1990sFest: Day Seven—A cultural oddity gets a glimpse of the future

This is faintly terrifying: but with very little effort, I was able to dig into
the center drawer of my desk and come up with my Screenz card.

     We like to think the pathways of technology were clear, that a few far-sighted individuals were able to forge the future, while others missed out. The truth was that nobody knew how the cards were going to fall, and those we think of as prescient were actually just persistent and lucky. It could have gone many other ways, such as this stillborn effort I tried out, once.     

     Every now and then my father abruptly announces that he could have bought stock in McDonald's in the mid-1960s and we'd all be rich by now.
     I'm not sure why he says this — free-floating remorse, I suppose. Squeezing a government pension can do that to you.
     A good son would sigh and commiserate. But I can't help but perversely remind Dad that, in the mid-1960s, he didn't even allow his family to eat at McDonald's, never mind buying stock.
     I can clearly see us burger-craving kids, piled in the back seat of our lime green 1960 Nash Rambler. Waiting while mom pulled over to the side of the road at a phone booth to call my dad to ask permission to take us to a little red and white tiled McDonald's stand. He said yes, finally, but my mother had to argue with him.
     I flash back to my father's failure to recognize the potential of McDonald's whenever I confront a radically new business enterprise, such as the "Screenz Digital Universe," a computer center; coffee house that opened last week on Clark Street, south of Diversey.
     I must admit, I was first drawn to Screenz because I thought it was a cultural oddity, a momentary representation of our infatuation with computers and coffee, a blip on the social screen that I had better familiarize myself with now before it evaporates.
     But as I was shown around the day before it opened, by Screenz' founder, a 29-year-old entrepreneur named Dan Kite, I got the sinking feeling that maybe I was the cultural oddity, and this might just be something that will catch on with people in a big way.
     Perhaps, I wondered, I should go empty my bank account and hand the money to Kite, if only to keep me from an old age of impoverished regret.
     Screenz is a good-looking operation. Large, brightly lit, and done in pleasing purples and yellows. Fashionable metal chairs from Italy; sconces from Sweden. As you walk in, to the right is a small cafe section, where you can buy java — the drink not the software — and bakery goods. To the left, 45 computer stations, each with a jumbo 17-inch terminal, a joystick, a mouse, speakers, a little control board and a headset with microphone.
     "We're the only place outside the Navy using this," said Kite, putting on the headset and explaining how users will be able to communicate with each other — say while playing on the same team in computer games. They also will be able to talk to a centrally located helper, who will guide them when they get stuck navigating the intricacies of the online world.
     Eager to leap into this world, the day Screenz opened, I signed up, charging my Screenz card with $ 10 worth of computer time and grabbing a $ 1.25 coffee.
     Of course nothing at Screenz is beyond what you can do at home. What Kite is counting on is that most people will not have the quick, state-of-the-art equipment they do, nor the wide range of new software. The endless delays of waiting for my pitiful 486 computer, an antique at three years old, are wiped away by Screenz' powerful server and direct dedicated lines.
     Is this enough to get people to go to the place — a clean, well-lighted place — and pay 13 to 19 cents a minute?
     "We are really trying to be the community center in cyberspace," said Kite, who previously established a string of Blockbuster videos and a small software company. "We are focused on making this a neighborhood destination."
     I started in on the games, since I don't have any at home and wanted to know what all the fuss is about. I tried Doom 2, which I'm sure has 100 different levels, each more challenging and wonderful than the next. But I ended up stuck on the first level, having blasted away all my monsters, wandering the computerized maze, lost.
     I suppose I could have sought assistance. But I couldn't bring myself to press my aid button and say: "Help — I'm stuck in maze on the first level of Doom 2." It seemed, I don't know, demeaning.
     So I got out of the "Fun and Gamez" section and headed for "The Knowledgeable Explorer," another of the six zones Screenz has created to help its users navigate cyberspace. I was attracted to the Encarta Encyclopedia.
     Yet, as happens so often with my computer at home, I couldn't make the thing work. This time, emboldened by failing at an educational pursuit and not mere carnage, I donned the headset, and checked in with the helper, who was prompt and friendly in telling me that the Encarta wasn't working just then.
     At least it wasn't me.
     I poked around in various other areas and time slid by, if not pleasantly then at least imperceptibly. Every so often the computer would tell me how much money had trickled away. After about 45 minutes I decided I had better head home to supper. The computer thanked me, told me I had spent $ 6.90 and had $ 1.85 left in my account, which didn't precisely add up, but was close enough.
     The coffee, however, was excellent. The place seemed to be running well considering that it was their first day and, heck, if there are 10,000 Screenz outlets in a decade, it won't be because of me anyway.

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Oct. 6, 1996

1990sFest: Day Six—"The struggle never ends for Planned Parenthood"

Untitled (Your Body is a Battleground) by Barbara Kruger (The Broad, Los Angeles)

     I'm on vacation this week. One great thing about this job is meeting fascinating people who've spent their long lives doing important work. Peggy Carr passed away only in 2016, at age 103. 

     Peggy Carr was born in 1913 on Chicago's South Side, the third child in four years.
     "My poor mother," said Carr, 83, who has devoted much of her long life to helping women plan their families through an organization that came to be known in Chicago, 50 years ago this month, as Planned Parenthood.
     Three years after Carr was born, her child-weary mother slipped off to a South Side meeting held by contraception pioneer Margaret Sanger.
     Sanger was the New York nurse who started the movement leading to Planned Parenthood and, it might be argued, should be listed as one of the founders of 20th century life, for good or ill, along with Freud and Darwin and Marx.
     Carr's mother had to go in secret because in 1916 a woman could be arrested in Chicago not only for speaking about contraception, but also for hearing about it.
     That sort of oppression is worth remembering in the complicated present, since those who moon for the days of farm wives and their 12 kids churning butter forget that misery often went hand in hand.
     Peggy Carr remembers. While opponents of Planned Parenthood often give lip service to their love of children, sympathy for the plight of children led Carr, and others, to form the group in the first place.
     "My mother was president of the Chicago Orphan Asylum," said Carr. "Here were these neglected, unwanted children. We used to have the children come and play with us; the old orphanage was not far from where we lived on 48th Street. It was always so sad for these children nobody cared for."
     Then, as now, society found it more convenient to ignore unwanted children than to try to keep them from being born.
     "Lots of convents had a revolving door, you put the baby on a little shelf and rang a bell," said Carr. "They came and turned the door around and took the baby away."
     In 1939, Carr joined what was then the Illinois Birth Control League and served as its last president. At the time — and, in fact, until the 1960s — most states had laws either banning or restricting the spread of information about contraception.
     "Women begged their doctors to tell them how not to have another baby, and the doctors told them to tell their husbands to sleep on the roof," said Carr.
     Acting in the margins of the law, the Birth Control League held clinics and women just seemed to know when to show up.
     "They had never heard of birth control, but somewhere they found out and came to us. They may have already had nine children when they came, it meant so much to the women," said Carr. "You saw constant child bearing -- women had 10, 12 babies, and so many babies died."
     Though not a professionally trained nurse, Carr would help in the clinics to teach wives about reproduction and how to prevent it using methods available at the time, condoms and diaphragms.
     "Our clinics were only for married women," she said. "It never occurred to me that we would offer birth control to unmarried women."
     Even when money for professional health workers was available, the workers were not always willing in the early years.
     "You could hardly get anyone to work 50 years ago," she said. "They'd hardly dare tell what they were doing. It took a lot of courage."
     Carr remembers when Red Cross volunteers got in trouble for attending Planned Parenthood programs.
     "They were told never again to appear at a Planned Parenthood program in uniform," she said. "That's how much we were shunned."
     She also remembers the husband of one important Planned Parenthood advocate being called on the carpet and told that unless his wife curtailed her activities, he'd be fired.
     Another longtime Planned Parenthood worker, Geneva Hayden, who joined in 1966, remembers there being a constant struggle just to find a room to hold a clinic.
     "In Markham, we had to set up in the judge's chambers," said Hayden, 60. "There was no other place."
     To focus on the dismal past is to imply the situation is much better today, and it isn't. Simply because you can listen to Peggy Carr without fearing jail doesn't mean that her message isn't blunted in other ways.
     Ad agencies, for instance, that do pro-bono work for other social service groups still shun Planned Parenthood out of fear that clients will object.
     Television, which runs the vilest garbage, can barely bring itself to run ads for condoms. And while accepting the "Life: What a Wonderful Choice" ads from the religious right, TV stations refuse Planned Parenthood's most benign offerings, such as the one that boldly states: "Children have the best chance at a healthy life when they're born into a loving home."
     With such opposition, the next half century will hardly be easier. But as Carr noted, observing a fact that seems to elude so many of Planned Parenthood's opponents: "You can't go back."
               —Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 22, 1997

1990sFest: Day Five—"Being nude doesn't make you invisible"

     I'm on vacation this week, so instead we're dipping into some early columns from 1996 and 1997.

     The health club this took place at—the Lakeshore Athletic Club, just north of the Sun-Times—is gone, as are the 401 N. Wabash offices of the paper, of course. The Tribune columnist I refer to, George Lazarus, is also long gone, expiring famously on the Metra, an end that has crossed my mind more than once while commuting on the train. He is famous for complaining, bitterly, of being lampooned in song at the Gridiron Club dinner. Which is also gone.

     Men must feel that being naked makes them invisible. Invisible, or maybe just shrouded in the Cone of Secrecy. That's the only way to explain a phenomenon I've noticed in locker rooms over and over.
     Two guys finish playing racquetball. They clomp over to where I'm getting dressed: alone, silent, pondering what's for dinner.
     After a word or two about the game, they begin talking about their work. They ignore me — a nebbishy guy, fiddling with his necktie — and I of course listen intently.
     And am usually shocked by what they say.
     The most recent time it was a pair of lawyers — I won't reveal the firm, though I could easily read its name, and the lawyers' names, from the business cards they had stuck in their gym bag name tag holders to save themselves the 10 seconds of writing down a name and phone number.
     Lawyer One asks about a certain Chinese colleague. Lawyer Two says the colleague's going back to Beijing. Lawyer One speculates on the reasons why. Lawyer Two mentions he's had the Chinese lawyer over to his house — they played Ping-Pong. Lawyer One muses on the impact that his leaving will have on the firm — it seems he is a rainmaker bringing in business from China. They then discuss their firm's relationship to China and its hopes for the future there.
     My jaw drops open.
     I want to say: You guys are lawyers? Aren't you supposed to be, oh, I don't know, circumspect about this sort of thing? During the O.J. Simpson trial, did Johnnie Cochran and F. Lee Bailey shoot their mouths off at their health club? "Good thing O.J. dumped the knife at LAX, eh?" says Cochran, toweling himself. "Sure makes our lives easier," answers Bailey, slapping Vitalis on what hair he's still got.
     I mean, these two guys didn't know me. I could be a lawyer from a rival firm. I felt like saying, "Gone to China, has he? Maybe I'll ring him up and see if he wants to represent us."
     I don't want to implicate only lawyers. Everybody does it. A lot of our competition goes to this same gym. There used to be this columnist — again, I will draw the protective veil around his identity, though heaven knows he doesn't deserve the kindness.
     Every day he would drape himself in a towel and get on the pay phone and begin yabbing to his secretary, going over his schedule — the calls he was returning, the leads he was developing. His voice echoed off the walls like cannon fire.
     I used to listen in — I could hardly do otherwise — hoping for a tip to rush back to our business department. But he never seemed to be working on anything worthwhile.
    Of course, listening in also can have its perils.
     I remember, I had just moved to Los Angeles — a brief, mistaken adventure. Two guys in a club locker room were discussing the fall of a colleague.
     "He lost all his power," said one man, sadly. "I feel bad for him. He had to move out of his house. . . ."
     Geez, I thought. What a ruthless place! I pictured this poor executive, cashiered by brutal corporate infighting, deprived of his position, even booted out of his high-priced residence.
     Then they continued talking, and I realized: he had lost power, as in electricity. Whoops.
     But the lesson is the same — even though you're wearing a towel, you're still in public, and you never know who's at the next locker, listening.
     —Originally published in the Sun-Times March 20, 1997

1990sFest: Day Four—"Love at first byte."

Children Watching Balinese Puppets at the Field Museum of Natural History

  

     While I'm on vacation, let's squint a few decades into the past.    
     Today, one third of recently married couples met online, as opposed to at a bar or social event. That was very different 20 years ago, when meeting online had an air of something unwise, perhaps illicit. Notice the presence of a certain thick yellow piece of technology now entirely absent from our lives.

     There was a great sketch at Second City recently in which a defiant wife is packing her bags to meet her new online lover. She grandly announces that her online name is Lady Crimson, and her new boyfriend is The Weasel.
     "I have to go to him," she tells her boggled husband. "The Weasel is my soulmate."
     The Weasel turns out to be 14 years old. His mother drives him to the motel. But the funniest part is how her husband just can't get over the moronic moniker of his rival, and keeps repeating it, in agonized wonder, while his wife is leaving. "The Weasel!" he says, clutching his head as if it were splitting apart. "The Weasel?!?!?"
     Public service types always focus on the risk the Internet poses to tender and impressionable children. Warnings are always ringing that the kiddies might stumble across some dirty pictures and, I don't know, be scarred for life.
     What about their parents? What about the risk to them? The Internet's online services such as America Online are a tar pit, an attractive nuisance, an inviting trap enticing the lonely and the foolish to embrace their ruin.
     Exhibit A: The ad for Myers Service Inc., "Chicago's Premier Detective Agency," in the 1997 Ameritech Yellow Pages. Like most phone book ads for detective agencies, it has a pleasant Sam Spade ring to it, listing that the company will trace missing people and investigate backgrounds.
     But one service is something never imagined in Raymond Chandler: "On-line Infidelity."
     "We've been getting a lot of business — it's exploding," said Marty Mroz, director of outside investigations at Myers. "We've been noticing that a lot of people have been meeting on these chat lines."
     Of course they are. The Internet is perfect for those inclined to stray. Anyone with a computer and a modem now has a 24-hour honky tonk in their rec room, and many seem unable to resist wandering in.
     "I see it as an increasing problem," said Jeffery M. Leving, a divorce attorney, who is handling cases involving online dalliance. "There are people who are addicted to the Internet."
     Of course there are. For women, it is a chance to troll for men, free of their often-menacing physical presence. For men, it permits the kind of incremental, hair-splitting approach to whatever qualms they might have about cheating on their wives.
     Exhibit B is Howard Stern. Stern, who has made technical fidelity to his wife the core of his shtick, spends the first 50 pages of his most recent best seller rhapsodizing about the joys of online sex.
     "I like this Prodigy chat concept because here's a way to be with new women and not have a guilty conscience afterward," he writes in one of the few quotable passages of Miss America. "In my mind this ain't cheatin'!"
     Legally, he is right. No matter what is done with somebody in another room, it doesn't become a case for lawyers until two people get together.
     "By definition there is no such thing as online infidelity," said Barry C. Zachary, a divorce attorney. "If there is no contact between the two parties, it cannot be adultery."
     But legalities are moot when the crockery starts to fly. Conducting a relationship online is, perhaps, most comparable to exchanging love letters, and while the lack of physical intimacy might keep your spouse from actually tearing you limb from limb, the odds are that he or she will not be happy to learn of your electronic liaison with the anonymous.
     That assumes the affair is kept online. There is always the temptation to move from the virtual to the real.
     "What's happening is they're finding people they're interested in, setting up these romantic interludes," Mroz said. "It's becoming more and more common in the last couple years; this stuff has been catching on. It's kind of scary that people would do this."
     It certainly was scary for the New York woman who had dinner last week at the apartment of a man she met online, only to be — she says — beaten and raped by the man.
     "You have no idea who you're speaking to," Mroz said. "This person can be a complete crazy person. You can think you're talking to a woman who could be a man, it could be a kid. You don't know who you're speaking to."
     Ah, well. Somewhere, aged computer wizards are shaking their heads, thinking back to the days when they were slaving over those burning electrical circuits and exploding tubes, deluding themselves that they were struggling to bring the world an easier way to calculate large prime numbers and figure out the trajectories of cannon shells. Sorry, guys, you were building a sex toy.
     Had they taken a few psychology classes among the physics seminars, they would have seen it coming. Human nature being what it is, we should never be surprised when libido -- licit, illicit and otherwise -- overwhelms technology. Look in the benign, utilitarian phone book that brought this up in the first place. There are 19 full pages of advertising under the heading "Computers" in the 1997 yellow pages. And 27 full pages of ads for escort services. Draw your own conclusions.

       —Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 22, 1997

1990sFest: Day Three—Stars shine at Art Institute soiree

     While I'm on vacation, I'm setting the Time Machine for the late 1990s.
     This isn't a column, but a news story, helping out with our coverage of the 1996 Democratic National Convention. I wasn't invited; Richard Roeper helped me crash the party. The place was packed, and when John F. Kennedy Jr. entered the room, the mob pressed toward him. I wheeled around and headed in the opposite direction, but a young woman caught my arm and asked to be introduced to JFK Jr. I did so, and used to have a photo of us shaking hands, but his face in profile, and mine, provided such a stark contrast I gave the photo away to the young woman, who was also in it. 

     Others were there who didn't make the story—Mike Royko, grumbling about phonies. For years I thought of the evening as the night I met Bill Zehme, which tells you where the nonpareil Esquire writer stood in my esteem.

    The only other thing I can recall is that this story wasn't written, but dictated over a payphone I had managed to wrest away from someone. 

     An A-list group of celebrities — including Norman Mailer, Kevin Costner and Aretha Franklin — joined thousands of well-connected people for John F. Kennedy Jr.'s hot-ticket George magazine party Tuesday.  

August 1996 edition of George magazine

     

     Nibbling crudites and sipping wine, the guests packed the Art Institute courtyard and rubbernecked to catch a view of celebrities ranging from Chastity Bono to Neil Hartigan.
     Kennedy worked his way through the crowd — flanked by security guards — and praised the party's setting. "I can't think of a better place to have a party than in this beautiful museum," he said. "I'm coming back tomorrow when it's open."
     The party, which featured the music of the rock band Poe, was to promote Kennedy's political magazine, which he started last year.
     Kennedy wore a navy blue double-breasted suit. As he spoke, Joe Silverberg, co-owner of Bigsby & Kruthers, adjusted the host's white pocket square, which was not filling the pocket properly.
     "Why not? What else am I going to do? He's beautiful," said Silverberg, adding that he often pulls stray threads off of people's suits in pursuit of sartorial excellence.
     Across the courtyard, which was minimally decorated, Mailer was talking about Hillary Rodham Clinton. "I have nothing against strong women," he said. All of his six wives were strong women, the novelist added.
     While Aretha Franklin munched on an hors d'oeuvre, Kevin Costner walked up and said modestly, "My name is Kevin and I'm a big fan of yours."
     A waiter reported that the celebrities were entering the party through the kitchen. Some dawdled to sample the food there, he said, including Franklin.
     Christine Gidwitz said, "For Chicago, this is excellent people-watching."
     Among those being watched were Billy Baldwin, Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), three Chrises — Lawford, Rock and Zorich — Sugar Rautbord, William Kennedy Smith, Janet Davies, Eunice Shriver, Eleanor Mondale, Jerry Springer and Juanita Jordan, who reported that Michael was in Los Angeles.
     TV personality Bob Sirott supplied some perspective. "This is supposed to be the most exclusive ticket to get," he said. "So how come everyone I know is here?"

     —Originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times, Aug. 28, 1996

1990sFest: Day Two—"Neighborly thing to do is assume the worst"

19th century French mugshot (MMA)

     I'm on vacation. While I'm off, please enjoy this nugget of the 1990s.

     Talk about your unnecessary and wasteful government meddling. Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan is appealing a judge's overturning of Illinois' community notification law — one of those laws modeled after New York state's "Megan's Law," requiring that local residents be informed when convicted sex offenders move into their neighborhoods.
     Is that really necessary? You mean there are people who don't just automatically assume that their neighbors are criminals and perverts? Who smile and greet them over the hedges without wondering what sort of nightmare atrocities they are secretly perpetrating behind their ghastly floral-print curtains? Who don't glance into their open garages, searching for pentagrams and manacles and drums of acid?
     I don't believe it.
     For my part, I am always on constant alert for criminal activity on the part of my neighbors, without any prompting from governmental authorities. In fact, I wish they would notify me about the neighbors who definitely aren't criminals, so I could stop worrying about them.
     As it is, the slightest sound from next door and I am ready to snap into action.
     "Honey, call DCFS!" I yell, leaping from my easy chair and waving my index finger. "The Schmendersons are abusing their kids again."
     "The Schmendersons don't have any kids," my wife replies, wearily.
     "Aha! So you've fallen for their little scheme," I say, eyes glittering. "That's just what they want you to think, isn't it? The kids are chained in the basement, weaving baskets, waiting for us to rescue them."   

Metropolian Museum of Art

     "The Schmendersons don't have a basement," my wife says. "We've been through this."
     "Aha! So you've fallen for . . ." I begin, but she cuts me off with a harsh look.
     In addition to being suspicious by nature, I can't stand the thought of being caught unaware. I've seen too many stories where, the day after the maniac is brought into the police station, screeching and frothing in a cage, the boob neighbors are trotted out blinking before the bank of news cameras.
     "Gee, he seemed so normal," they gibber. "Yup, I heard those screams and thuds and struggling sounds in the middle of the night, and something that sounded like a radial saw. But I just thought it was the television."
     I can see the headline: "Schmenderson House of Horror" with my picture low on the page: eyes wide, mouth agape, tie under my ear, and the caption, "Neighbor: 'I suspected nothing.'"        

     This must be avoided. Careful monitoring of one's neighbors, after all, is one of the stoutest corner posts of civilization.
     That's why so many wackos come out of farm country and the empty expanse of the Great Plains. They are unobserved, left to their own devices, and they know it. If Ted Kaczynski had lived here, not in rural Montana, people up and down his street would have turned him in as a Unabomber suspect years ago.
      "I happened to be walking my dog in the breezeway next to his garage," the hero would report. "And I heard a funny noise. So I stacked some boxes together and stood on them so I could look through the transom. And sure enough, there was Ted, at his workbench, filing away at something that looked kinda like the trigger mechanism for a bomb. So I went through his garbage, and there was a receipt for . . ."

   Constant vigilance, after all, is what makes for a safe society. We are always being tormented with the statistics from crime-free Japan, where there are about 12 murders a year and where if you drop your wallet on the street good samaritans will wrestle each other to see who gets the honor of returning it to you, elaborately gift-wrapped. What we aren't told about is the intense effort required to maintain that level of safety. When my brother moved to Tokyo, he didn't know the proper way to wrap his garbage when he threw it away. He discovered the proper way, however, after his neighbors formally complained to his boss, who then called him on the carpet and told him to get with the program.
     Just this year, our neighbors to the west built a nine-foot wooden fence between our properties, without so much as a "boo" to us beforehand. "You think they are going to top it off with searchlights and concertina wire?" I asked my wife, as we watched the monstrosity going up like worried East Germans monitoring construction of the Berlin Wall. It was my impression that the wall was about two feet over code, and we briefly considered turning them in to the city.
     But that seemed so unneighborly. You don't want to antagonize people — you never know who you're dealing with. Psychotics are everywhere, waiting to explode at the slightest provocation.
     And besides, I figure the wall protects us from them as much as it protects them from us. And a good thing, too. I've had my doubts about them. They are quiet people. They keep to themselves. That's always a sure sign of trouble.
      —Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 12, 1996

1990sFest: Day One—"Nose for news nets a piercing interview"

     I'm on vacation. As much as part of me wants to leave this space blank for the next week, to show that I can, enough people start their days here that I don't want to disappoint anybody.

    I don't know when I'll be able to vet comments and, alas, can't leave them unmonitored. Please be patient and I'll get them up as soon as possible. 

    This week marks my 22nd year as a columnist at the Sun-Times, and I thought I would reach back to the first couple years, to the foreign shore of the second half of the 1990s, and revisit some chestnuts from the day. I've tried to pick posts that hold their interest, such as this foray into kink.  Notice the rather prescient observation about Dennis Rodman. At the time he was considered a freak; now half the players in the NBA have body art very much like his.

     Some readers may doubt my motives in attending a lecture entitled "Fetish: Fashion, Sex & Power." Honestly, I wasn't out for a thrill.
     I had a question in mind. I wanted to know something. I figured that Valerie Steele, a New York cultural historian speaking on that topic last week at the School of the Art Institute, just might be able to answer it.
     I hoped to have nose jewelry explained to me. I live in a neighborhood where, more and more, young people parade about with metallic ornaments dangling from their nostrils.
     Nasal decorations mystify and disturb me—not simply because I find them ugly. But because of my reaction. No matter how many times I've seen them, my brain still goes through the same three-step cognition process: 1) Hey, that girl has a booger hanging out of her nose; 2) No, wait, it's metallic; c) Oh, it's a nose bauble.
     I worry this is a sign of old age—that, at 35, my mind has seized up, and is no longer nimble enough to accept such an innocuous change. Why should a gold sphere worn at the nostril be viewed as any less attractive than one worn in the ear lobe? They're big in India. Why can't I accustom myself to what has to be, at least for some, a fetching fashion?
     Steele didn't say much about nose baubles. She focused instead on the spike heels, leather outfits and rubber unmentionables standard to the fetish underworld, showing how, via high fashion and icons such as Madonna, the marginal has quickly filtered into the mainstream.
 

Diana Rigg as Emma Peel

   "For the past 30 years, playful incorporation of fetishism into popular culture has been a growing trend," said Steele.
     She traced the bondage-at-Bloomingdales phenomenon to Diana Rigg's Emma Peel in the 1960s TV show "The Avengers." Mrs. Peel was "crucial" to the emergence of fetishism into pop culture, Dr. Steele said, showing how Peel's skintight cat suit was taken from an English bondage uniform. "The television producers thought the full-face mask was too kinky, so they lopped that off," Steele added.
     I imagine Steele's lecture 20 years from now will include a slide of Dennis Rodman, in full tattoo and regalia, along with an explanation of how Rodman was a pioneer of the body decoration that no self-respecting member of the class of '16 will be without. Rodman is an amazing figure, when you consider how unimaginable he would be in professional sport even 10 years ago. What today strikes us as weirdness might someday be seen as vision and guts.
     Steele showed a slide of a turn-of-the-century Viennese fetish shoe whose 11-inch heel was not meant for walking, but for . . . well, for something else. She explained how the important thing was not so much the shoe, itself, but the meaning given to the shoe.
     "A fetish is a story masquerading as an object," she said. "This shoe symbolizes a story, a fantasy."
     Steele didn't intend it, but I think her comment also explains the fantastic prices being paid for the flotsam and jetsam of Camelot at the Jackie Onassis auction in New York. Both are using an object to reach toward an unattainable fantasy.
     Afterward, I asked Steele if she saw a connection.
     "It's not a sexual fetish but it is a fetish," she said. "Clearly, the overvaluation and ritualization of objects that evoke the Kennedys. They touched these things. He sat on that chair. He used that golf club. It's like a relic of the saints."
     About 75 people attended the lecture, mostly students from Gillion Skellenger-Carrara's class, "The Art of 20th Century Dress." Among them was Rachel Parker, who sported six piercings in each ear, two nostril posts, two nostril rings, a chin ball, a tongue barbell, pierced nipples, two tattoos and a few ritual scarifications, plus long hair dyed a vibrant orange and green.
     Here, I thought, is the person to explain nose decoration to me, and indeed she was astoundingly candid, pulling down the front of her black sweater to show off the scarification on her left breast, which she administered herself with a razor.
     "I know I won't regret anything I've done," said Parker, 21. She said that while she started scarring herself at 14 as "a way to hurt myself, an escape," now she has been decorating her body for so long that it has become part of her identity. "It's not like I have a choice. This is the way I am."
     Ironically, Parker does not approve of nose festoonery, nor pierced belly buttons, nor any popular embrace of the adornments that set her apart. She sees it as an assault on her dignity by upstarts.
     "I find it annoying," she said. "It's a trend. Trends fade and go away, and I'll have a really big party when that happens. It can't go on much longer."
     I hope not. I walked away thinking how odd it is, that both of us -- this young girl with the pale blue eyes, pretty under all that metalwork, and myself, 35, unpierced, untattooed but plenty bewildered -- can't wait for society to proceed in exactly the same direction.       —Originally published in the Sun-Times, April 28, 1996