Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut Read Online Free PDF Page B

whom or what—I had it narrowed down to the girls’ JV squash team, but that’s not too helpful, and between Dynasty and T.J. Hooker , Heather Locklear was only on TV two nights a week, so what was a boy to do? Since I was ferociously pursuing a rigorous course in dimly understood Catholic devotion, I carried a safety pin in my pocket to jab myself in the event of carnal desires, to prevent them from happening, yet this was a defense mechanism that proved useless—it didn’t even get me through algebra class, not with Holly Greene sitting in front of me. That girl knew how to pronounce the word “parabola.”
    I would come home from school and do my Latin homework in my room, stretched out on my Boston Bruins sleeping bag, with Wacky Packages stuck to every flat surface and pictures of rock stars taped up all over the wall. My Star Wars posters faced off as Bowie’s voice whispered over the tape deck to fill up the room. He made the space seem impossibly glamorous. I got to know his voice well, as he translated sexual confusions and cravings into the absurd romantic pageant I knew they were supposed to be, and he made it a lot less lonely.
    I yearned to become the Thin White Duke, yet I was stuck being a Thin White Douche. I studiously imitated his every move. There were so many Bowies I could barely keep track of them, but somehow the Bowie I liked best was the one from right now. The way he looked, sounded and moved reminded me of C-3PO. Except not as cheerful. Sometimes he was a heavy-breathing rock stud, like in “Rebel Rebel.” Sometimes he was a disco queen, like in “Fame.” Sometimes he was a crooner straight from The Lawrence Welk Show , sometimes he was Dracula with a head cold, sometimes he was a clown with an eye patch. Sometimes he was a lonely space traveler stuck on earth, doomed to wander around in disguise without ever finding a home, kind of like the Incredible Hulk. (“Don’t make me sexy! You wouldn’t like me when I’m sexy!”)
    Whoever he was, he made everything different. When his song is playing, that’s not just a radio—it’s Ground Control, picking up signals and random messages floating in from outer space. And you’re not a loser spending Friday night at home with the radio—you’re experiencing a night full of star-crossed romance and serious moonlight. He sang about girls in space—why not? That’s where all the cool girls were. (They weren’t where I could find them, that was for sure.)
    He created a night world of new romantics and modern lovers, populated by all the bizarre creatures he sang about. He was a kindly presence, a cracked pastor for all of us moonage daydream believers, pretty things and hot tramps, queen bitches and slinky vagabonds, people from bad homes, night crawlers and pinups and young dudes and scary monsters. They moved in numbers and they plotted in corners. And you could join them just by listening. The B section of the local record store is where you’d find them. I started to spend many afternoons loitering around the B s.
    True, it was somewhat unlikely the astral-traveling rebel chick of my dreams would show up at the Popcorn Records at the South Shore Plaza in Braintree, Massachusetts, sprinkle some stardust on me, and invite me to go on a “Young Americans” bus ride through the existential highways of our youth. But you never knew, right? It’s not like I had other plans. And waiting for her to stumble out of a Bowie song was a lot easier than attempting to go out and search for her, which was frankly out of the question for a tongue-tied trollop-in-training like me.
    This was the era when Pat Benatar had just become a huge star, and in response, the Massachusetts State Legislature had issued a decree that no female between the ages of twelve and forty could leave the house without a killer headband-and-leotard combo. (It was still a couple years before the landmark Leg Warmer Bylaws of spring ’83.) But the new-wave girl was out