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Within the category of poetry chapbooks, John Lee Clark's SUDDENLY SLOW is one of the hottest bestsellers out there. Order your own copy and find out why! Autographed copies are available at http://www.clercscar.com/books

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WHICH REMINDS ME
Raymond Luczak
Words: 822
[Response to "Sexiest Woman Alive"]

Editor's Note: Readers are invited to suggest a thing, person, place, event, or concept for Raymond Luczak to write about. You can suggest anything up to three words and send it to editor@clercscar.com and Raymond will pick one to respond to each week.

What woman would I date if I weren't gay?

Easy. Tina Turner.

Yep, that short singer with those twinkling eyes, sensuous lips, and unabashed smile combined with the sexiest legs in the entire history of rock and roll. She had every right to be proud of those incredible gams; she always wore the skimpiest outfits and tallest pumps onstage. (In real life, she's only 5'4".)

The first time I became acutely aware of her was back in the summer of 1984. I was still living at home and biding my time before I would take my first (and literally life-altering) plane ride to Gallaudet University. For some reason, my father didn't disconnect our TV that summer. Growing up, I always remembered him making a point of disconnecting the TV's reception from the last day of school until the first day of school. He wanted us nine kids to stay *outside* and play. I am still grateful to him for doing that because that enabled me to appreciate the woods across the street. Some of us trooped out to the public library downtown and checked out books to read on rainy days. Some of us biked all over town. I confess to feeling sorry for kids today who are so wrapped up in their handheld videogames and not enjoying the gorgeous weather outside.

But I digress. In any case, our TV still had MTV, which in those days played nothing but music videos 24/7. The channel wasn't cut up with reality shows at all. It was the Golden Age of the Music Video when it seemed every week some jaw-dropping video would be aired and rotated every so often that you had to wait around just to see it again. (This was eons before YouTube.) Michael Jackson was the undisputed king with his groundbreaking videos for "Beat It" and "Thriller." There were others who stood out, like Pat Benetar with "Love Is a Battlefield" and a-ha with "Take on Me." But in the days before I even saw New York City itself, Tina Turner was right there with her oversized natty wig. She always looked great no matter what wig she wore; she's said several times that she makes her own wigs. It's even more incredible when you consider how wigs rarely make anyone look sexy.

So when I first saw her in "What's Love Got to Do with It?" she was all eyes, lips, and wig. In the music video, she was all about attention, but only because she'd *earned* it. She herself would decide whom she'd go with, and if she did go with anyone, it would be on her terms. She alone had the power. It wasn't as if she was just another sexy thing on the street. She was HOT!

When she sang "What's love but a second-hand emotion?" she made me wonder about the men I'd ached for from afar; I hadn't told my family about myself. I was in the closet then, but I knew I wanted to be like her, not in dress but in attitude. Her thick lips were flaming red. She wore a denim jacket, a simple black shirt, and a leather skirt. She conveyed both jadedness and exuberance at the same time as she sang what became her biggest hit. She strutted along the boardwalk off Brooklyn Heights in full view of Manhattan as she circled men on the street and displayed the confidence I thought I'd never be worthy of having. Once in a while she'd shift her saunter and resume her pace. I loved that.

And that radiant smile! I always thought she had the greatest pearly whites. My friend Quentin Crisp would've disagreed with me on this one: He felt that Whoopi Goldberg had the best smile in show business.

I never thought about how old Tina was at the time, so this is where reality throws a big damper on things. In 1984, she was 44 years old and had managed to shake off the physical and verbal abuse from her husband Ike Turner by divorcing him. All of this lent a peculiar poignancy to the song, but I didn't know the particulars of her situation at the time. All I understood was that in "What's Love Got to Do with It?" she had conveyed the gumption of a twentysomething hottie and the wisdom of someone who'd been around the block and then some. I'm now 43 years old, which makes her 69 years old as of this writing. It's hard for me to imagine her as just another old lady, but never mind. She's inspired a lonely deaf boy to imagine that maybe--just maybe, one day!--he would have the same confidence not to be ashamed of what he was. He would walk proudly as utterly himself, no matter where he was, and know that he was worthy. For that, she will remain forever ageless to me.

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Raymond Luczak's latest book is Assembly required: Notes from a Deaf Gay Life. Six of his poems appear in Deaf American Poetry, which is available at http://www.clercscar.com/books.

Raymond's Web site is at http://www.raymondluczak.com.

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