Less Than Conventional

There's nothing more amusing than walking down The Drag here in Austin, Texas to see what the University kids believe to be the next cool "thing." 

When I first got to town I remember two-foot high spiked hair, which morphed into skinhead mosh-pitters, which in turn became flannel-shirted, stocking-hat grungers, who became nose-studded, inked hipsters who became, well, I haven't figured out what look today's men get to be.

For the cool, it's important to be different and some would say unconventional.  However, I take exception to the latter because I strive to be unconventional and I'm nothing like those cool folks.

I never got a tattoo. I never did anything to my hair in order to be different (although if you've seen my picture, you know I'd be willing to do that just to have hair). I didn't wear jeans with a hole in the knee to be cool—I wore jeans with a hole in the knee because I would do work that wore out the knees in my jeans.

I guess it’s because I believe being unconventional has more to do with behavior rather than appearance.  I attempt not to act the way society may expect me to act.  You know, things like get out of school and buy a nice car, invest in a house, get married and have 2.5 kids.  Instead I kept driving my beat up old car, I didn’t want to be known as a landowner, so lived in apartments until I finally felt backed into a corner and bought a house (it’s a looonnng story) and my relationships…Well, you’ve seen this blog and know that I’ve been less than conventional in relationships and so remain single.

It all began decades ago while a teenager.  I had a good friend named Phil Johnson who developed cancer after my family had moved away.  We kept in close contact via mail (it was long before anything like the internet. No, not the Stone Age. Jeez) so I knew of his struggles, including the loss of one of his legs.  So my family traveled from El Paso back to Topeka to go to his brother’s wedding.

When we got to the church, our first time to see each other, he was at the top of the stairs with his family, I was down at the door with mine.  He was so excited to see me that he yelled my name.  I looked up at the smiling face of my young friend and fought the urge to run up the steps to greet him.  Instead, I did as I was programmed and stayed at the bottom of the stairs in the receiving line with my family.  Heaven forbid I do something out of the norm that the conventional folks of Kansas (and my family) would think was out of line.

Oh, we had a nice reunion when my family finally made it to the top.  He was still happy to see me, but that image of his smiling face looking down at me while I stayed motionless haunted me.  Especially when he died from that cancer a few short years later.

That conventionality, that formality, burned into my thoughts.  I vowed to never let formality or being conventional interfere with the important moments in life.

I remember at my high school graduation a cousin shouted out as I walked across the stage “he’s got tennis shoes on!” I think I was the only one who didn’t wear formal shoes and attire.  I didn’t mind the public abuse.  I felt comfortable.

(Jay working graduation. Nope, wouldn't wear a suit)

My parents always insisted that my brother and I wear a suit and tie to Sunday church services yet all during high school I somehow managed to get away with just a sweater and open neck. One time I needed to borrow a black suit jacket from someone so I could go to a funeral of a relative.  For about 20 years the only time I would wear a tie was when I had to work the graduation ceremony as part of my advising duties.  So in that 20 years I only wore a tie twice a year (spring and fall graduation).

Yes, it's Jay's VW & Datsun, circa 80s

When everyone else would buy a new car every other year because they wanted to stay in style, I would hold on to my old car or truck for ten years no matter its’ looks.  If I did buy a different car/truck, it would be used, usually with dents and ugly paint job, and the main feature had to be good MPG’s—which is a popular trend today, but I’ll keep that habit no matter.

This latter habit didn’t help relationships with females.  As noted in previous blogs, while men may be superficial in how a woman looks, women want a man who has a fancy car (in other words, money).

My desire to avoid formality and the conventional affected relationships in other ways.  For example, I actually wanted women to make choices, not to let me make all the decisions. Oh, sure, as you may have noted in my routine blog I can get set in my ways, but I like trying different things, I'm almost always looking for different experiences.

So often I'd call a girlfriend up and ask her what she wanted to do and she'd get flustered and insist I decide. It could be that it was early in the relationship and she hadn't committed yet (yeah, I blogged about that too) and so didn't want to make a mistake. But surely with all the females around wanting equal rights you'd think I'd find a few willing to express themselves on a social level.  Most guys, the macho types anyway, probably insist or want to be the decider.  I wanted to hear something from her.

So no, you may never see me inked or with purple hair.  I may not wear a tie or fancy clothes to your formal event.  You will definitely never see me with a ring in my nose.  However, there's a good chance that I will not act the way you expect. I may even do something just to get a reaction from you.  Forgive me, it's just me doing my best not to be conventional.

Ahhh, James Thurber

In(k) Excess

Back in the 80s a great bar to hit in Austin was The Back Room. A gigantic place divided into two halves. One side a game room with pool tables, video games, air hockey, etc.; the other a music venue. The bands that played ranged from headbangers to blues. I saw all sorts of groups from The Genitorturers, Anthrax and The Cramps, to Al Stewart, The ThunderBirds and Tragically Hip. For the most part though, I'd say the flavor was hard rock. The Back Room was popular with bikers after all.

I mainly hung out on the music side, but between sets or if I didn't want to pay the cover I'd hang in the game room. Although it could be loud in there too, it was the place I often tried to pick up women because I could hear them.

One night I stood along the wall, slowly drinking a beer while scouting out the night's targets. At The Back Room women often dressed much more provocatively than at some of the other haunts of mine, such as Liberty Lunch or Steamboat. This night I spotted a really hot female with painted on latex pants and a backless blouse. Her Pat Benatar-esque eyes and shapely body drew a lot of attention, including me.

However, she turned to look at someone playing pool and I noticed that she had a gigantic tattoo on her back. I casually moved a little closer and discovered that it was a panther. It's head on her right shoulder and its tail snaking off somewhere below her waist underneath those latex pants.

Although she had seemed intriguing, that gigantic tattoo turned me off.  Back in those days most women didn't have much in the way of ink. Well, unless they were biker chicks.

I also had a double-hit mindset against it because I had grown up as a youth in the middle-American Midwest. Us God-fearing whitebread kids were taught by our elders that men who had tattoos were either old sailors (which was deemed acceptable but you could still smirk) or else criminals or carny folk (not acceptable).  Obviously, to these people, it was impossible to think that a female would sport a tattoo.  Tsk, tsk was the phrase used when you passed a person such as this (people back then were PC—not prone to being jerks—before that became a way of behaving).

However, besides my youthful brainwashing, I had another reason I didn't like the idea of tattoos. Way back then a horrible man named Richard Speck butchered eight young nurse trainees in a dormitory. I distinctly remember the police saying we'd be able to identify him if we saw him because of a “Born to raise Hell” tattoo on his shoulder. Oh, it wasn't the tattoo that caught my attention, it was that a tattoo was a way for you to be found.

Now before you say that I obviously had been thinking about a life of crime and so didn't want to give myself away, it really was because I was slowly getting radical ideas. I also realized that ideas often scared people, and so radical ideas could get you into trouble no matter that we lived in the "land of the Free."  Yeah, the Vietnam years.  My ideas weren't really anti-war thoughts though, but that's for a later discussion.

(Yes, a youthful Jay at a civil-rights protest looonnnngggg ago)

This anti-tattoo concept also followed me into the army.  There was tremendous pressure to get a tattoo or two if you were in the military. I had a friend who went nuts about them, even had a contest of sorts with another of his friends to see who could get the most. This was before the day when you could get full arm tats. They were all individual things. So I got a lot of pressure from him as well as my other army buds. On several drunken nights I almost succumbed to the most common (in my unit) "82nd Airborne" insignia tattoo. But I resisted.

In the army I really had become a big radical threat to the establishment because I dared to advocate for enlisted people's rights. I figured that any day some general would decide I must be incarcerated on some trumped up charge, so no way would they ID me by a tattoo.

So I escaped the military tattoo-less and carried those same concepts well into the 80s, 90s and 00s. A gigantic Panther tattoo could only mean trouble and just didn't spur my sexual desires enough to give me the courage to throw a line her way.

Nowadays tattoos are the rage with today's hipsters. It's a common sight to see men AND women sporting complete arm/leg/body ink. Where in the old days even a peek of ink under the shirtsleeve could result in the job applicant getting shown the door, now it's accepted—or at least tolerated.

Even I have slowly come around to accepting some tattoos on women. I often get involved in rousing discussions over beer with male friends about what is acceptable. They usually have absolutely no qualms about any ink on a prospective date (okay, a lot of my friends are younger and avoided that middle-American brainwashing), while I argue for discretion.

 
I still would prefer to just see a small butterfly above a breast (an homage to "Papillon"), and even find it a little seductive to see a small sun barely peeking above the back of the belt. Ironically, this latter one is called a “Tramp Stamp” which got its name through similar brainwashing/stereotyping as what I experienced but in later decades.

However, it will take some major adjustment to ever get me excited about a prospective date who has tattooed her entire life's history on her back; or have a dragon shooting fire on one arm toward a knight on the other; or a gigantic cobra slithering up one leg and a mongoose on the other. Yes, a little too much ink for me.

Some brainwashing just can’t be undone.

(okay, you young readers may not have gathered that the title of this blog is a play-on-words referring to INXS. Yes, another 80s band; yes, I know I'm in a rut. No, they have nothing to do with tattoos although I'm sure they had one or two).