By Gazonga Gal

“Perky!” Now there’s a word. I hear it in my mind calf-roped by the thick Midwestern accent of my youth. Indeed, as brisk winds signal a change in seasons and fall descends, like exhaled breath and errant deer along the shoulder of a misty highway, while the echo of Frances McDormand rendering “Perky!” in her best lingua Fargo caresses my psyche—like fingernails insouciantly raked across a blackboard—manifest nipples appear as chimera suddenly rendered visible in the chill morning air.

Ah, but I have never been “perky.” Not even in my youth. We could tell Mutt and Jeff to hang their heads in shame, but the point, I’m afraid, would be moot.

On no occasion would one be likely to hear Jeff utter the words: “My, doesn’t that cloud look like a circus bear riding a unicycle!” Nor is Mutt potentially poised to chime in with: “Do you think that plane is headed for Aruba, or perhaps, Key West?” (Unless, that is, I am lying flat on my back—and even then, they would probably be looking more to the right or left for suspiciously fugitive delivery persons who were supposed to have the package to you by 10, and it is now going on noon, or errant livestock who have escaped the confines of their appointed coop or pen…) Nope. Mutt and Jeff’s general perspective on life is most often along the lines of: “Nice shoes, don’t you think?” “Oh, really, they are so last season.”

Here’s a little secret for you…that’s no big secret: boys weren’t the only ones sneaking peeks at Daddy’s stash of Playboys when they were growing up. I used to peruse the models with wide-eyed wonderment, weighing the odds on whether I would grow up to look more like Miss March or Miss November. The answer was, of course (as it is for most of us), neither.

It wasn’t my lack of stature that precluded me from the pages of that venerable bastion of female pulchritude. To be sure, they have had short models grace their centerfolds (which well may be what the wide-angle lens was invented for). And I did have big blue eyes, an unruly mane of auburn hair, and a creamy, pale complexion that flits in and out of vogue at the whim of fashion, but kept my skin from turning into luggage a few years down the highway. But alas, along with the Stitzburg tits came the Stitzburg teeth—a bit too gap-happy for the requisite winning pageant queen smile, which, when paired with the Jetlitski (the name my great grandfather quickly anglicized soon after his arrival on these shores, thankfully predating current water sport trends, or I might, God forbid, be going through life now as a Jetski) nose, rendered my face…more “unique” than the white bread sensibilities of the day.

But, like Janis Joplin as the protagonist in Leonard Cohen’s classic anthem to the disenfranchised, “The Chelsea Hotel,” determinedly “clenching her fists like the ones like us who are oppressed by the figures of beauty,” even those obstacles might have been overcome had Mutt and Jeff been hitchhiking to Oregon or the California Coast, rather than searching the pavement for loose change—and had I, by the time I was of age, still had the inclination to appear naked in the pages of a national magazine, which I did not—because I had by then learned that my balcony stuffers didn’t exactly fit the Playboy bill.

Here’s another little secret for you that’s no big secret: boys weren’t the only ones sneaking peeks at their peers in the locker room. Though I was years away from discovering that magazines featuring buxom babes with “Juggs” more akin to my own even existed, much less had a fan-base of devoted admirers, I was educated enough by comparative study to discern that while Mutt and Jeff had sizeable merits that were nothing to be scoffed at, they were simply not going to make the cut for first string varsity porn. Damn, another career choice shot to hell!

I did, quite by chance, happen to meet a Playboy photographer during my freshman year at college. The magazine was doing a “Girls of the Big 10” spread, and they were scouting talent among Northwestern University’s crop of comely coeds. As I recall, the photographer was a man of short stature, an easy smile, and a practiced, professional eye. He didn’t even bother to offer me a test shot, he did, however, ask me if I cared to take a romp with him between the sheets. This led me to another valuable lesson, and one that women who let themselves be oppressed by the figures of beauty, whether of the porn standard or fashion runway variety, would do themselves a great service to heed: What’s best for the camera is not always what’s better in bed—nor what a lover finds truly desirable—not by a long shot.

And so, when several years later, I was disrobing for the first time for a new man, who exclaimed with awe: “Wow! You look just like something out of a magazine!” I knew I’d found someone whose dad must have been a Juggs man. And amen, to that.