Set My Heart Aflutter #2: Cindy Crawford

Ah, the memories

Do you remember the moment you went from being interested in the opposite sex to being interested in the opposite sex? I’m not certain everyone does, but that’s part of what makes me special. I can remember where I was, who I was with and what happened. Let me fill you in. I was staying over at a friend’s house (Dave) and we were in his sisters’ room playing videogames on the television there. Admist shooting the shit and talking about the game, Dave said, “Oh I have something to show you. Look at this.” This was the Rolling Stone cover above, and the moment I saw it something inside me changed forever. I was completely aware of it happening. Up until that point I had always found girls/women to be interesting and mysterious. I wanted to know things about them and spend time with them. I wanted to know what kissing them would be like. I imagined watching movies together in the dark and having dinner together and walking places holding hands, all of that corny shit that I still love. As soon as I saw that cover I wanted more. Suddenly the urge to actually admire a nipple was unleashed from a deep dark cave in my mind. Suddenly, more than anything on Earth or beyond, I wanted to touch Cindy Crawford. Cindy taught me everything I needed to know about wanting women, and she did it in a glance. I wanted to be that pink blanket scarf thing. Of course, if she actually had walked in the room I would have had a heart attack on the spot. It would have been worth it.

I ended up buying the copy (it was already too late as it was the next month now and there was no way I was asking my folks to back-order that particular issue) from Dave and keeping it for a very long time. Eventually my brothers found it and thought it was pornography. Yes, in the days before the internet a picture of a woman with no top on but with her nipples covered was the closest thing they’d ever seen to porn. It’s kind of funny how times change. I’ll admit that I eventually lost the magazine, or possibly one of my brothers took it, and I can’t blame them for that. Maybe Cindy worked her magic on more than one of us. She certainly had the power. I even read the accompanying article roughly ten million times. In her youth people told her that since her mole was on the “wrong side” it was ugly and therefore so was she. That’s the kind of world we live in, my friends. A world where a lie of that magnitude can not only be spoken, but backed up by further moronicy. Jealousy is one of the ugliest monsters on Big Blue (sorry, that’s what I call Earth until we find another blue planet, and then it’ll be Big Blue #1, because even a world where people would tell Cindy Crawford she was unattractive is still #1 just because she lives here) and jealousy has led to some of the most unfortunate mistakes in human history. I’m so glad she was stronger than all of that. I’m so glad she didn’t listen. I need to breathe, I’m just going to take a second here and relax.

Hi..

One of the other things I remember clearly from the article was that Cindy and Richard (of the gerbil infamy) were married in Las Vegas after a particularly hairy drunken night. When they awoke in the morning, almost sober, they talked about what had happened and decided to try to make it work. It ultimately didn’t work, but never in my life did I want to move to Sin City so much. A man could even take up drinking (I think I was twelve at the time). What I would have given to be that mole upon that beautiful face. What I would still give, to be honest. Even if it meant whatever guy she was with kissed me sometimes just to be cute. I’d tolerate it. Hell, I’d spend the rest of my life fighting off rumours that I put furry animals in my posterior just to be able to say I was married to her for a while. Let’s be honest, too, if Richard Gere wasn’t married to Cindy Crawford I’m positive he would never have had those crazy stories started about him. I don’t think I was the only one with a heavy case of the Wants. I just handled it better than most, it seems.

=x omg

There have been other famous women who have stolen my heart and kept it locked away from me for years, and they’re all very special to me in their own way. None of them have quite the same position as Cindy Crawford and none ever will. I don’t believe in gender roles, really, and a lot of the things I’ve done have inspired people to ask me if I was gay. The question always made me smile because I understood why they would think that was a possibility. The reason why is they were not in my head the moment I saw the cover of that Rolling Stone. Understand I have gay friends and would probably be gay if my machinery worked that way (Women, you are delightful and beautiful and probably the most confusing and misleading thing on the planet) but I’ve never looked at a man and seen what I saw that day. I haven’t even come close to that. Remember the movie she was in with Stephen Baldwin? I wanted to see it until I saw them kiss in the preview, then I only wanted to see Stephen Baldwin cheesegrated to death in slow motion. Don’t mess with the emotions of a young man in love, that’s the moral of today’s story. The deeper, more meaningful moral is that I love Cindy Crawford and I always will. She helped form me into the man I am today (only in the good ways. All of the bad things are a result of my thing for Amy Winehouse) and is undoubtedly still doing her thing, showing young men the reason they wanted to have dinner with girls and hold hands with them.