#05 - Melantha P - 2Gether 4Ever (1986)

Today's post is possibly NFSW, due to embarrassing descriptions of teenage record-sleeve self-abuse.  Oh, come on.  Don't look at me like that.  Like you never once felt a bit frisky with a Roxy Music album.

Despite the myth that dance music is only the domain of teenage girls and gay boys who dance with their arms above their head, I have an unhealthy knowledge of relatively-interchangeable eighties electronic bimbo singers entirely because of my heterosexual friends.

Originally the teenage schoolyard determination of who was best was entirely pitched between Madonna and Cyndi Lauper.  The girls all picked Cyndi, because she’d be a fun friend to have, where Madonna was denounced as ‘Obviously A Slut’, with all that particular kind of haughtiness that can only be displayed by girls who haven’t yet experienced any remote interest from boys, let alone actually had sex.

Of course, this is why all the normal boys loved Madonna.  She looked like a low-impact aerobics instructor for very undisciplined women to my eyes, and couldn’t sing worth a damn, but the boys didn’t care.  There were whispers of pictures spotted in Older Brothers’ ‘Penthouses’, (where her bush was bigger than ‘one of those Gonks you’d win on the clowns at the show’), and having starred in what Molly Meldrum described on Countdown as being a ‘pornographic movie’, thereby dooming a generation of horny Australian boys to a hard life lesson in extreme disappointment.

A tidal wave of First-Name-Only Female Singers doing video aerobics in a succession of different outfits-picked-by-stylists followed, all possessing what can only be charitably described as ‘chirpy’ voices, which were always buried under a blanket of increasingly-desperate recording effects to give the effect of Being Able To Sing.  More often than not, they sounded like Marilyn Monroe having an asthma attack, to the extent that I assumed the Seven Year Itch was something to do with hayfever.

I was getting into my Teenage Indie phase at the time, so with the resulting feeling of smug superiority as my shield, I managed to avoid hearing most of these Madonna Wannabe records, (obviously oblivious to the fact that the people I was judging as inferior for listening to such rubbish were judging their taste as superior to mine for doing exactly that).

Still, with friends trading Smash Hits pin-ups to put on their wall, I quickly learnt what the girls looked like.  I first encountered former Page 3 pin-up model turned singer ‘Melantha P’ after being shut into a friend’s bedroom to ‘wait until he gets home’ by his scary Dutch mother, which, admittedly, was preferable to sitting with her as she snort-laughed her way through 'Gilligan's Island'.

With nothing else to do, I grabbed a foolscap school book by the side of bed to read and was confronted with page after page of glued-in pictures of girls cut out of 'Smash Hits', as well as K-Mart Catalogue Bra Models, which seemed rather strange to my eyes.

Cluelessly, I flicked the pages, until I came to a page that wouldn’t quite open all the way.  I only managed to make out a Toreador Hat on top of an enormous mess of crimped hair, before it finally peeled apart with a loud rip, which, as an adult, makes me realise my friend probably ran out of Clag Glue and added his own home blend.  Of course, this was the moment my horrified friend Eric chose to appear in the doorway.

“You ripped Melantha!”  Eric was obviously upset.  He snatched the book from my hand, and started trying to smooth the edges of her picture back down.

My friend Steve was behind him, and ran his finger down his index finger towards me.  “Shame, shame on you.  You don’t touch someone’s Wank Book”

“What the hell is a Wank Book?” I asked.

Steve rolled his eyes.   “It’s where you keep all your sexy pictures, you dork”.

This was news to me.  I’ve always had much older friends.  They were two years above me in high school, which, in those days, might as well be twenty.  Still, I felt like this was unfair.  “How was I supposed to know?”

Eric had managed to push the picture back into place.  “Don’t lie.  Everyone’s got one!”

I was horrified.  “But I don’t!”

“Come off it,” Steve said.  “I’ve got one too”.

This was news to me.  “Does your Brother?”

“Don’t be a dickhead, he has a subscription to Penthouse”.   Obviously, this was something guys do before they can buy Proper Porn.

The conversation eventually became about The Girl In Question, which is how I learnt ‘Melantha P’ had become famous for regularly showing her breasts in 'The Australian Post', a magazine aimed at that weird breed of old men who hang around the TAB, race greyhounds and find something funny about the wacky lo-jinks of 'The Ettamoogah Pub' crowd.

“What’s the ‘P’ stand for?”

“She’s Melantha, the Sex Panther,” Eric said in his best ‘don’t you know anything?’  I failed to see what was supposed to be sexy about the feline metaphor:  It wasn’t like his Wank Book contained ‘Garfield’ strips.  Still, every generation brings a new generation of Batman, and everyone goes crazy over the concept of 'Who Will Play Catwoman?', leading to skin-tight spandex and the sight of a grown woman pretending to purr every two seconds: which, in real life, would be completely retarded, but I guess as a Wank Fantasy must push some Universal Button in straight guys.  Is it the whole unsubtle 'licking cream' metaphor?

Steve complimented Eric on his taste.  “She’s bloody sexy, mate.  I got her record last week”.

I was curious.  “What does she sound like?”

He shrugged.  “I didn't buy it to listen to it.”

That wasn’t enough for Eric, whose face literally was bathed in a beatific glow, or possibly the embarrassed flush of anticipatory wanking.  “You have it?  Can I borrow it?”

“I already leant it to Andy,” Steve said.  “You’ll have to wait.”

Eric frowned.  Andy was far cooler than Eric, and hated Eric’s guts because he said all the girls couldn’t stand him, and he’d end up looking like a loser by association.  As cruel as it sounds, it’s good to know at least one of us actually had a clue about the opposite sex, because girls really loathed Eric.  He had anti-charisma.

Still, this wasn’t enough for Eric, who won Steve over with the lend of a couple of Commodore 64 games, a Bananarama record, and a Toto Coelo pin-up that he had ‘two of’, as long as we could go over and get it from Andy ‘right away’.

One ten minute walk over to Andy’s later and the three of us ran into his mother and sister as they were pulling out of the driveway.

“He’s inside,” his mother said, far more interested in reversing the car than talking to the three of us.  “Let yourself in the back door”.

“Hi Carrie!”  Eric waved at Andy’s older, completely-untouchable sister, who had never acknowledged his existence in any way whatsoever, since he was just a combination of pimples 'n' pubey stubble in grey-zip-up K-Mart shoes, and gave off the desperate stench of A Guy Who Spends A Lot Of Time With His Wank Book.  True to form, she suddenly looked very interested in the contents of her handbag until the car was out of sight.  I was struck once again with wonder at his magical power of repulsion.

As we walked around the back, Eric said Carrie had “Totally smiled at me”.  I often thought he operated on his own reality when it came to women.

“Then you don’t want the record anymore?” I asked.  I didn’t like Andy much either, and this expedition was so uninteresting to me by this stage that even watching ‘Simon Townsend’s Wonder World’ was looking good by comparison.

Steve stopped by the door.  “Just shut up, Eric, and I’ll get the record of him.”

I nodded at this.  “Just don’t say anything, because if he knows you want it he’ll keep it just to screw you over”.

Even Eric saw the logic here, and mimed buttoning his lip.

With our exaggerated mission of Being Quiet, it made perfect sense that we would open the door without being heard by Andy, which is how we discovered him squatted back on his haunches passing beyond the moment of no return, as he proceeded to give a facial to Steve’s copy of Melantha’s debut / only album, ‘Sexual Connexual’, and whilst he wasn't playing the record, his hand was surely moving at 45 rpm.

This was definitely something I did not wish to see, but I did note that at least it was still in the protective plastic sleeve.

Regardless, Steve was still horrified.  “Why the fuck are you doing that?”

I got the sense Andy was more angry at being interrupted, if anything.  “Well, what the fuck else would I be doing with it?”

Having bought and heard the single many years later for nostalgia’s sake, I understand his logic completely.