David Cassidy on the Web
Character Sketch
Thursday, September 18, 2008
By Julia Gordon-Bramer
http://prefirstdrafts.blogspot.com/2008/09/repost-for-bekkah.html
I had this up on my old MySpace page a year or so ago. By request, here it is again. Now my rock and roll reputation is completely destroyed:
***
There are so many stories of First Love. This is one about First Lust.
It was 1971. I was eight, watching The Partridge Family on the large color console TV in our family room with my six-year-old sister, Amy.
David Cassidy's handsome face and shaggy longish brown hair graced my bedroom in pictures from every angle; fold-out posters from Tiger Beat and 16 Magazine. I had plenty of pictures in my collection that also included David Cassidy's body-- for example, that great Rock With Me album cover of him, on a porch rocking chair in jeans and cowboy boots. I had live concert shots of him in a sparkling silver suit with a deep V-neck, baring his chest down to his belly-button. What I'm trying to say is, I'd seen his body, more or less. But I'd never seen this body.
The sitcom scene is vividly burned into my memory. It was a life-changing moment: David Cassidy and co-star, Susan Dey ("Laurie Partridge"), are deep in conversation, walking down a sidewalk towards the camera. On this day, David Cassidy is wearing a button-down, flowery shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, showing off his trademark puka bead necklace. But the focus of the camera, and my attention, seemed to be on his extremely well-fitting, faded blue jeans.
Those jeans changed everything for me. With each step David Cassidy took closer to the screen, closer to my world, there was a clear and definite bulge running down from his fly to the very top of his thigh. Oh, my. There was a whole mysterious universe out there that I knew nothing of, and God, was it beautiful. I would never see men the same way again.
Amy saw it too, and she burst into a fit of giggles. "Look! You can see his thingy!" she shrieked, her hand smacking the television screen before she rolled onto her back on the floor in hysterics.
"Amy, shut up!" I said, trying to impart a sophisticated, worldly tone. I was so much more mature than her. And besides, I was, well, intrigued. We really could see his thingy. Okay, maybe it was behind a veil of denim, but we certainly knew its dimensions.
Was this intentional? Surely, the TV producers knew that little girls all over the nation would be watching at that same moment. Maybe, at the mature age of eight, it was perfectly all right to see his thingy and, I should, I didn't know.perhaps cast a knowing smile toward my unfortunate younger sister who was so many years behind me in life. Perhaps I was to ease back into our plaid sofa-convertible, roll the ice cubes around in my plastic tumbler of cherry Kool-Aid, and muse on the handsome men of my future.
I didn't do either. Instead, alone in my white canopy bed that night, I mused of David Cassidy and me. I wasn't sure exactly how it would go, but I knew that he would love me passionately, drive me around with his family in that big multi-colored school bus, and sing "I Think I Love You" to me every night. And there would be nakedness involved. On his part, anyway.
Oh, David Cassidy! If only you could have known how much I wanted you! I can still remember that you're thirteen years older than me. I still know the words to all of your songs, try as I have over the years to block them from my older, cooler brain. Coming at me through image signals via radio waves, to pixels from picture tubes, your penis changed my life! Don't tell anyone, but I want you a little bit, even still.
