The Wikiness

The 14 year-old is bigger than me. He is Paul’s cousin, but his presence makes me uneasy, even though Paul and I are on our “home turf,” the tennis courts at the end of my alley. The stranger’s mouth curls into an amused look of disgust as he sees the LP I hold, my recently-purchased copy of Elton John’s Catptain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. I had been telling Paul how good this “concept album” was when his cousin showed up.

He looks up from my record and his eyes narrow, sneering at me, “Elton John? How could you stand his music? That guy is so-o gay!” His eyes stay focused on my face and he points at me. “Paul, is this guy a faggot?” He laughs derisively and I feel myself redden.

A strong urge to justify my purchase and sexuality makes me say. “I’m not gay, and there’s some good music on here. Um, also,” I add, hopefully, “look at the cover art. It’s pretty far out…”

At my inadequate repartee, the young man, shakes his head. He scoffs. More than challenging my budding manhood, the stranger from St. Bernadine’s parish challenges my critical position. He calls my aesthetic opinion into question. Mine. I am astonished, and breathe in deeply. 

In my neighborhood and public school, I have for years been the arbiter of good pop musical taste, a taste cultivated with regular study of Circus and Creem magazines, and countless hours of WCFL and WLS. I keenly felt pop music’s power to alter mood and sometimes express my confused feelings in beautiful ways. Furthermore, had not I been chosen to spin the 45s at Washington Irving’s sock hops? And did that not make me a DJ,? And who is more a musical expert than a DJ?

To my rival’s claim of Elton’s perversion, I have no reply. For although the former Reg Dwight hasn’t “come out” yet,  how else to explain his outrageous feathers, beaded costumes, and bejeweled, oversized eyeglass frames? 

On musical terms alone, though, and with the certitude of a thirteen year old, I had decided that the only British rock star worth being a fan of–and buying the records and posters of, and maybe one day buying a concert ticket for–was Elton John. His wonderfully hooky music, melodic choruses and harmonies, melancholy, wistful, and decadent worlds evoked in Bernie Taupin’s lyrics–engaged me in romantic places like Spain and rooftops. His music to me seemed clearly the successor to those who wrote the foundational text of British pop, the Beatles. Their carnival of fantastic sounds and imagery was alive in Elton’s songs.  But I am not a puritan. I do enjoy songs by Gary Glitter, T. Rex,and Alice Cooper,–all of them uncomfortably androgynous. But, no, it is Elton and his cartoonish outfits, not the obviously homosexual David Bowie, who deserves my allowance dollars.

A word or two about my homophobic youth. Fear of queerness is in the air and water: everywhere, unnoticed. Of course homosexuality is wrong. It is disgusting and unnatural. For look around. Real men love women, and sports, John Wayne movies, and Old Style, and they nod their crew-cutted heads at ads showing men in shiny shirts luring attractive women into their grasp with the right musk or Hai Karate cologne. Any deviation from this hetero-norm is insufferable.. 

In the whole neighborhood, there is but one male I know of brave enough to be his gay self, and he is an object of universal contempt. A few years older than I, in my sister Sharon’s grade, he is the already pale-skinned and red-headed David Williams. He has teased his quiff up into spikes just like Ziggy Stardust. 

When South Oak Park’s David Bowie passes us on the school playground, my friend smiles and shakes his head, knowinglly . “Would you get a look at that fag? He’s got his mom’s makeup on! Disgusting!” 

Here on the tennis court, my critical rival has come not merely to disparage my tastes, but to proclaim his true faith in the only musical artist worth any American teen’s wealth in 1974: Who is that? Why, Pete Townshend and the Who, specifically their greatest-of-all-time concept album, last year’s Quadrophenia.

I am mute, impressed as my rival waxes poetic on the stunning achievement of this double album. “These songs, they tell a teenager’s life, they’re real, and intense, and they rock so hard that you want to listen to them again and again, I’m telling you. There is no one, not John Bonham, not Ginger Baker, no one that can play drums like Keith Moon!”

As it happens,my rival’s besting of me this day dislodges my musical bearings from pre-teen (“teenybopper”) to more mature (“teenager”) tastes. In five years time, I, too, will be inhabiting the world of Jimmy in Quadrophenia. I see myself in him, a young man struggling against corrupt authority threatening to quash his young manhood. I, too, listen again and again to its hard-rocking songs of alienation, loneliness, and striving against desperate odds.

The music hadn’t changed a bit. But I had.