Not Your Average Joe

the coveted Christmas prezzie

He’s on my radar once more—Aerosmith’s inimitable lead guitarist, known predominantly throughout the rock world as “Mister Joe Perry.” After 15 years of radio silence, I saw his autobiography on a shelf at the bookstore and stopped so abruptly that, had I been on the highway, I’d have caused a multi-vehicle pileup.

My heart did that crazy swoopy thing that hearts do when something too deep to reach is touched.

I dropped a five-ton hint on Ter, and if the book wasn’t beneath the tree on Christmas morning, I’d have gone out on Boxing Day to get it myself. (Sneaky Ter—she fooled my nosy fingers with a copy of Prince Lestat and disguised Rocks as a big square something wrapped in Nutcracker-themed paper. She knows.)

There was a time when I owned an extensive collection of Aerosmith albums. I even persuaded Ter to accompany me to a live show during the Get a Grip tour—the scariest crowd I’ve ever been a part of, but seeing the man himself made the risk worthwhile. He was in his prime at the time, when I believed that a man is at his best in his mid-to-late-30s. Mr. Perry was actually in his early 40s, challenging my parameters with flowing black hair and those long, smooth muscles. And he has aged in typically uncompromising style: he turned 64 on September 10 and still commands a third look.

So, what gives? I no longer have my Aerosmith albums, nor did I hang onto the band bio I devoured in the 1990s. I thought that he and I were done, that the affair was over. Gods are irreplaceable, of course, but even the vampire he sired has lain silent for almost two decades.

At one time, I considered him a strictly hormonal crush. Now I am unsure. Now I suspect a connection on some other level, a memory from another life in another world. It’s possible. It’s actually probable, given what I’m learning about how souls are but satellites of the mothership. I suppose it could be as simple as biological hardwiring, but if the appeal was purely physical, I doubt I’d care to do anything more than mate with him. This is not so. Not purely, anyway.

Rocks has jumped the queue to next in line after I finish my annual holiday wallow in The Night Circus. I am certain that it will be a fascinating read and reveal no common ground between him and me (except that we’re both Virgos). I am unlikely to buy any more Aerosmith albums, and when he played Victoria with his spinoff band a couple of years ago, I wasn’t the least bit tempted to get tickets … though I did get some cool pics of the tour bus.

What mystifies me is the crazy swoopy heart thing caused by someone I have not and will not meet. I may not know him, but I recognize him. Was he a lord in a previous life? Definitely. Was he my lord? I doubt it. All I can say is that he was on my radar before radar existed and he’s come around again.

It’s a deliciously, creatively compelling mystery, one that has borne fruit in the past and may signal something that I, as a writer, have been avoiding for more than a year. If Joe Perry is back, then Marcel de Chauvigny is sure to follow … and his is a story I don’t want to write.