Round and Round

The Ballad of G.

G. was a short and stocky guy with pallid skin and a choppy blond mullet. He had tattoos of daggers and coiled up snakes and was missing two of his bottom teeth. I met him while working at a hardware store. I was 17 at the time, cutting keys and mixing paint after school and on weekends. G., meanwhile, was 24. He puttered away in the hardware store’s basement, happily resurrecting a lawn mower or grill while whistling along to Q107, Toronto’s premier classic rock station.

G. was a ‘headbanger’ and damn proud of it. He’d come to work every day in his trademark outfit: black jeans, high-top Converse, and a long-sleeved tee. He loved Motley Crue and early Van Halen. But his favorite band was Ratt.

Ratt was a glam metal band from L.A. You remember glam, don’t you? Catchy riffs and giant hair, spandex, headbands, and enough silk scarves to make Salome gyrate off a cliff. It’s almost impossible to imagine these days, but glam metal reigned supreme in the mid-80s. From Dokken to Poison to Cinderella; Skid Row to W.A.S.P. to Twisted Sister; Warrant, Whitesnake, Winger, and White Lion. All of these acts (and many more) filled arenas and sold millions of albums.

G.’s favorite song by Ratt was Round and Round. It dropped in 1984 and reached #12 on the Billboard Hot 100. You’ll find it on their triple platinum debut album ‘Out of the Cellar’.

“It’s about a girl,” G. explained.

We were having lunch in the parking lot that was tucked behind the hardware store, munching on sandwiches and listening to the radio G. had brought outside. Round and Round had just come on and G. was totally pumped.

“Boy meets girl,” he continued. “But they ‘cross the line’ and ‘abuse’ themselves. So the girl says no, I’m done with this shit. But she knows and the guy knows that if they ‘just give it time’, he’s gonna make her ‘mine’. Or ‘his’. You know what I mean.”

“So it‘s about a guy who chases a girl? Round and round like a dog and its tail?”

“Like a dog chasing tail, period,” G. said. “Glam metal’s all about sex. Lots and lots of cheap dirty sex.”

He wasn’t wrong. All you had to do was look at the charts. ‘Girls, Girls, Girls’, ‘Cherry Pie’, ‘Seventeen’, ‘Talk Dirty to Me’, and the ever subtle ‘Animal (Fuck Like a Beast)’. These were but a few of the songs that proved G.’s point.

“The world runs on fucking,” G. informed me. “The more you fuck, the more you live. The more you live, the more you know. The more you know, the more you fuck.”

I had no idea what he was talking about.

“I mean life is a fucking circle,” G. said. “And pussy keeps you young. Don’t you ever forget it, you puke.”

I decided on a whim to reconnect with G. the last time I was in Toronto. Over thirty years had passed, but I found him online within a matter of minutes. G. was on Twitter, where he regularly shared his opinions on life. The planet was ‘screwed’; politicians were ‘poseurs’; Mia Goth was ‘hot’. I couldn’t find any pictures of G. There was only his avatar: the album cover for Out of the Cellar.

I created a throwaway account and sent G. a message, wondering if he’d remember me after all this time. G. responded later that day. HOLY SHIT!!! Sonny is that you?? Let’s grab a beer, you puke!!!

We agreed to meet the following night. I must have had a hundred flashbacks driving down to his place. Mostly I remembered going to G.’s apartment after a long shift at the hardware store. We’d smoke some weed and guzzle down beers—exciting stuff for underage me. G. and I would chat about work and inevitably land on the subject of ‘chicks’. I’d tell him about the girls I was too shy to talk to. G. would tell me about the girls he’d slept with. How this girl smelled or that one moaned. What this girl said or that one did. I remember thinking how cool G. was, how worldly and experienced. I would have sold my record collection for a taste of his glam metal lifestyle.

I knocked on G.’s door at the appointed time. It felt like an entire epoch passed before it finally opened. When it did, I recognized G. immediately. His hair had thinned and lightened with age, but G. still wore a mullet. He was dressed in black jeans and high top Converse, along with a long-sleeved shirt that advertised David Lee Roth’s Skyscraper tour. He looked like a headbanger pushing 60 stuck in the 1980’s.

It took G. a moment to recognize me. That’s because he was wasted. He leaned in the doorway and squinted at me. Then he smiled, revealing a bottom set of teeth missing a couple of incisors.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” G. said. “Come the fuck on in!”

“The thing about politicians is they don’t give a shit.”

G. was on a roll. Had been since he offered me a seat on his sleeper sofa. He’d ranted about gas prices and the real estate market before pivoting to the federal government. Ten minutes in and already I was considering leaping from his eighth-floor balcony.

Instead, I surveyed my surroundings while G. rambled on. G. lived in a studio: a catch-all kitchen, living room, and bedroom, designed for students and incurable bachelors. Clouds of dust danced in the corners. Two posters — one of Slash, the other a Testarossa — adorned the egg white walls.

“How about some tunes?” I asked.

G. looked up from the joint he was rolling. He’d been blathering on about tariffs or something and I’d rudely interrupted. “Let me finish my thought,” he said.

I began to regret my flighty decision to reconnect with G. We used to spend hours talking about our lives. But not once did G. ask me how I was doing. Nor did he exhibit any interest in what I’d been up to the last three decades.

Finally, G stopped talking. He lit the massive joint he’d been rolling, took a couple of Cheech and Chong puffs, then passed it over and headed for the stereo. Seconds later, the room was alive with the sound of Ratt.

“Remember this?” G. asked.

“You bet,” I said, and passed the joint back to him.

G. waved me away, preferring to wail on his air guitar. “I listen to this album every week,” he said. “Helps me keep shit real.”

G. pursed his lips and shut his eyes. He rocked back and forth, air-guitaring the solo with verve, awash in a sea of glam metal bliss.

G. sat down when the song was over and puffed on the joint that was still going strong. I told him about the chat we’d had — out in the parking lot behind the hardware store all those years ago. “You told me that life is a circle,” I said. “That pussy keeps you young.”

G. laughed out loud. “Guess I’m a wise motherfucker,” he said. 

We sat in silence for a minute or two, smoking weed and listening to Ratt. A mischievous look crossed G.’s face. “Speaking of pussy,” he said. “How about we get us some?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Whores,” G. said. “My treat. Let’s get a couple and swap.”

The last thing in the world I wanted to do was order up a couple of hookers and bang a gong with G. So I feigned fatigue and told him I better be going.

“You just got here,” he said.

“Guess I’m getting old,” I said.

“Guess you’re still a puke.”

Clearly I’d disappointed G. You might even say I’d offended him. How dare I refuse his inspired idea to engage in an innocent foursome? Especially one that was on the house.

G. arose from the sleeper sofa and saw me to the door. “Your loss,” he said, then slammed the door in my face.

The drive back home was bittersweet. G. had seemed cool to me back in the day. But what on earth did I know then? Aside from cutting keys and mixing paint, not a hell of a lot.

But I grew up. I evolved. I’m 52 at the time of this writing, and I doubt I’d even recognize myself at the age of 17. Though if I did, I’m sure I’d be embarrassed. 

There’s not much room for self-consciousness, though, when you’re in the heat of the chase. When you’re busy hunting the same old thing; running round and round like a dog chasing its tail. Like a dog chasing tail, period. Hoping you’ll catch some eventually and feel young again just a little while longer.