Someone told me about a record store on Adams in Phoenix. I went there and discovered Sandy’s Records, a cultural oasis in late 50s Phoenix, about to be overtaken by right-wing Republicans and megastores like Circles. Sandy was a fat man a real fat man, not overweight, not obese, not going against his true nature as propounded by natural law just fat and enjoying it. He apparently had some family money or some such and loved classical music. He thought rock and roll a decent gateway to jazz. He wasn’t a total elitist and ordered for me any number of Afro-Cuban records from Panarts that are the jewels of my record collection to this day. He also recommended any number of recordings of European art music aka classical music, which over the years I have found to be the center of any record collection of such music. Thanks, Sandy.
That first visit to Sandy’s was marked by my introduction to a gentlemen who sat on a stool in Sandy’s store. That seemed to be his job: to sit on the stool. He also was fat. Now that I look back on it, I’ll bet Sandy was gay and that was his partner, but maybe he was just a friend. His claim to fame was that he had worked with Freud. He quit, he said, because all Freud wanted was for people to drop their trousers. Interesting that it was drop trou rather than raise skirt. Hmmmm.
That was not my first introduction to attitudes toward sex founded on the chaotic American cultural complex around sex, but it was telling: a man who had worked with one of the intellectual founders of our age and that was all he had to say about the experience. Hmmmm.