My Blood Runs Cold, My Memory Has Just Been Sold

[Today was not a good day for Huntington, in the sense kindergarten teachers mean when they say "Bobby didn't have a good day today." Usually, that means Bobby* was caught just before he pulled Susie's pigtails or set fire to the teachers' lounge or something. It implies a sense of simple familiarity with little Bobby's barely developed strengths and weaknesses, a competent reassurance to Mr. and Mrs. Bobby (or, you know, whatever) that a. narrowly averted arson by a five year old is no big deal, and b. Authority, in the person of Teacher and the Bobbies, are in this together. There's still time: action is called for, but not major therapy or military school (not yet).]

[I had the kind of day that showed my weaknesses in their pure form. The details aren't important, but the end of the day couldn't come too soon. Come to think of it, I could've used a nice lie down with a blanky and some graham crackers. Instead, I answered the phone, solved problems, trained the untrainable, and even cleaned up around the place a bit. (Work is three men and a Ridiculously Large Mastiff in a garage-like space - we call it a "studio-like setting" when pressed, since it's Potrero Hill, but you can guess the tidiness level.)]

[Even after getting good work done this afternoon, I left still feeling not terribly successful in this endeavor called adulthood. I walked my usual route down Vermont and up Ninth, ambled into Trader Joe's to see what unique variation on pesto they'd come up this week, and wondered where it all gone wrong. Then, as I approached the bagged salad greens, what to my wondering ears did appear?]

"Darken the city night is a wire
Steam in the subway earth is afire Do do do do do do do dodo dododo dodo."

In touch with the ground
I'm on the hunt I'm after you
Smell like I sound I'm lost in a crowd
And I'm hungry like the wolf
Straddle the line in discord and rhyme
I'm on the hunt I'm after you
Mouth is alive with juices like wine
and I'm hungry like the wolf.]

[Of course I could barely restrain myself from belting it out in the cracker aisle right along with Simon, even though I only know half the words, which make no sense anyway. I kept giving women and gay men who looked about my age sidelong glances to see if any had broken down as I was about to do. None had - the Durannies have built a thick skin over the years in the face of near-constant ridicule. But I knew they were there. (Lyrics pulled from this offical fans site, by the way; someone has finally done something about the crying need for a Slovak translation of "Rio." About damn time!)]

[But wait! Next, though! So, the moaning woman in "Hungry Like The Wolf" faded into the jungle like always, and what comes next? Someone had a fine ear for different grades of 80s cheese, because we were next treated to the skirling swing of the J. Geils Band's "Centerfold." And I had an Ally McBeal (or "It's Oh So Quiet" or whatever) moment: I was sure random Trader Joe's shoppers were about to join me in a barn-burning, hip-swaying, boob-shaking interpretive dance. I looked around with a sly, anticipatory look, waiting for it to happen. It didn't, except in my head.]

[Now, I think it's OK even now to admit to a fondness for Duran Duran if you danced the Molly Ringwald to "New Moon On Monday" in a high school gym. They're English, they were on the safe end of "alternative" ("formally conceived as a mix of the Sex Pistols and Chic" according to Authority), they were cuuuute. (Note to self: you are going to Trannyshack's Duran night next week. Nick Rhodes is a drag king's greatest gift.)]

[But J. Geils? No. American! Trashy! No sexual ambiguity whatsoever - 100% hetero rock of the kind the boys who had terrorized me in elementary school liked. But standing there in Trader Joe's, tomato-basil hummus in one hand, sage-geranium-mint conditioner in the other, I was ready to sing and dance. I found I knew all the lyrics, too, which mystified me until I remembered why I was having some happy on what had been such a crappy day...]

[Spring 1988, Francisco Torres dorm, near, but not at that time part of, the University of California, Santa Barbara. (No, it wasn't originally built as a Holiday Inn, so stop asking.) Your protagonist is waiting to perform in the dorm lip-synch contest, and is not in the least bit nervous or apprehensive. Not nervous because we'd practiced; I was just one of three backup lip-synching Pips to our friend Mike's Gladys Knight; and I knew we were going to win.]

[Mike was from around Pasadena, and theatre and tennis had been his "things" in high school (mine had been band and band.) I couldn't believe it either when contrary to all good sense, he insisted on being straight. He was brilliant (but I knew things he didn't), hilarious (but he laughed at all my jokes) and decent. I knew I loved him desperately - at some point I figured he knew, too, but I wasn't anywhere near coming out. Mike and his girlfriend Shannon were for a while my best friends in the entire universe.]

[So, my dorm roommate David, my band buddy Candy, and I somehow ended up being Pips, and somehow the song that Mike chose to strut to was "Centerfold." We'd all been quite bigger fish (music/drama dept. subvariety) in our small high school ponds, but at UCSB, and at especially Francisco Torres, it was harder to make quirky work amid the blond, beautiful and Beemered Biffs and Babes who seemed to outnumber us. Again.]

[By spring quarter, we'd had enough, especially Mike. When he heard that F.T. was puttin' on a show, he knew that not only could he beat Biff and Babe, he'd be doing it not at their own game, but at a better one, and they'd love him for it. He chose the corniest song he could think of to lip-synch that everyone would know, asked his three decidedly non-Biff/Betty friends to sway their arms and lip-synch the "doot, doot, doo-wahs," put on the dorkiest red lycra pants and billowy white shirt, and killed.]

[More later...I've been fooling with this long, long post all evening in between trips to the laundry room in the basement, and I need to figure out what this has to do with kindergarten teachers and my current craziness. Good night.]

[*Are any kindergarteners named Bobby anymore? I had thought to use the name "Jaden," since no one over the age of twelve is called that. I think the Pinkett-Smiths made it up, and now we're beset with a whole generation of Cadens and Zadens. See also Kayla Brady from Days of Our Lives]

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