The Daily Minutiae

My dad doesn’t keep any secrets in his car.  I’ve learned that from sitting at bank drive-thrus and waiting for groceries. 

With this in mind, it was second nature to plunk in his old copy of Janis Joplin’s Farewell Song that I found suspiciously stowed in the glove box.  The opening track is an acid blues version of “Tell Mama” and had so much speed and torque to its sound, I could hear the gears moving.  This is what women sounded like when the rocked the world when Dad was my age.

:::   :::   :::

[A yuppie electronic flourish] “USB: Please say a command.”

“Play artist Katy Perry.”

“Playing artist…”

When Jon said her name to his car that first time, my first thought was, “Gee, that’s a catchy name.  ‘Wonder if she’s a porn star.”

He asked what I thought of the song in the first dozen bars.  It was a chick and she sang to a thick drumbeat.  I gave him lip service and said she sounded sexy, which wasn’t untrue.

Jon turned it up just loud enough to not carry a conversation over so I hadn’t much of a choice but to let the chorus hit me.

“I kissed a girl and I liked it,

the taste of her cherry chapstick...”

The words really kicked my ass.  Immediately I looked to Jon and demanded who in the hell this…this…woman was.  I ended up having to look her up when I got home; all he could do was giggle and all I could get out of him was that she was some new name on the Top 40. We reclined and set it on repeat, silently appreciating something coming from the speakers.

Katy Perry’s got it all: a chest out of a Bare Necessities catalogue, oozing confidence, and the face of that girl you always wanted to sit with in the high school lunch room.  Her music is a turn-on and in the same token turns on us.

In these rough times for masculinity, Perry throws us a bone. Somewhere out there, the traditional American Man is sought after. It’s a hopeful message in a world where men are having children.  She likes to point out that some men resort to guyliner and girls’ pants: “I want to wear my jeans.  Don’t wear my jeans.”

With lyrics like “You bitch and moan about LA/wishing you were in the rain reading Hemingway” and “You don’t eat meat and drive electrical cars/You’re so indie rock it’s almost an art/You need SPF 45 just to stay alive,” it’s hard not to look and see yourself part of the epidemic.  That’s what her album One of the Boys is –an antidote.  Just from the title, I can see old Katy lounging around with some burr and conducting a self-help group for men with pussiitis.

“Hi.  I’m Rich.”
“Come on everyone:”

“Hi Rich!” “Hi Rich!”  “Hey Rich, how you been?”

“Hi everybody.  I’ve been doing well, thank you. I’ve been coming to Bob’s basement for about eight months now.  I finally started taking charge again; little by little. Oh, and I might go hunting next turkey season.  Depends what Marge says.  She's still got the final word.  Me and my brudder Jim haven’t done that since high school…”

“Hunting’s fun; you’re on meal duty turkey season then!  Yum!  I love turkey.  Jim, have we addressed that little problem we mentioned last time we met?”

            “Well…ah, yeah.  I mean, yes, Katy, yes I have.  I’m learning how to control it.  No more of those things, but every once in a while when I’m by the mirror, after a shower, say, sometimes I try to shift around see what I’d look like if I were…”

Pop’s definitely not Rich, but maybe I should throw a mix CD in the glove box.  Dad might really appreciate it.