Poppa Superdude

oh, poppa, you knew that lady when. what you gonna do with her now?

Seeing You Again after all these years," she sighed, the lady did, she actually sighed. "Superdude, I can't, can't, cannot believe it."

You think I put down her sugar? I mean, she'd growed herself up a bit. She was one tough lady now. Here in L.A. In the $80,000-and-then-some bracket, head of promotion for the West Coast, no flunky job, and, OK, I didn't need her, she needed me to push her records over the air, right? But maybe I'd been a d.j. just a little too long. Maybe she could do something for me in the industry. I mean, she had herself a name now. And, besides, I could be real nice to tough ladies, especially ladies who have grown up so terrific to look at, with a bony Madison Avenue face and big boobs and a bigger expense account.

I remember Madeline when she was just a pretty, young chicky with a thing for me. Well, in those days. Whew. I was one heavy poppa, late Sixties, I was picking it off the walls, I couldn't handle the harvest--rock-band groupies, honey-pot singers or just camp followers of the good Poppa Superdude. I'd do a show from some college auditorium and keep my eyes moving behind my shades to figure which lovely young thing gonna make it with Poppa tonight. A couple of joints, some heavy breathing to establish empathy, and then a little music and it be all over, she be all over Poppa Superdude.

That be the way, but Madeline, I recall, she out of luck, because the chicky flights were stacked up over Logan that month, and I never got her landed.

So there we were, sipping martinis, whilst the fancy hotel chandelier shone and shimmered like Close Encounters and I was the old Poppa Superdude once more, as if I be once again that young stud of some chick's creamy dreams. I mean like the old days, when Poppa had nary an ounce of flab on his hairy torso and everything be in sync.

So I grinned at Madeline, my fat-wallet grin, and I said, "Lady, you have become one sweet thing. You have become one tough babe. You have become ten thousand times greater, your power-to-weight ratio, your amps, you know what I'm telling you? Why don't we renew and relive over a steak at Ma Maison?"

Ma Maison. Just to show the lady I know my L.A. The industry has expense-accounted Poppa Superdude plenty, you bet. And I figured I may name the place, but Madeline gonna pick up the tab--what's it mean to her? Show she working evenings is all.

"OK. I've got a limousine outside," she said, and laughed, as if to say, Look at my stuff now, Poppa. And, hey, she did got a limo. Big black limo hired by the company for her--and I let her pass through the golden ballroom doors ahead of me and caught the whiff of her hips, the flash of her red high heels.

"My, my, my," I growled at her in my most funky register, "how some people have changed."

"Oh, Superdude," she said, as I held the limo door for her, "you always knew how to sweet-talk a girl."

Well, we drove through the night and she caught me up on her marriage, now down the tubes, and I clucked my poppa tongue at the injustice, such a sweet lady like you, Madeline, Friend of Mine, and I began seeing extravagant movies in my inside screening room of Madeline as my West Coast Regular, Poppa Superdude getting too well along to catch his stuff strictly fresh from the Pacific. And Poppa tired of hotels and motels.

Poppa tired.

So. So I came on to her over bourbons on the rocks how she had had something Mysterious and Explosive way back then, but now, aaah, she was a gold platter, even platinum, and how her combo of brains and powerful sexual stuff was getting through to me this night.

"Poppa Superdude, you knew me when."

"You were something else," I said.

"Oh, you can't imagine," she laughed, with her Long Island whine still peeking from under her expensive executive drawl, "how I dug you when I was in college. I used to listen to you at one in the morning, and was I dying to meet you!"

"Well, didn't we?" I said.

"Oh, Superdude," she said, scratching her long, sharp, red nails over my Calvin Klein thigh, "we did. You knew me when." She stared down at the gorgeous steaks the waiter brought, and she toasted me with that good red California vintage wine. "And look at me," she said.

"Uh-huh," I said.

"No, really, babe. I'm bored a lot of the time. I handle my work really well. I like the limo. I wouldn't give it up. I like it when I'm sitting across the pool at The Beverly Hills Hotel and I see Linda Ronstadt and she comes over."

"Hey, you're beautiful. Beautiful."

"And I can get into the fakery. You know the first thing a publicity person has to do, Superdude? Don't tell anybody. Make themselves a star. I'm a star. I did it consciously."

"You're a very conscious person," I told her. "A real person. You are Real."

"What I mean by 'consciously,"' she said, "is that I set out to connect my name to a certain image, just the same way I would with a rock group."

"Sure," I said, not liking the serious, high-level tone of this talk. "You're a person with a Name."

"And that was-fun. You know it yourself. . . . Sometimes I don't even particularly like the image--flamboyant but responsible, shrewd but daffy. It's a game. Like you made yourself into Superdude. Right, Superdude?"

"Another bottle of wine, kid?" I crooned, and she said, "Sure," in a slightly teary voice, and I didn't want the blues, so I figured snorting a little of the white powder later on would do us real fine. In the meantime, I took her hand for a little romance. "I knew you when, kid."

"Yeah, Superdude. Sure. It's true."

"Only one thing, kid, one thing I personally regret."

She stroked my hand and I figured to hell with dessert. "What, Poppa? What do you regret?"

"That we never made it together, you and me. You know? I mean, why not?"

"What do you mean, Superdude?"

"Never made it. Something always came up, right?"

"Well, right, but not always--"

"And then," I sugared her, "you were long gone."

"Never made it? Superdude, come on."

"You mean it's never too late? Well, now, that's the truth--"

"But we did."

"Well, sure," I said. "Oh, sure."

"Superdude, you mean you don't remember? We made it the night I signed out for my first fake overnight from the dorms. And I said I was at my aunt's?"

"A virgin?" I said.

"Oh, come on," she said. "Stick it in your ear, a virgin. Not since I was a junior counselor at summer camp. But it was my first fake overnight. Oh. Oh, I was so crazy about you. It was after you d.j.'d a live show from the student center. We met because I was organizing the show. Remember? Remember, some of the money went for antiwar stuff?"

"Sure. I was into good causes. And, hey," I said, "that funny hotel we stayed at, right?"

"Oh, Superdude. It was my friend's attic, for God sakes."

"A very pretty place it was."

"We made love all over the god-damned wooden floor. You were showing off."

"Well, well, well."

"We slept on an old mattress and you were nervous about bedbugs. And you kept telling me what a Beautiful Experience it was."

"Well, it was. I'm sure it probably was, Madeline."

"Finish your steak," she said. "Just finish your steak, will you?"

"Hey, look," I said, "it's been a long time."

"Hasn't it just?" she said.

You see how things go nowadays for the old Superdude? It is a fallen world, my friend. Nothing be in sync now. A fallen goddamned world.