A Huggin' and A Chalkin' On The Disco Round.

There was a song called "A Huggin' and A Chalkin'" by Hoagy Carmichael, or it could have been Kay Keyser, that my dad used to listen to all the time when I was a kid. I remember him asking us to listen to it with him. It totally cracked him up. The song is about a guy who is in love with a woman who is so big and fat that he has to mark where he started hugging her with chalk so he'll know when he gets back to where he started. Seriously. Oh, and one day, he's a huggin' and a chalkin', and he meets a guy coming around the other way. Oh yeah. I'm really serious. That's the song. Of course, it came out at a time when the most famous black person was Stepin Fetchit, and women either were dames with nice gams or barefoot in the kitchen. But my dad liked it. So I liked it too.

That was my musical influence as a child.

The first album I ever bought was "The Sugar Bears." I swear. It was an album by the character from the Sugar Crisp cereal box. I saved up to buy it, so it wasn't some foolish impulse purchase. Oh no, I really wanted it. And listened to it. Over and over. I was 18.

Okay, kidding. I was a little younger than that. But again, my musical preference was a group of cartoon bears who peddled crispy sugar-coated sugar breakfast nuggets. By seventh grade or so, I was so into John Denver that I used to beg my mom to let me stay up late to watch his TV specials. I would sit in the basement listening to his records, singing them out loud. Come on, 'Annie's Song' is still one of the most romantic love songs ever. His music is still a guilty pleasure. But again, not the most popular choice.

So, it should come as no surprise that as a young teen, I was a disco fan. A big, dago-fro, gold chain wearing, double-knit Sans-A-Belt slacks disco boy. My friends and I saw Saturday Night Fever four or five times. And that's when there was no such thing as DVDs or even VHS. Remember those days? When you had to go to a theater to see a movie. We went to the theater four or five times to see it. Oh, we were only freshmen in high school, but we were living the Tony Manero life.

We went to teen dances on Friday nights, Saturday nights and sometimes even Saturday afternoons and Sunday nights. Okay, there was no alcohol served or anything, but to meet girls, you had to know how to dance. Girls liked guys who could dance. And when we went over to Jersey to a teen dance, the Jersey girls would get all flustered because the Italian guys from South Philly were there to show them a better time on the dance floor than their rock-loving Jersey boys. Of course, there were lots of fights. But I never fought. I was a lover, not a fighter. Actually, I was a pussy. But a pussy that could dance! The hustle, the line dancing, the rock. I had a chiana shirt, with the wide collar and a silkscreen of a couple on the beach on the front of the shirt. Oh, it was friggin' hot. And I would proudly wear that thing, because I bought it with money I earned working at the local corner grocery store, delivering milk and Nilla Wafers to moldy old greaseball ladies. Just like Tony Manero worked at the hardware store and earned enough dough to buy his white suit. We were living parallel lives, he and I.

And the music went along with the lifestyle. "I love the nightlife. I've got to boogie on the disco round..." I always wondered what a disco round was, but it didn't really matter. I did love the nightlife. Even if teen dances ended at 11:00. I had a plethora of 12" disco singles. One of my favorites was "Knock On Wood" by Ami Stewart. I could shake my groove thing to that.

My brother would taunt me with "Disco sucks!" Yeah, right. That's why I was out meeting girls at dances and he was at home diddling himself with Led Zeppelin albums playing in the background. I didn't even like Kiss until they came out with "I Was Made For Loving You" and Ace did "New York Groove." The Village People, another favorite. Were they gay? To us it didn't matter. To us, they were gay, when it means 'happy and fun'. But they were disco. We even assembled a Village People tribute act and performed as them. In front of people. Not just a few people. Auditoriums full of people. I was the "hot cop." Oh, yes I was. And I could thrust my pelvis like a stripper who's having an epileptic fit on her pole. My tight white cop pants hugged my butt as I lip-synched "YMCA" and "Macho Man." It was truly a thing of beauty. It was a far cry from the sugary pop goodness of The Sugar Bears, and miles from my current iTunes list of eclectic choices. From Cake to Amy Winehouse to Arctic Monkeys or Southern Culture on the Skids.

But I still have some Village People tunes there, nestled between The Velvet Underground and Weezer.

Am I proud of my disco days? Hey, we all have things in our past we're not completely proud of. But I can say this much, we had fun. Not 'gay' fun. But real, memorable fun. I can still dance, which makes me feel good when I see all those guys doing the white-man shuffle at weddings or clubs. And girls still like guys who can dance. As long as they're not wearing wide-collared chiana shirts.

So, I listen to my eclectic stuff, mixed in with my Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, or Tony Bennett or Sinatra. (Hey, I have to like Sinatra. I'm Italian from South Philly. If I don't like him, my kneecaps get broken.)

Oh, and I just downloaded "A Huggin' and A Chalkin'" from iTunes. It's an obnoxious song, but it makes me picture my dad laughing. And that's music to my ears.