Title: Off the Record

Author: Samara McDowell

In: Sport 32: Summer 2004

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, December 2004

Part of: Sport

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Sport 32: Summer 2004

Groupies

page 112

Groupies

Now, classical and/or jazz and/or Latin groupies are not in the same order as rock groupies, but even they will leave you with a new, mildly nauseated disrespect for your fellow woman. And they are disproportionately women, groupies: partly because the musicians are so disproportionately men, and a longing for what you do not have, and imagining you may get some of it by sleeping with it, is a misconception as old as art itself.

—So no, they aren't ripping all their clothes off when they catch your eye across the room, or throwing their skimpy musky panties on stage—onto the organ, perhaps; into the rhythm section; into the horn section (you know: the one with the instruments that get blown). —Okay, so they're not doing that. Okay. —They just look, with their pupils as round and dark and dilated as mouths; with their eyes and lips as glossy and glistening as labia. Oh and they giggle. The most spirited of them will venture opinions—even dissenting opinions, which they will then defend, spiritedly but never for too long—and then they all toss their hair around. I mean, you know. I mean, really.

Secretly I think I'd prefer the rock groupies, the naked girls with the coke and (appropriately enough) the Brazilians; the girls with real attitude, who are at least very, very honest about what they're doing. Classical and jazz groupies? —God only knows what they hope to get out of what they do, as even a rigorous fuck doesn't seem to be all or simply the answer. Merely a titillating, perhaps literal, brush up against the talent? For all the nice middle-class young women? —Maybe it's that. —And, to be fair, for all of us there is some confusion over how one tells the dancer from the dance.

Except for the musicians themselves, interestingly enough. They know, clearly, they're not it, they're not the music. Which is maybe how else they differ from rock musicians, even leaving aside the cocaine and the Brazilian waxes.