How George Carlin Helped Me, uh well, Get Laid at MSU

Roughly What I Looked Like in 1974

"Yeah, there are 400,000 words in the English language and there are 7 of them that you can't say on television. What a ratio that is! 399,993 to 7. They must really be bad. They'd have to be outrageous to be separated from a group that large.

All of you over here, you 7, baaad words!

That's what they told us they were, remember? "That's a bad word!" No bad words, bad thoughts, bad intentions, and words.

You know the 7, don't you, that you can't say on television?

"Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits."

Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that'll infect your soul, curve your spine, and keep the country from winning the war."

The Seven Dirty Words, George Carlin

In October 1974 George Carlin played Michigan State as one of the homecoming activities. My memory pegs the date as October 19 or so. Mid-October is really the most enjoyable time to walk MSU campus.  

October weather is warm enough that a light jacket is all you need at night and a long-sleeve shirt is fine during the day. October dayare sunny days. The critical thing about the tenth month in East Lansing is that hundreds of tree varieties' are turning color. Those colors include orange and yellow, deep purple and bright red and a whole color wheel of other shades.

In mid-October midterms were still a week to a couple of weeks away. Back then the drinking age was 18 so with no pressure from exams you could hit the bars. Weed was plentiful so you could smoke bowl after bowl. Back then it was an age of golden twilights and thoughts shaded in amber.

On a whim, or maybe out of my lonely desperation, I asked my coworkers from Kurly Kustard in Ocean City, Anne and Larry, and Anne's cousin Sarah, to come out for a visit. To my surprise they said yes. Ah the hubris of youth. On a whim they drove across Pennsylvania and Ohio via the turnpikes.

My roomie Nate the Great was absent over the weekend. So were the two guys who lived next to me. Everybody who was leaving said, "Go ahead and use the room," and gave me their keys. In 1974 we were young, we had a joy of life, but we didn't have a dime. So, the open rooms saved a motel bill.

Anne and I took my room and Larry and Sarah my neighbor Don's room. All I remember are a few bits and pieces of what we did that weekend. There is a clear memory of a walk along the Red Cedar looking at the ducks. Anne's just then beginning here career as a birder had her Audubon book fall apart. The book was old and back in those days the glue holding the pages in paperbacks didn't last very long, a few years at most. Not solidly bound to the volume, the pages of the field guide, the pages flew away. Rushing with adrenaline we chased wet pages of that birder's field guide down the river bank.

Back then, all those years ago, Sarah shared an apartment with Anne in East Lansdowne. If memory serves me well, Larry had a passing interest in Sarah, but I might be wrong about that fact. If you haven't figured it out from my prior writings, I clearly had a thing for Anne. As for her, well she did not have as strong an interest in me. I don't think she knew what I was or what to do with me. 

As a first term freshman I did not realize what a big deal homecoming was. MSU had 40,300 students at the time and had been churning a quarter of that number out each year for at least 15 years. Yeah, that is a shit ton of alumni and they all wanted to return to campus and relive their glory days. They would wear earlier iterations of the school colors with images of earlier versions of the school mascot. Homecoming was huge and things happened like concerts and marching bands and parades.

In a joint decision we all decided we would spend Saturday evening at a concert. This required preparation. As I recall, Sarah was strait-laced. As a result, Anne and I had to lose her and Larry for a few minutes, we had a need. The short time we were apart let us blow a joint or three to prepare for George Carlin. Carlin performed at the MSU Auditorium. He competed with a Dave Loggins concert on campus. Loggins was a one-hit wonder, but "Please Come to Boston" is still something I hum when it comes on the radio.  

My thought is that Sarah had only seen Carlin doing his hippy dippy weather guy thing on Carson. When we all agreed we would go see Carlin I assumed she would be ready for his more mature schtick. She wasn't. She really wasn’t.

The four of us were sitting in the cheap seats up in the balcony at the MSU Auditorium. Two of us were stoned and simply saying, "Hello," would send us into fits of giggles. We would be liquid with laughter once Carlin got started.

Carlin almost immediately started riffing on what would happen if all the couches gave up every silent fart that had passed into them. Anne and I laughed just riotously.  Sarah offered a few polite guffaws and Larry squirmed. My assumption is that the squirm came because Larry:

·       a. Knew Anne and I were stoned and he wished he was because this would be so much better, and

·       b. Wanted to laugh but didn't want to offend Sarah and hurt his chances for the evening.   

Things spiraled from there. By the time Carlin got to the part about how fucking was so nice that fuck you should be our greeting in lieu of hello I was about to pee myself. Sarah at that point had her jaw clenched closed and Larry was squirming.  On the other hand, Anne and I laughed riotously at both Carlin and the Sarah/Larry situation. 

When it was over, we headed back to the dorm. If my memory serves me well, and it may not be because I was indeed quite high, Sarah was on a tirade about blue comics, Larry had his head hung down and Anne and I couldn't look at each other without giggling. 

Sensing she didn't want to argue about the merits of blue comics I grabbed Anne and we ducked into my room. Me, I think that it was because of the whole fuck you riff that Anne engaged me in forenesia (mercy fucking) that night. Forever the Grateful Dead's "Wake of the Flood" will bring a sly smile to my face. Couldn't lose my virginity without music. 

Thanks to George Carlin I lost my virginity. George where ever you are, whatever space your molecules now occupy, I thank you for that.

There is a coda to this story. I will always remember the call from a hysterical Anne telling me that Larry was being taken to jail in Ohio for speeding. Yeah, that was a thing in Ohio back in those days. The Ohio State Troopers would pull you over and shake you down for whatever cash they could wring out of you. Apparently the smokies got enough dinero that the trio's trip home was only slightly delayed.