In Their Flop Era

Men.

Teddy Pendergrass on the cover of Ebony, December 1979.

Teddy Pendergrass performances are basically the only thing I use YouTube for these days. I’m obsessed. If I could go back to any time in history it would be to the filming of the 2005 comedy-drama Rumor Has It, to the reporting of New York Magazine’s iconic Gossip Girl cover (specifically to hear that one mean Blake Lively quote out loud), and to see Teddy Pendergrass perform live. (I am a woman of simple tastes.) The hips, the drip! Sometimes Teddy Pendergrass performances are the only thing I get onto the internet for at all. I spend hours watching them, finding more: Simply who else was doing it like my man?!

Look at that Ebony cover. The open chest, the beard, the scarf, necklaces layered just so. The grin! My God. It is a disgrace that my coming of age came during the era of Marvel’s pointless brawn. (My friend and role model E. Alex Jung wrote a little about this phenomenon for Vulture in 2017: “The past few years have seen …