I was never part of the music scene, but the women I got into relationships with starting back in the 60s shared a certain trait: they resembled well-known rock stars. Perhaps unfortunately, it was male rock stars they looked like, and not the prettiest ones either. I never dated a girl as drop-dead gorgeous as Jim Morrison, or as cuddly-cute as Beatle Paul, as gorgeously tressed as David Coverdale, as perfectly lipped and eye-lidded as the King, or as glitzy as David Lee Roth. Instead my girlfriends resembled some of the plainer, even grotesque male rock stars. But I’m not complaining. This detracted not a bit from their femininity, and never compromised my gender identity. These young ladies may have looked like plain-to-ugly male rockers to a startling degree, but each and every one overcame that with cherry lips, Bambi eyes, a tidy rack, sometimes a Marilyn mole, and other wow features.
My first girlfriend, a desperate score I made in time for senior prom in 1965, having gone dateless up to that time, looked like Sam the Sham, right after he and the Pharaohs scored big with “Wooly Bully.” Carla didn’t have a beard, not yet anyway, but she did have the Sham’s thick mat of curly, dark hair, jutting jaw and monstrous overbite, and an identical reluctance to pay a dentist to rein in those buck teeth, despite the hit single royalties that must have been accruing in his, if not her, pocket. As for her more womanly attributes, Carla added to Sam’s overt maleness some seriously cute female dimples and a sassy, womanly pout. Carla and I experimented with pot and a bunch of new dance steps together. The jerk comes to mind. But the highlight of our relationship was attending a costume party the summer of our graduation. She went as the Sham, no surprise there, wearing a false beard and a paper pharaoh hat. Lacking a costume, and wanting Carla to take center stage, I came in a flannel shirt and blue jeans as the pharaoh’s food-taster, and I still remember how great those finger sandwiches were. Carla and I lasted a few months of doing wild coming-of-age things together, but somehow we managed to go off in different directions to college.
In 1966 I met Sherry in my freshman psych class. She resembled bandleader Paul of Paul Revere and the Raiders, right down to his short blonde hair, his come-on smirk, and the roguish twinkle in his eye. Sherry could prance to “Kicks” the way Paul and the band did, too, flaunting her solid tush and round thighs in skin-tight pants just the way that stocky Paul shook his own generous bum in snug cavalry britches and riding boots. Sherry and Paul were two prancing fools. The difference was, Sherry shook her bouncy little rack and added a hip roll as she worked her go-go boots, and this turned my head much more than Revere’s manlier motions. And talk about a kisser: I still remember her breath warmed by 3.2 beer and tongue skilled from licking cigarette papers. She was such a good smoocher that I could hardly take my eyes off those cherry lips crinkled in a smile. And in case you’re wondering what it was like to kiss Paul Revere, or his copy, it was great, and it never occurred to me that I was kissing a guy, because I wasn’t.
In 1967, when student radicals moved in on campus and began to plot against the administration, I shacked up with Sandra, who was an exact lookalike for Smokey Robinson, only with pillowy lips, Bambi eyes, a rack so tidy as to be pointy, a magnificent collection of earrings, a Marilyn mole, and her process beginning to explode into naturalness. We only lasted a month or two before conflicting views on the role of police in society sundered our relationship, but meanwhile we stoked each other in the bedroom with talk of justice and equality between heated sheets. I like to think that in some way we liberated each other’s souls, and man, could she nibble an ear.
Right after I dropped out of the higher education racket in 1969, I met Barb at a laser show in an art museum. This foxy lady looked so much like Question Mark of Question Mark and the Mysterians, a band I often saw on TV, that I was floored. In case you don’t remember what Question Mark looked like, he resembled a worm with shoulder-length dark hair, always wore dark glasses, and had very bad skin, as if he had been badly burned in an accident. That was Barb all over, and her little sister Babs too. Barb and Babs both had that wormlike quality with really bad, my-house-burned-down-with-me-in-it skin. Barb and I loved to frug to “96 Tears,” “Magic Carpet Ride,” and my then favorite, “Draft Resister.” For a while I was eyeing Barb and Babs at the same time, getting off on their fantastic Question Mark looks. But eventually Barb’s cherry lips, sparkling Bambi eyes, and roly-poly hips put her over the top in my little red address book. She told me I could use her VW Beetle if I needed to hightail to Canada until peace broke out, and maybe she’d come with me. We never tried to sneak over the border, though, since I drew a winningly huge number in the draft lottery.
After graduation in the early ’70s from a junior college with lax admission policies, I went with the spitting image of Ginger Baker, drummer from Cream. Cherie wasn’t as tall as the over-six-foot Baker, but still towered over me by a couple of inches, and sported Baker’s gangly build, red hair, enormous feet, and unfortunately those not-great British teeth, though her fangs were American. But she also had flashing blue eyes like Ginger’s, legs that went to heaven, and a rack that, though small, was definitely not minor league. Like the drummer, she had great energy and endurance. She could play hacky sack and ride bikes with me all morning, and had strength left over to chase a Frisbee and rip my clothes off in the afternoon. Aware of her resemblance to the great musician, Cherie didn’t mind in the least that my nickname for her was Ginger, and she flashed a gray-toothed smile, and opened up those baby blues, when I teasingly said such things as, “Hey, Ginger, come over here, and bring your tidy rack.”
The great blonde in my life circa the ’80s was Julie, who was the duplicate of that blowzy blond singer, What’s-his-name, in Flock of Seagulls. In a blur of acid after a rock concert, we went back to my place, where her hair twisted and curved all over the pillows like a sculpture of fine wires. Our first night together, I dreamt her hair took flight and soared out my apartment window like a bird. Then I awoke and, after ascertaining she didn’t need a shave or have an erection, made love to her. She explained afterward that her hair was the result of many less than successful dye jobs and home permanents, these having caused lasting damage. I loved Julie hair damage and all, but we disagreed about Bill Clinton’s talent on the saxophone, I insisting it was an impeachable offense, and we soon split up.
Neanderthal-thick and sporting a sloping forehead that looked atavistic back to the chimp level, my future wife Claire was a dead ringer for Meat Loaf. In 1990, tired of frequenting fleshpots and panicked to find myself still a bachelor, I noticed that my librarian’s pelvis was every inch as wide as Meat Loaf’s sprawling pant-load. This presaged easy childbirth if we went the family route, and why wouldn’t we, after I checked out a few books and made advances? I also found bewitching Claire’s cute-as-a-button Marilyn mole, and her sparkling Bambi eyes beneath an adorable jutting brow. And oh those sweet cherry lips, though compared to Meat Loaf she probably wore too much makeup. On our first date, she told me I was a dead ringer for Rudyard Kipling. I said, Whoa, but figured I shouldn’t argue with obsession. I only wondered if Kipling was handsome or at least a five. I later saw from his picture that he was about a three, and that I did look like him.
My son, I’m proud to say, takes after the old man. Over the holidays he brought home the body double of Adam Levine of Maroon 5. She had Levine’s tattoos all up and down her arms, his cherry lips and short brown hair, his slim hips and flashing eyes, even his tidy rack, but still she was all female. “Can she sing?” I asked my son. I don’t know why I asked him that, since none of my old girlfriends despite their rocker looks had shown one bit of musical talent.
“What do you mean, can she sing?” my son shot back. “She’s in medical school. What are you thinking?”
Yeah, what the hell was I thinking?
