I Didn't Know How to Twist

I Didn’t Know How To Twist

or shout. But in 1984 on a Tuesday night at The Boss Club at Imperial Gardens on Sunset Boulevard, I tried to do both.

I’d tricked this guy from my acting class, Bobby Sugarman, into asking me out. He had dark tousled curls, hypnotist’s eyes and wore a jean vest, checked flannel shirt with cut-off sleeves and bandana as headband. He could have been Springsteen’s baby brother.

So why did “Twist and Shout” have to be playing instead of  “Back In Your Arms Again”? I wanted to slow dance with Bobby Sugarman but Bruce’s cover had turned The Boss Club into American Bandstand and everyone was grinding, thrusting, swaying.

“Rotate your hips, your torso. Bend your elbows. Go low,” Bobby instructed, his hands finally on me, even though you weren’t supposed to touch the other person in this dance. “Everything moves but stay put. ”

“I’m trying,” I told him.

“It’s like playing Twister without your feet,” he said, encircling me with his moves while I stood there, flailing.  

I was from Encino not New Jersey. I’d graduated from the mellow sound to loving punk. The only dancing I’d ever done was slow and at bar mitzvahs or jumping wildly in a mosh-pit.

I’d been studying Bobby Sugarman for months, every Monday night in Matt Chait’s acting workshop in a black box on Santa Monica Boulevard and Vine at the Richmond Shepard Theatre. He was a born actor, had technique and charisma, was teacher’s pet.

Across the hallway, at the same time, Exene happened to be taking voice lessons with Gloria Bennett.  I’d hold my ear up to the door and listen to her warm-up exercises. She was my mascot in those days. She stood for all I had never known.

And in class, I’d attempt to present another excerpt from Studs Terkel’s collection, “Working.” Every young actor I’d ever met performed from that book. There was the waitress, the auditor, the steelworker, the gravedigger, the bookbinder.

I chose the “New York hooker.” The opening line of my monologue was: “A hustler is any woman in American society.” I was 21 and picked the piece for shock value. I knew nothing about being a woman or the working life in its many forms.

Matt Chait told me to relax. “Take off your shoes, rub your feet. Find the original wound and speak from it,” he said.

Bobby Sugarman used my time on stage to go outside and smoke. His original wound had colored lights and a megaphone. He only stayed in class when he was onstage or when one of his friends was doing a scene.

Why was I in this workshop, anyway? I blamed it on a celebrity psychic I met when I was nine, who’d told me I was going to grow up to be a famous actress. This was the same psychic who predicted Sharon Tate’s killer was “a man with a beard named Charlie.”

So I spent my days reading plays by Tennessee Williams, James Kirkwood Jr. and Beth Henley. At night I’d go to punk clubs to hear X, The Weirdos and The Germs, where you didn’t need to know how to twist, only meld.

Springsteen belonged to high school, to stadium days, the phase where we slept in front of Ticketron at Topanga Plaza to get floor seats to The River tour. It was behind me now. But a night with Bobby Sugarman had been more my goal in acting class than learning an actual craft. And if he loved Springsteen, I was willing to look back.

How did I get so lucky as to finally make it happen? By telling him, after he’d finished a masterful scene from “Death of a Salesman,” that I knew someone in the business who could help him.

“Oh, really? Why don’t you come with me to The Boss Club next week and we can discuss?” Bobby suggested.

He had never talked to me in class before I’d approached him. And it was true, I answered phones in my father’s office where a personal manager of actors rented space in the same suite. We were friends and he sometimes listened to my suggestions.

I had eight days notice to starve myself on grapefruit and hard boiled eggs, lose eight pounds, buy red stilettos at Leeds in Fashion Square, get a perm to make my curls more defined, and squeeze into Big Joe jeans by laying on the floor and holding my breath.

This was the 80s and I didn’t believe in myself yet. At The Boss Club, I used my body as a 3-speed oscillating fan, trying to twist, like the biggest geek in a John Hughes movie waiting to be written.

Bobby Sugarman was twisted in front me.  He knew all the moves, the words to every Springsteen song, And just like in acting class, he emanated ease and sparkle, he glowed center stage. It would be the closest I ever came to dancing with Springsteen.

“So you don’t know how to act or dance?” he blurted out on the ride home.

But that didn’t stop him from wanting to make out with me, even as he said, “I feel weird doing this because I have a sister named Susan.”

He called me the next day, not to say what a good time he’d had but to ask when he could connect with my manager friend. I set it up and they met for coffee that week. The manager later remarked, “Sweet kid but he’s just another Springsteen wannabe.”

On Monday night, I drove to the acting studio on Santa Monica and Vine but decided when I got there to skip class. I thought, maybe I’ll even quit studying here. No one in the room sees my potential.

I did climb the stairs to Gloria Bennett’s voice studio and held my ear to the door. I could hear Exene’s growls turning smooth and almost smoky. I wanted her to stop. I loved her original singing, raw and untrained. Yet she was committed to growing. To being more. I was too but you’d never have known it.

I didn’t know how to twist or shout, act or dance. But I knew that soon I would find my own natural voice. And I would do it without taking lessons.

(Photo of Bruce + Patti by Susan Hayden, Kia Forum 4/7/24)