by Mark Morelli
From the balcony of Akron's Civic Theater I had a so-so view of the stage where Culture Club was performing. The real action was taking place ten feet to the right of me. Three lithe young women nuzzled and kissed each other.
"Do you really want to hurt meeeee," sang Boy George. His voice, all these years later, was one register lower.
We don't get out to concerts much. For the past seven years many of our outings have been to that Las-Vegas-for-kids, Chuck. E. Cheese.
And there, dancing, writhing, fondling trios of entwined, wine-drenched young women are - if memory serves me - rare.
But here at the Culture Club concert, I glanced at these young girls pawing at each other. I was careful not to gawk. "Hey, what will your folks think," I thought - and boy was I surprised that I thought that.
Probably the same feeling Boy George got when, donning lipstick, he peered into the mirror and said, "Darling, you now head an oldies act."
Prior to that Dorian Gray moment I'd considered myself a recent college graduate. Recent? 1985. One was tall with a tight, tight t-shirt. One was short with a heart-shaped face. The third, average height, leaned dreamily to the tall one whilst cradling and nuzzling the small one. Their fingertips explored each other. Slithered over each other's bellies, Looped over belt buckles, drawing pelvis to pelvis.
(Not bad for a quick glance, mm?)
A happy, nostalgic dance beat blasted from the stage, but these young women, supporters of this benefit concert for "Out In Akron," were not reflecting wistfully upon the past. These shapely, tribadistic three bears were in diapers when Boy George accepted Culture Club's 1982 Grammy by thanking America for knowing a good drag queen when we see one.
It was a time of cultural last hurrahs. Sinatra sang at inaugural balls. The youngest baby boomers - one of them, me - turned into taxpayers. The men and women who still had years to go before Tom Brokaw crowned them "the greatest generation" were just beginning to retire.
Also being put out to pasture were vinyl records. One of pop culture's cruelest little jokes was the advent of CDs, rendering entire personal music collections obsolete in a very short time. You could also throw out your old phone and buy a new one (without a cord! carry it around the house!)
Disposability arrives. Also, glibness. David Letterman started hosting an arch talk show that made fun of unarch talk shows. Aptly, the age of irony dawned simultaneously with computers, a time when fewer people than ever were readers, and yet just getting words on paper now got more complicated. Clacking typewriters gave way to word processors.
(That first generation of computers is now at the bottom of the ashheap. Find the typewriters - wherever they are - and they'll still work.) One of my college professors perused a brand new MAC computer lab with round-the-clock assistance. "All this to put words on paper?" he said.
The first generation of writers and entertainers weaned on TV joined the media vanguard. Cultural references were no longer to Benny Goodman, Jack Armstrong, Ike, or even to books. About the only TV star using the word "Guadalcanal" in an aside was Johnny Carson, and he was running on fumes.
I entered college thumbing through card catalogues thumbed for generations before me. (My own thumbs had been once or twice stained by real carbon paper.) By graduation, the catalogue was computerized.
We once hung around watching the phone, waiting for it to ring. Five chart hits into Culture Club's career and we were able to leave for the night, the machine would save our messages
In 1982, a college classmate threw a party, showing a film - yes, threaded onto a projector - of Bergman's "Persona." (It was a snore and sucked all the life out of what had been a pretty fun party, but hey, how cool was it in the first place that we had a real movie at our party.) Overnight, we began renting these big boxy VCRs and five movies to make the VCR rental worthwhile. Add a dozen friends, three pizzas, a case of Blatz and you have a movie orgy. The headaches came not from drinking, but too much viewing.
Did we really spend hours watching one MTV video after another. On our deathbeds we will grieve those lost, irretrievable hours. "You come and go," Boy George sang. "You come and go-oo-oo."
"Karma Chameleon" is now an oldie. The tunes of Boy George and Culture Club were still catchy. I didn't realize how much I loved them. But suddenly Culture Club was like the Andrews Sisters making a guest appearance during Beatlemania.
"We don't have a CD," said Boy George. "We don't have a book. We're just here to have fun." I was trying hard to listen to the stage patter.
I'd forgotten that in between songs was when you're supposed to emit loud, falsetto whoops. But for the first time in fifteen years, I felt like I was back at Cedars, the new wavy Youngstown club where kitschy photocopied handbills promoted slam-dancy, new wavy, unisexy bands of the week - whose once-pierced guitarists are now marketing managers. The wife and I began our love life there amid deafening power chords.
Today my power cords are plugged into hedge trimmers. (Ba-da-boom.)
The tall girl invited the others to reach under her shirt. They did. I looked away smiling, not lasciviously, but in fond remembrance of an era in my life that has been over for a long time. I just hadn't realized it. Now that I do, it is easier.
The young women laughed and stumbled, jagged on wine. Long may they live without mini-vans.
After the concert we went to Benito's, the Cuyahoga Falls jazz saloon that the national website LuxuriaMusic.com calls "easily the coolest attraction for miles." At Benito's we swung and danced to That's Lew's Jazz, a band of five guys, at least three of them over 80, whose long list of songs were written before Boy George and I were born. The songs and the musicians hold up better than the three young women.
The band played "Young At Heart." On the dance floor was 75-year-old Jimmy, 22-year-old Josh and 39-year-old me and the 37-year-old missus. Little Mary, 85-years old, scuffled out onto the dance floor. She smiled and took teeny dance steps.
"Here is the best part, you had head start," sang an old fellow at the mike. "If you are among the very young at heart."
At that moment, we felt as young as Little Mary. But truth be told, we still have miles to go before we are that blessed.
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