California Girl: From the Dark Ages...To Clay Aiken

FROM THE DARK AGES…TO CLAY AIKEN

By California Girl

What is the intangible, mystifying, puzzling appeal of Clay Aiken?

How come this kid with droopy pants, owl-like glasses, and red hair knocked our socks off, and had us screaming for more…more…please, MORE!

I don’t know.... what am I? A mind reader? A soothsayer? A gypsy, tealeaf reader? I guess we have to go all the way back to the cave dwellers to figure this one out. Some brainless brute of a guy is looking for tomorrow’s meal, under rocks, in the trees, along the streams. His stomach is growling. He remembers his last meal…a rump of wild boar, tastefully seasoned with sand, and dirt and bugs. He looks up and there is a female (he thinks it’s a female because she has breasts) so he grabs her by the hair, and drags her into the cave, He grunts once. (That means get me some food.) If he had grunted twice, it would have meant, “it’s time for sex.”

The female straightens her coiffure, and wipes the blood from her ear that her significant other had pinched when she didn’t start those pots and pans quick enough. She looks about, finds the leftover wild boar rump from yesterdays feast, and throws it at her paramour. Steadfastly, she watches as he eats, hoping her “man” has the kindliness to leave a scrap for her.

No such luck. The delicacy of the food has given her guy the sex-incentive, and so he leaves the cave to find the most attractive, alluring, scar-free female, and winner of the latest pre-historic rock-throwing contest in which “big daddy’ votes by grunting his approval, and Miss Wasteland knows immediately where her next rump roast is coming from. And back at the cave, waiting for pretty boy to come home, Oomgomwa (we met in a nightmare and she introduced herself) hummed her favorite song, ”I Got Plenty of Nothin.”

So we move ahead a few hundred decades to the Suffragettes, those eulogized, petted, and flattered females who found their life’s calling in the kitchen, and the labor room, striving always for perfection, acceptance, and first place in the apple pie contests. The ’head of the house’ was proud of his possessions, his house, his children, sometimes his wife, because she never did realize how lucky she was…for he brought home the paycheck didn’t he? So what if he ranted and raved sometimes, and shook his fist at her because the mashed potatoes had a lump in them, or the soup wasn’t hot enough? He gave her everything she needed, didn’t he…a wonderful stove to cook on, a house to fuss over, children to show off. What the heck else did she need? She mumbles something..…He asks, “What did you say?”…She shakes her head, and when he’s left the room, says, to no one at all, “Yeah, but I don’t have the Vote. ”

The vote. Now we don’t talk about ‘the vote’ when ‘our man’ is around, because after all, we wouldn’t have any personal opinions that would differ from big daddy, now would we? So let him vote for us. What could be simpler? …Except, oh God, their candidate is a fool, and a hawk, and doesn’t understand foreign relations anymore than he understands sexual relations… Sorry, that was mean. She didn’t know what his sexual preferences were, and didn’t much care (well, sometimes in their coffee klatches the ladies brought up the subject) but she did have opinions although she couldn’t discuss them in the house (you know, the breadwinner thing) but she could sure sound off in a voting booth! Well, after their rump roast dinner, maybe she’ll just take off and go to that Suffragette meeting, singing the hot song of the day, “ Look For the Silver Lining.”

And suddenly, there we were, in the flaming sixties, really doing our own thing, and everybody else’s thing.

Now we had the vote, so what did we do with it? We traded our gift for drugs, and ‘free love’ and the indispensable “boyfriends” who helped us burn our Bras, and put flowers in our hair, while we sang about the really important issue of the day, “Hair.” That became our national anthem. Not understanding that love was never free…you always had to pay the price. And the “boyfriend” became the guy your sleeping with this week. The guy was not your breadwinner anymore; he was your supplier, and the father of your child, maybe, since you couldn’t be sure who the father was. There you were, cooking that rump roast once again, and wondering if tonight he would be coming home, while he was off wailing somewhere, Joe Cockers “I‘m Gonna Turn you On.” The guys saw all the possibilities, while the gals, as the decade waned, wondered what happened to the promise of female redemption.

The nineties, well now, that was an era where females stood up and sang, “I am woman, hear me roar.” Such a heady, fulfilling time, with their diplomas in hand, their business suits, their assaults on the athletic, business and creative worlds. They were singing, “I Will Survive” and “What’s Love Got to do With It? The day had come where they could declare, love-me-or-leave-me. Oh, really? Well, sister, I got news for you, you’re still back in that cave, with that “I Got You, Babe” guy and you got the scars to prove it. Musically, we’ve turned back time to the caveman environment of T&A, with lots of bling-bling on the male, and a diminished capacity for self-respect for the female. We’re taking our clothes off in public now, shakin’ our booties, talkin’ that slimy talk, letting those male ’buddies’ drag us across the floor by the hair, descending to levels of indecency where a guy announces publicly that you are his B______ and you just twist that torso, expose that breast… showing the world that’s just what you are. Are we so used to this treatment we don’t even question it? Has the escalating drug and music scene made us vulnerable to the point of watching and listening, unaware that our sex is being exploited, and our musical sensibilities in a state of rigor mortis?

The world has never been more violent than it is today, and women are feeling the brunt of it. The shadow of the caveman is still hanging over us. The proof is in what you see on television and in the movies, and what you read about in the newspapers about domestic violence and soul-destroying rapes.

We have been a fearful gender, carrying Mace in our purses, and putting baseball bats next to our beds. There are more than a few gun-toting females out there hoping to protect themselves, who will probably end up shooting off a toe. The workout clubs are full of women feverishly trying to level the field, with bulging arm muscles, and kick boxing techniques. They are preparing for the day they will need to fight to survive.

So now we come to Clay Aiken, who has arisen, just like the Phoenix, to become the symbol of every woman’s dream of what a man should be. Raised by three women, he has learned to respect and embrace the weaker sex. He has given us hope that if one like him exists, there may be more. He laughs with us, and tells us funny little stories, while exuding such a joy in our presence that we find ourselves relaxing, at last, and no longer fearful. He has given us a belief in the true equality of a man/woman relationship, which is based on love, respect, and loyalty.

His singing makes us believe in God, because he does. His dedication to children reminds us that we are the mothers of these children. What he shows us is real and when he sings, the sweetness and purity of the sound wipes away all the hurt and the disappointments that has become woman’s heritage. He gives us pride in ourselves, he brings us romance, without which a woman cannot really live. And in so doing, he becomes our son, our brother, our husband, and our lover.

Clay Aiken is all things to us. That we share the same world is so comforting, for he has shown us a new world in which we see once again, gentleness, goodness, and hope as he leads us out of that dark and dismal cave.
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Copyright 2005 by California Girl. Printed with the permission of the writer.