[Surrogate's Blog]
A day without surrogate, is like any other day, except... without surrogate.snippet
2007-01-24
This is from the story I'm working on right now:
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One neat thing about the few months I traveled to Mr. Ziedler's church on Thursday afternoons for organ lessons was that every week we drove by the, now long defunct, Detroit Playboy Club. Being around eleven at the time, and already having stumbled upon more than a few Playboy Magazines in Kelly’s Woods near one of the many forts maintained by the older kids, I knew a thing or two about the sort of thing I was absolutely sure went on in such a place, and even briefly being in the general proximity of the building on such a regular basis, with it’s neon bunny logo and bright red lettering announcing it’s whereabouts to the world, gave me a giddy thrill I looked forward to each week.
Imagine my delight upon learning that my Dad’s Dad, for a few years, was actually a card carrying member (or more properly said, a "key" carrying member) of this den of sin! This went hand in hand with one of the other discoveries I'd made about him just a few months earlier, when my Father showed me, for reasons I’ve yet to figure out, a draftsman’s triangle that my Grandfather had owned before the War when he he did design work for Bulldog Electric. It was made of some sort of early clear plastic, and even then, close to forty years ago, it was yellowing with age.
He'd evidently used the point of a compass, though this was an assumption on my part. No matter what implement he'd chosen for his work, he'd used it along with the talent God gave him to thrill his as yet unborn grandson. He'd etched three beautiful nude women into its surface. Naked women! My Grandpa!
This was huge.
Posed to look as though they were part of the triangle’s original design; they were simply gorgeous! They appeared so casual and comfortable with their nudity; they were "naturalists," I decided. The idea was shocking to me on a bunch of levels.
The carvings were so incredibly detailed, even the aureoles around the nipples had texture and depth. Their skin looked smooth and flawless (and, as it happens, perfectly clear if a tad jaundiced) and their faces each had wonderful variations of that "come hither" look that proved they were "real women" to me. I knew from the photographs in the Playboy Magazines that this was the sort of look women got on their faces when they were naked.
Somehow though, to my dismay, all three of the women were shown in angles that precluded seeing the area between their legs. This was a disappointment. However, rather than looking as though they were deliberately covering up, they looked as though they’d ever so slightly, and certainly accidentally, turned away before Grandpa snapped the mental picture that became the original his hands traced so expertly.
If only they were as alive as they looked to me then, they could have turned back! I was sure they'd have wanted to.
According to my Grandfather, when I finally got up the nerve to ask him about the Playboy Club years later; probably no more than a couple of years before he died; it was just a nice restaurant.
The menu was interesting, he said. Everything on it was a dollar. Want a steak? A dollar. A potato? Another dollar. He told me he’d given up his membership after the night his dinner had included rolls, a salad, coffee and desert and had ended costing him eight dollars. He also told me that there was absolutely no nudity in the Playboy Club; that the waitresses simply wore the traditional bunny outfits with the puffy tails.
He said it was just a classy place to eat.
I was devastated.
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Be good to everyone.
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