I confess: my favorite erotic aroma is chlorine. I can’t resist its siren song of smell. Chlorine imprinted itself on me as a pre-teen and I never escaped.
I thank Mrs. Walsh for this. Mrs. Walsh held swimming classes every summer at the pool of the Fontana Motor Hotel in Mission, my home town in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. The pool reeked of chlorine, which clung to me and wafted around the whole complex. I could even smell it in the Fontana’s lobby, where I wandered after class.
Ever the curious reader, I checked out the magazines in the lobby’s gift shop. There I found Playboy. Golly, I thought, this is a change from Hot Rod and Dave Campbell’s Texas Football. Even then, I knew an 11-year-old shouldn’t really scan Playboy, so I slipped the magazine into another one – male readers know this drill. I flipped through the issue, trying to look nonchalant. But Misses June and July dazzled me with their undraped allure and bubbly smiles.
Case in point: I still swoon for July 1969 cover girl Barbie Benton, a/k/a Barbara Klein. In the unpainted passageways of my brain, the Fontana’s chlorinic aroma mixed with this vision of Barbie on the beach. A whiff of chlorine returns me to July 1969 – those eyes, those shoulders, Barbie’s brown hair tumbling down her curving waterslide of a back. In a flash I’m back in the Fontana’s lobby, where Mrs. Walsh’s class ended and my introduction to another wet side of life began.
I’m thinking about chlorine and Playboy in light of my role as the divorced dad of a teenage son. I wonder what images and influences are shaping his view of life. I could tell him plenty about the curiosities, longings, and colossal frustrations that roiled me at his age. I could ask him, “So, what do you think is sexy, and where is it? Watchmen? Grand Theft Auto? Anime? Hannah Montana? YouTube? Hermione Granger?” That would embarrass both of us, so I let his interests develop at their own pace without imposing my own fatherly framework on whatever catches his attention. Instead, we talk about values, the meaning of peer pressure, respect for women, self-acceptance, and speaking up for what he believes. He’s a great kid who takes these issues seriously.
Forty years ago, I had to figure these things out on my own. With no Internet, no cable TV, and no older sibling, I had few outlets or role models to answer questions or help me figure out “sexy.” My mother wasn’t much for talking about the changes of adolescence, and my father moved away after they divorced in 1962, playing no role until I was a teen. I couldn’t look to the larger community for guidance. Mission shared the conservative culture of deep south Texas, where you didn’t discuss adolescent sexuality or liberal politics.
Article comments
1 - Joanne Huspek
Amusing. Especially the Hyundai.
2 - Jon Sobel
Love it. I've often had similar reflections, seeing old movies and TV shows and musing on the images that meant so much back then. Realized I always had a thing for female action characters. Stefanie Powers guest starring on The Six Million Dollar Man...heaven. A direct line from there to a latter-day obsession with Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
3 - BigLittleWolf
Beautifully written, poignant, and with subtle insights.
I remember some of these same films - and their "educational" value at a very young age. And from them (like many girls at the time), I took my sense of what it meant to be a desirable woman. I thought we all had to look like Nova in Planet of the Apes... and I secretly dreamed of being Elizabeth Taylor in Butterfield 8 - vulnerable, supremely seductive, and madly in love with Lawrence Harvey's dark edge.
At the time, of course, I couldn't really make sense of any of it. Doesn't that seem wonderful, looking back? The lingering of that innocence, and putting the pieces together at our own pace? Bravo to you at for having the integrity and sense at 17 to know yourself and say no to your father.
Our ideas of intimacy, what is sexy, what is erotic are initially set so young, as influenced by our parents push-pull as by the words, pictures, and experiences we discover ourselves. I hope I've managed to remember that raising my sons, now teens. Providing information at various stages, a forum for open discussion, but leaving them plenty of privacy.
Tom and Becky's interaction (or yours with the Baptist Chick in a Halter Top) ring like wonderful beginnings of awareness. I seem to recall an "older man" of 20 when I was 15, and a sultry night in the South of France. It was a remarkable encounter that was all about the kiss. And at the time, that was just right.
4 - Bliffle
Good article.
5 - Rufus Brown
MMM this article is naughty. heh heh heh.
Texas be an oppressive motha fucka. Dey say everythin is big in Texas, but dey really mean everythin is bigotry(lol) in Texas. racists asses.
6 - Midiane
Great essay, well-written, and engaging.
7 - Renee
I could not stop reading this article! I grew up with Cooper, Van's brother and I too took Mrs. Walsh's swimming classes. My memories of chlorine were that of fear though. I almost drowned in one of her classes. I loved the references to movies, and am so glad I am not the only one that references my personal life to movies, books, and characters. Great job Van! You certainly kept me captivated with every word.