Vintage Sleaze

I just sent this image and another one to Jim Linderman whose site, Vintage Sleaze , has many images that are. . . well. . . archetypal, I think.  They are archetypes for me, at least.  They filled my heart and brain with lust and guilt when I was a kid, so taboo and so dangerous.  Us boys of the neighborhood would go rooting through parents' closets and drawers whenever no one was around in order to dig out magazines with pictures like these.  That someone's father would have them was scary enough, but the thought of getting caught by such a maniac was terrible and exhilarating.  The worst things I ever found in my own parents' drawers were a package of condoms which I didn't know anything about but which had instructions and a diagram that illustrated how to put one on.  It included the statement, "For the prevention of disease."  Hell, I wondered why my father hadn't told me about them and was terrified that I would be stricken with whatever disease they prevented, so I took one and tried to wear it all the time but it kept falling off into my underwear.  The other macabre thing of horror was the instruction booklet for the Tampon package. This one really confused  me.  What the hell was my mother doing, I wondered?  I knew I was living with very strange people then.

Uncovering the true lives of adults was disturbing, but the fathers who owned the magazines really scared me.  These were men who would coach little league practices in the afternoon, but when the kids went to bed. . . .  Holy smokes, I thought, the world is very, very weird.  I think David Lynch must have had much the same experiences growing up.

A family down the block had bought the newest kind of record player, on that was "stereophonic", and they had expensive stereo records to play on it.  Some of the adults in the neighborhood would go down there and drink cocktails and listen to songs like "Telstar" while they danced in provocative ways, sometimes with other people's wives, the women--the mothers of us all-- in low cut tight dresses that exaggerated their big butts and exposed their milky breasts.  When this happened, all I could think of were the pictures in those magazines, so bold and terrifying.

Jim Linderman's site brings it all back to me.  Jesus Christ, the man's a genius.

I'll let you know if he responds to the image.  It seems he might.