Hef and the Boy Scout

I like this story. Nostalgia, to quote myself, is porn for old people, and maybe I'm getting old, but damn it, I like this story. A little tone-poem of an era. I'm tempted to turn it into a short film. Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Been a lot of album rock on the radio lately. The boy wants music when we drive, and the funk station talks all the time, and the college stations aren't dependable, and well, I don't have to tell you that radio sucks anyway, right? But if the CDs come out, the boy demands one of "his" discs, all of which make me want to steer into an embankment.

So it's all the best of the 70s. And the worst. For every Stones or Bowie or Queen song I don't mind hearing over and over, and for every now-and-then like Heart or Fleetwood Mac or Led Zepplin, and for every one-off "oh, I love this song" like Golden Earring's "Radar Love" or T-Rex's "20th Century Boy," there's a hell of a lot of Doors and Johnny Cougar and Bruce Springsteen.

What really jumps out, though, is when they play a Steely Dan song. Horns, organs, Motown backup singers, themes of middle-aged ennui, what the hell was this band doing playing in the era of big guitars and earnest working men wailing about cars and girls?

Listening to the few 'Dan songs they'll play booted a childhood memory onto a front-burner of my cerebellum.

Must've been 1977 or so, that's when the album came out. Would've put me at 12 or 13, prime time for li'l Pete's sexual awakening. I was a Boy Scout, which probably doesn't surprise you. I was going door-to-door, trying to sell something for some damned reason, I forget what. Anyway, there I was, in my little uniform, thumb on a doorbell, all prepared to launch into my spiel.

And the door opens, and there he is. Tall, tanned, glint-eyed, just a touch of gray at the sleek temples. Black turtleneck, at least in my memory, with a herringbone sports jacket, and was there a pipe clutched between his ivories? Maybe. No probably not, because I'm sure I do recall a martini glass in hand. His home, what I could see of it, was the bachelor pad to launch a thousand panties. Probably there was a Nagel print, although I wouldn't have known the artist at the time. I got the hint, maybe it was a scent, of some pneumatic sexpot just out of eyeshot, curled purring on a leather settee, a Manhattan beading sweat on the kidney-shaped coffee table, coasters and tastefully provocative photobooks arranged just so. And Steely Dan's "Aja" was playing on the hi-fi, speakers hidden inside professionally-tended houseplants.

And I saw this, and I heard this, and I smelled this, and I thought... this is what I want to be.

He didn't buy whatever I was selling. I doubt I even managed to stammer out my pitch. But I sure as hell bought what he was selling. And I bet the woman did, too, whoever, wherever she was.

Damn. I gotta pull out my copy of "Aja."