Wild Boys

Like a month ago, Wifey and I scored some tickets to the Duran Duran concert at Boston University. And when I say scored, I mean, I bought expensive floor seats 6 months ago when I could have bought half-pricers the day-of due to the fact that the year was no longer 1984.

Yeah... it couldn’t have been any clearer that nobody in the State of Massachusetts was any longer hungry like the wolf.

Agganis Arena was empty.

Notoriously empty.

NO-NO-NOTORIOUS. NOTORIOUS. UNGH!!!

The opening band stunk. A rock-n-roll cliché of everything in a black Lucky shirt and Diesel Brand jeans. I got completely bored with them and decided it was time to go all concession to get me and Wifey a brew, a pretzel and a Pepsi.

I ordered the beverages through the hazed odor of deep fried chicken fingers and cheeseburgey sliders, then I got carded.

Carded?!?

By the Ticking Pocket Watch of Cronos, I got carded!!!

Not because I looked less than the big 2-1 - because my grey beard strands and jowl wrinkles made damn certain that THAT wasn’t the case. Nah, I got tagged because this poor B.U. work-study student's point of age reference was off. I mean, way off.

There wasn’t anyone below the age of 38 in this house. And those who were, were clearly only irony-obsessed pre-20 queens with their obligatory hag harems. She probably bell-curved the crowd and I was on the 21 end of it. I guess that's cool.

“I need your I.D., sir.”

First off, by calling me “sir”, you don’t need to see anything. Secondly, I’m plenty old to be buying a shitty light beer from you.

“Here.”

I handed her my Mass State driver’s license and watched her calculate the math in her head.

Borrow 1 from the 9. Make it 18. Subtract from the 9 –

“39.”

“What?”

“I’m 39.”

And thirsty. Can I have my beer?

She went back to it.

“I have to do it myself.”

“You have to do the math yourself?”

She nodded. This chick needed a major major change at ol’ B.U..

Take some basic math, sweetness.

“Still 39.”

But not for much longer. Can we kick the speed up here?

“You're 39, sir.”

“Yes. I know.”

I rolled-out 9 for a brew and a Pepsi, then ran back to my seat because the Double Duran was already playing – one of their new ones.

New ones?!? Come on, guys! At least open with something we know, cuz, ‘mates, we didn’t buy your NEW one. The newest thing we have in our family jukebox is Kid Bopz 10. WE ARE OLD NOW!!! We bought Rio and, barely, Notorious, then we stopped, blokes. WE DIDN’T BUY YOUR RED CARPET MASSACRE!!! So, stop - singing - from - it.

So, yes, the crowd was dead. Death. Stone cold. Nothing.

Except for him –

My age. Our age. 39. 40-ish. His bespectacled eyes closed tight… and dancing. Yuck.

Nope.

And feeling… feeling the sounds of Duran’s new-y: The Valley.

Wait. You KNOW this, dude?!? You know The Valley?!? Yikes to you. YIKES all over you! And Double Yikes for dancing harder than your lady, man. Double double. Yikes. Yikes.

How does he even know this anyway?

See in my books, after a certain passage of time, you can’t new album your audience. This is like if my old man went to Gene Pitney and the prick never once shot the liberty valance.

Stop playing the new stuff.

Double Duran, you’ve gone and hiked well over the “new album” hump. You’re not a real band anymore. You’re a tribute.

After 20 years, if you ain’t rocked a hit and you’re onstage calling the new one a “record”… you have to become your own tribute band. Case closed. Case locked. Now, stop all this bloody foolishness, blokes, and play Ordinary World.

But, the problem was this: I couldn’t say anything. Nothing. Not a word. This dude in front of me was rocking it. Hard. Rocking it to The Valley. All donned out in his first day as a high school sophomore jam shorts, iZod collar-up shirt and a loosened skinny black tie. And all three smelling of moth balls and a 24 year old Bekins Bros. box.

I pitied his gal pal. She was politely rocking back-n-forth to the beat, AS WERE WE ALL, but she was in wind distance of him really doing this. Really, honest to the the rat-tail dangling from the back of his mulleted nut, doing this.

I got all extry mad, not only because I had just frumped 150 bills on some strange tunes sung by some 4 middle-aged men, but this 80’s-alt douche in front of me had caught my attention and, I was obsessed – OBESSED with HIM!

During the The Valley, he slo-mo’d an evangelical, born-again, praising to Jesus thing. That was the dance. His eyes closed in wisped communion. Palms up in Acceptance to The Lord. The Lord Simon LeBon? There was nothing religious here. All these songs were thinly veiled metaphors for getting laid. The Skin Game? Union of the Snake? We’re not that poetically illiterate, ‘mates.

But why slow-motion? WHY NOT TO THE BEAT?!? The Valley doesn’t feel this good, Mr. Knuckles-only Gloves.

But? Wait. Did it? Did it feel this good?

Aw, goddammit. He had me doubting myself and my decent taste. Not good taste. Good taste wouldn’t have led me to this mid-80s Israel in the first place. Decent taste is where I had to draw my line. Was the new stuff good? Good enough for a heavenly ol’ palms up, born-again eye-closer?

I looked around. Hard. There were two Japanese exchange students kind of “into” this. I mean, into the beat and the fun sounding “English” words of it all, but the rest of us knew The Valley sucked and were, patiently, waiting for The Reflex or, at a minimum, something from Arcadia.

Give us, Election Day. Anything but –

“RCM!” He screamed out.

What the ass is RCM? Come on, I’m a boy of the 80’s. I had my Glam Band Rock-do. I Donkey Konged Colecovision. I flipped a videodisk. All that and I never remember roaming through the mullets and moussed-up halls of WHS panting out, “RCM!”

RCM? Was this code for Girls on Film?

No, dink, that would be GOF.

So, what the fucking GOF was –

“RCM!!! Yeah!!! YEAH!!! RCM!!!” My obsession in front of me was on fire. His date? Her head slowly shamed away into her chest.

“RCM!!! RCM!!! RCM!!!”

And with each RCM he bounced comfortably into his second of three moves: Running on a treadmill.

In slow motion!

His head down, watching the invisible rubber tread disappear under each pat-pat of his running worn-out Chuck Taylor High Tops.

Did Tubbs, here, save EVERY article of clothing growing up? Where was his mother? Mine was making me throw out shit when it got old. Some of it because it simply got minorly stained. Why does Sonny Crockett still have a pair of high-top Chucks?

They’re not even running shoes.

Maybe this is why he was going it in slo-mo.

I tried to kick-it up for the sake of the 150 bucks I’d never see again. Genuinely tried. The beat was there. The circa ’87 sound was all over this ditty… but, man, I didn’t know this tune. I found myself fingernailing to the chorus with my lips moving to the lyrics like the mouth of a low-battery Teddy Ruxpin.

I was souless for this New-ran New-ran while my man in front of me was maxing out to the max. I was envious. I could barely stand it and he was RUNNING to it. Running, despite all of the grossly overweight parts of his overall dumpy anatomy. Not everything, though. Just parts. Some of him was normal. He was a Bob Crumb sketch with a jet black Just For Men whiteman’s mullet-‘fro slo-mo’ing it off to, now, Nite Runner… another sucky newster.

I lost my momentum. So did his lady. She, actually, sat… I followed and put myself butt-side-down into the 75 dollar folding chair vibrating to the over-bassed Nite Runner.

I was coming undone. I sat, leaving myself face-to-ass with this Solid Gold dancer and his moth balled scented pant seat directly in my whiff. I just to watched him finish up the final beats of Nite Runner to the move: Blocking Punches from a Boxing Coach.

Again… in slow motion...

His arms up in a 90 degree, covering his face, swaying back-n-forth. He threw out a couple of rabbit punches with his eyes closed. His lady right-hooking me with a headshake of disappointment. I nodded back a shrug.

Then… like a magician yanking it by the long-ears out of a hat… the familiar intro to Hungry Like the Wolf played.

AND VOILA! The crowd awoke.

But, Dancey didn’t jolt his enthusiasm a bit. He was already a constant. His momentum in full-on physics. Slow motion physics, sure, but full. He sweated more. Shiny moth ball sweat, glistening the light show off the back of his pimpled neck. The smell of naphthalene and cardboard box glading the air like a deodorizer plug-in.

His lady tried to break in, but by now his three signature moves were in full recital. Rehearsed separately and now combined into a number: Up for Jesus, treadmill and boxing blocks… it was poetry. I stopped my gaze from Simon and the boys and just watched this majestic slow-motion beast dance. At one with himself and the cloud of syncopation fogged around him. Creatively adding to his dance with pure magic moves directly from the 80s as if each move was packed neatly in that moth balled Bekins Bros. box with the shirt and the Chuck’s.

He tossed-in with the blocking of the punches, a rouster of zombie arms circa Thriller.

Brilliant.

A Morris Day “tree” with the Treadmill.

Pure cadence.

And… wait… was that? YES! YES!!! YES!!! He just threw down a Miyagi and “sanded the floor”. Wax-on! Wax-off! Right there!!! He was Karate Kidding right there in conjunction with his Praise for Christ.

Simply religious!!! Just Divine!!! What a macchio!

Me, too! Me, too!

I mirrored his every dance. First, to mock this whacknut, then because I was –

“What are you doing?”

Wifey was appalled. I have to admit. I did look… well… weird.

But she started to laugh, “What are you doing?”

She stared. I mimic’d his every slow-mo move.

“Mothballs? You’re dancing like mothball-guy?”

A beat went by. Bud Light trickling from the pores in my forehead.

I lowercased and italicized my answer, “… I am…”

Wild boys never lose it!