This is Steve. (The one on the left.) Steve is a bit of an anomaly in the world of Road House, a bit of an enigma. He’s one of four people abruptly fired from the Double Deuce by Dalton when he assumes control of “all bar business” (per Tilghman) as the joint’s cooler. Morgan, a cantankerous thug played by hardcore wrestling legend Terry Funk, is fired for not having “the right temperament for the trade,” the wisdom of which he demonstrates by later attempting to murder Dalton on behalf of Brad Wesley. Pat, the weaselly bartender played by L.A. punk legend John Doe, is fired for skimming from the till. He too attempts to murder Dalton on behalf of Brad Wesley (his uncle), multiple times, indicating that Dalton has made another correct judgment call. Judy, a wiry waitress played by Sheila Caan (ex-wife of James Caan and ex-girlfriend of Elvis Presley), is fired for dealing drugs in the bathroom. She does not attempt to murder Dalton on behalf of Brad Wesley or anybody else for the rest of the film, indeed she doesn’t appear in the rest of the film at all, indicating that perhaps a reformist approach may have borne more fruit in her case.
Despite being a heck of a physical specimen, Steve is not a pro or even semi-pro ass-kicker like his coworkers Morgan and Pat; the one fistfight in which he participates ends with him groaning into a mirror about the shiner temporarily disfiguring his beautiful face. He’s not a drug dealer or a legbreaker or involved in any organized-crime capacity at all. Steve’s not a fighter, he’s a lover. The problem is he that loves young women who are visibly below drinking age, which may in fact be putting it generously.
We first meet Steve (Gary Hudson, a hunk) when he blows off the idea that he should break up a rolling-on-the-floor fight between two aggrieved pool players (“fuck ’em, they’re brothers”) in favor of telling a bosomy patron, whose fake ID is probably Mclovin-level, that he gets off at 2am, and (should she play her cards right) she could get off shortly thereafter. Later that night he incurs the shiner, presumably ruining his plans. In our next encounter he’s antagonistic toward Dalton during the meeting in which he fires Morgan and Judy and lays out the rules everyone will be expected to follow going forward.
Then comes Saturday night. When Beverly and Agnes, two women in, let’s say, his target demographic, get stopped at the door for presenting a Sears credit card as ID, Steve swoops in to wave them through. Why? Because he’s been thinking about Agnes, and tonight is a very special night: the night he’ll roger her in the supply room beneath a St. Patrick’s Day banner during his break. (Steve invented the “I was on a break” excuse, which he uses to no avail as he slides his high-cut blindingly white briefs back up and protests his firing. Eat shit, Ross Geller.) Stripped naked as a jaybird and rhythmically fucking her from behind standing up (everyone does their best work on two feet in this film), he pays her the ultimate compliment: “You’re gonna be my regular Saturday night thing, baby!” Then Dalton walks in, looks on in bemusement for longer than is perhaps necessary, then breaks up the party and sends Steve packing. (Dawn Ciccone, the actor who plays Agnes, has a “whoopsie daisy!” look on her face afterwards that’s one of the most endearing things in the whole movie.)
Road House is like Shakespeare in many respects, but foremost among them is its propensity to coin phrases. Most of these—getting “nipple to nipple” as a euphemism for sex, “balls big enough to come in a dumptruck” as an elaboration of “balls of steel,” replacing “does a bear shit in the woods?” with “does a hobbyhorse have a wooden dick?”—are wonderful, vulgar, stupid, and all but impossible to imagine anyone saying in the real world.
But “my regular Saturday night thing” is different. It’s an effective encapsulation of an entire type of relationship: people who like having sex with each other enough to do so regularly, but who are otherwise indifferent enough to each other to keep it on a relatively light schedule, with no real desire to treat it as much more than a thing they do on Saturday nights. Other people might have stayed home to watch the NBC comedy lineup (227, Amen, Golden Girls, Empty Nest, good stuff, I was a religious viewer). Still others might well have come to the Double Deuce, but to dance on tables, or to stab the people who try to get those people to stop dancing on tables, which is the other thing that happens on this fateful night.
But Steve’s desire to be a part of Agnes’s life that begins when they enter the stockroom and ends, I’m guessing, about three minutes later is heartfelt and modest and mercenarily horny enough to resonate beyond the walls of the Double Deuce. It’s the reason Loverboy was working for the weekend. It’s why the Bay City Rollers chanted “ESS AY TEE-YOU-ARE DEE-AY-WHY…NIGHT,” even if their teenybopper audience didn’t realize it. Readers of this series almost certainly have never thought of their sexual partners in terms of getting “nipple to nipple,” but I’d wager more than a few of you have had, or have been, a regular Saturday night thing. If so, I hope your cooler called out sick.
Tags: agnes, beverly, dalton, my regular saturday night thing, steve