Question: The Molly Ringwald Evolutionary Trio: What celebrity did you desperately want to have sex with at three different ages–sixteen, twenty-one, and then thirty?
Answers, below.
Summer ’86. I had just turned 16 which meant I could drive which meant I could go on dates which meant I could finally get laid! Well, I went to a lot of movies, anyway. And I fell in love one night. Not with my date, but with the woman on the screen (unfortunately for my date, unfortunately for me). Sigourney Weaver, I mean Ellen Ripley. Of course I’d seen her years before in the immortal Alien, but I wouldn’t have known what to do with her, then (I wouldn’t know what to do with her, now). But, I figured, if Ripley could save the human race, she certainly could find time to offer me some sexual salvation. Understanding the difference between wanting sex and having sex is something almost every 16 year old boy is a reluctant expert at; the difference between needing sex and having sex is something almost every man spends the rest of his life acknowledging.
(Vid is surprisingly difficult to come by, but I have no problems with this one. Do you?)
By 21 I had learned a thing or two. I had also made up for lost time, sexually speaking, exorcising the demons of the repressed Catholic kid I had unwittingly become. As such, I knew I was ready for a woman with experience, like Susan Sarandon. From the first time I watched Atlantic City on my Betamax (when we watched movies the way we masturbated: in analog), not really appreciating the plot but causing me to wish I was a sliced lemon so I could get closer to those impeccable, impossible breasts. Louise never would have careened over that cliff if she’d had me, Cliffs Notes in one hand, lukewarm PBR in the other, waiting on my student apartment futon.
By 31 I’d been there, done that, at least figuratively speaking. I was already a lost cause, a sad clown whose fate lay in recognizing all his soul mates had been born before his time (or had never been born at all, literally speaking). Still, perhaps because we long most for what we can never attain, I carried a tragic-comic torch for Faye Dunaway. Back to the future: 1967, Bonnie Parker, the perfect woman. Did any actress ever look as good in any movie? Not for all the money I don’t have in my bank account. And even though I wasn’t as exciting or nearly as pretty as Warren Beatty, I understood her pain. I could give her what she really needed (sorry, Clyde); I could help her help herself. I could help her help myself. Or something. I suspected, then, and know, now, that like me, she was simply searching for something she couldn’t find, something she could never have.
(Bonus footage. I don’t have any problems with that. Do you?)
This post originally appeared as part of a larger feature, with all the editors at The Weeklings submitting their choices for the same question. Check it out!
