He Does What?!
I’m about to make a confession, a confession about a secret desire. No one, not my parents or my best friends, not even my husband knows. I have an unbelievable decades-old crush on Rod Stewart. Right about now, my mother is saying "WHO?" my sisters are saying, "EEEWWW!" and my husband is saying, "WHY?" This is why no one knows and now every one knows.
Mom and Dad kept a tight control over the stereo and LP expenditures in our house while I was growing up. Basically, the choices boiled down to their way or the highway. While I lived with the Partridge Family, Neil Sedaka, Barry Manilow and Billy Joel, I loved the Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, and Queen, and I lusted after Rod Stewart. I dared not bring any of these bad boys of rock and roll anywhere near my mother’s Ethan Allen living room, but I never stopped drinking in every song played on the radio.
I stopped dead when Rod was played over the airwaves. I was capable of no sane thought or action. His British accented growl could make "sardines and toast" sound like something naughty. I would continue to pour milk into over flowing glasses. I would mow over Mom’s flowers. I would walk into telephone poles. I was incapable of any coordinated movement when that whiskey soaked gravelly voice flowed from the radio right into my soul.
No one noticed that I had an uncontrolled desire for this man. It was covered by a teenage awkwardness that began at the age of nine and ended at thirty-five. I had glasses, a bad haircut, chronic sinus drip, and a passion for reading which pretty much sealed up my social life and ensured that my parents left me very much alone. I was, however, skinny, real skinny, model skinny, but this was only a temporary tease for my adolescent ego. I knew, by looking at family photos, that I was headed to become an apple dumpling with cellulite.
Despite all the outward negatives, I did have one vivid imagination. In my mind, some day, some how…I would get to see Rod Stewart in concert and he might even look out to my section of the stadium and…and…
As I grew older, these fantasies grew older. They involved alcohol, cigarettes, velvet, and a tawdry lifestyle that I could never bring myself to attain. But in my mind, I would still gladly give my body, cellulite and all, if only….
Now fast forward to the present, I don’t think of Rod Stewart much any more, but every now and then, his songs are played on "oldies" radio. Such sin, Rod Stewart played on oldies radio. A quiet blush still crosses my face with "Tonight’s the Night" and I still love the name Maggie. Losing ten pounds will always result is a riotous round of "Do you Think I’m Sexy" shouted into my hairbrush as I gyrate about the bedroom dodging shoes and piles of laundry. But it has all ended today, in the post. It was a crushing blow.
My son’s "Model Railroader Magazine" arrived today. "Hey Mom, do you know Rod Stewart?" I’m thinking I’ve got to sing more quietly in the shower. "Hey, MOM! Did you hear me? Do you know Rod Stewart?"
"I know of him, Matt." I said, truthfully.
"Guess what! He’s a model railroader, just like me!"
"HE DOES WHAT?!", I screamed. My fantasy life crumbled as I stood in the driveway staring at a feature article about my favorite sex symbol’s hobby. For God sakes, he even takes his paints and glue on tour with him. The champagne, the smoky lounges, the bear skin rug, the entire fantasy is now lying at my feet like so much spilled rail bed ballast. It’s all replaced by an image of an English eccentric in a railroad cap painting age and tarnish over miniature plastic buildings.
"I’m proud to be a railway modeler. It means more to me to be on the cover of Model Railroader than to be on the cover of a music magazine" - Rod Stewart, Model Railroader, December 2007
Rod, sweetheart, you are in my heart and in my soul, but why did you have to end it this way?
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