Yesterday’s Favorite
“Baby
life's what you make it - can't escape it.
Baby
yesterday's favourite - don't you hate it?”
Life’s what you make it.---Talk Talk
I’ll admit it. I’m suffering from old-man angst. If I had been nothing before it wouldn’t bother me a bit to be nothing now. But I wasn’t nothing. I was something.
Out of the shower and dressing, looking in the mirror. What do I see? I see a hunched-over old man. And grey-haired too. Only the mustache hints of the rich black, the “used-to-be” color I possessed and wore so well. The eyes have lost their sparkle, and the boyish charm has probably gone the same direction. The jeans are sagging around the butt. I hate the reflection that is me.
Angsty as hell, that’s my style lately.
Like I said, it wouldn’t bother me if I had been nothing, had been no one. But I had been someone. I’m going to admit it right now to you all. I was Mod Man.
It happened like this: In nineteen sixty-five I graduated and started wearing my hair long. Not because of the fashion, at first. Because I had big ears. All my life the big ears. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but Disney came out with “Dumbo” at the same time I was in grammar school. So you know what they called me.
When the Beatles came in, here was my chance to bury my ears beneath mounds of hair, and I took it. The Mod fashion came later. American Mods had to search for the fashions, and copied “the look” from English band album covers. My wide-whale corduroy pants were as wide-whaled as Brian Jones’ red ones on the pictures from High Tides and Green Grass. You’ve seen it on TV or in history books by now. Long hair, military jackets, bell-bottomed pants, flowered or paisley shirts with plain cuffs and collars. Beatle-boots with stupid zippers on their sides that always broke.
Girls thought, everyone thought, you had to be in a band. I even rented a base guitar from Apex music downtown. Thought I could manage four strings at least. Turned out I couldn’t.
City College was right across the street from San Diego High School. It was small, and believe it or not, only three of us dressed anything Mod. There was me, a guy, Mike Millsap, who was actually in a band, and Steven Garrison, an artist who drew for the Fortnightly, the college rag.
Long-haired, all three of us.
We’d sit together at lunch and swap stories
.
“Guess what happened when I walked by the jocks today?”
That’s how it started.
One day they’d say, “Is that a boy or a girl?”
Next day it would be, “When you gonna get a haircut?”
Funny thing is, inside of a year they’d be, everyone would be, wearing their hair longer in one way or another. We were the pioneers though. We took the flak for the rest of them. Like the first bombers over Berlin.
First in battle and so forth. Front-line fashion-troopers, that’s what we were.
Then one day Steve comes to the lunch table with a piece of paper in his hand.
“Look at this,” says he.
It was the first cartoon of Mod Man.
“It’s you,” he says.
He made them for a semester, and if you don’t believe me, go down to City College in San Diego and ask to see the back issues. Just for nostalgia’s sake I’m about to do it myself one day. Just for nostalgia’s sake, get me?
Gonna ask myself what happened. Gonna ask myself what went wrong. Gonna ask myself why I’m not famous anymore, why I’m only yesterday’s favorite. Gonna die my hair and stash with something that “just gets the grey out.” I’m not just going to get it out. I’m going to exile it. No, then it might return like Napoleon from Elba. Better to assassinate it. Gonna back-date my age and everything.
“Baby
life's what you make it - don't backdate it.”
That’s what Talk-Talk says. Wonder why?
I gotta go back to the mirror to brush my hair, it’s dry now anyway, it took so long for this old man to type this crap out of his system.
But wait a minute here! Something’s wrong. An hour has passed and the light has changed in the room. I can see better. Let me open the blinds up a bit.
Hey!
My daughter, Nichole, short as she is, has hung the mirror too low on the wall! That’s why I’m hunched over. And now that the light is brighter, the grey is all silvered-out instead. My stash is silver and black too. It ain’t so bad after all.
The eyes, all blue and green, have more sparkle than Captain Kidd’s treasure!
And hey, these are my son Sean's big-butted son’s jeans! Mine are over there on the chair. Lemme try them on. Hey, there’s my butt after all. It was there all the time.
And the boy-ish charm, well I can’t say for sure where it was hiding, but there it is, right where it belongs, inside of me. I’ll use it whenever I damn please.
“Baby
life's what you make it - celebrate it
anticipate it - yesterday's faded.
Nothing can change it - life's what you make it.
Ev'rything's alright - life's what you make it.”
That’s the thing about old-man angst. Like Malaria, it comes and goes. Or maybe I was just going through a phase.
©StevenHunley2017
https://youtu.be/YvkRnEv6WG8 Placebo Life's What You Make It
Reply With Quote
