “I Want To Know What Love Is,” “Who’s Crying Now” is a schmaltzy power-ballad, more heart-breaking than heart-lifting. Even though Rori and I considered ourselves “rockers,” and Journey was considered way too soft for our heavy-metal social circles, we both really dug them, and agreed that Steve Perry had an amazing voice.
When “Who’s Crying Now” filled the car I was filled with hope and promise. But although an hour later Rori and I would share our first kiss near the end of our first game at the bowling alley, it would sadly remain our one and only date.
Rori’s mom would not allow her go out with me again. We lived too far away, she was too young to date, she needed to focus on school — those were the reasons Rori gave me over the phone when I tried to ask her out again. I didn’t understand. Clearly we were in love!
After the breakup call from Rori, I sat unmoving on my bedroom carpet, Journey’s Escape album in my hand, only getting up every 5 minutes to move the needle on the turntable back to the beginning of “Who’s Crying Now,” mumbling the lyrics to myself over and over, certain that I’d never find another love as deep as I had with Rori.
One love feeds the fire
One heart burns desire
Wonder who's crying now?
Two hearts born to run
Who will be the lonely one?
Wonder who's crying now?