“Are you warm, are you real, Mona Lisa?  His voice was.  Warm and real.  They thought I was crazy for it was an old record, and only the “a la mode”, the very most latest and greatest singer was worthy of pop-stardom and buying their music, and they must be loud, full of acoustic guitar, and lewd.  But this was my rebellion, to love the old music, the by-gone singer.  And that’s how he came to be a masterpiece to me.  I sat on the chocolate brown, shag-carpet floor with these huge, heavy headphones covering my ears, in a world by myself, listening to him on dad’s high-fidelity—hi-fi we called it in the vernacular of the time—record player with stereo sound and large bass woofers and multiple medium and small tweeters.  Funny how “tweeters” would make no sense at all to the next generations who “tweet” with their cellular devices now and whose tyrannical president dictates by “tweet”.  Woofers and tweeters and walnut-wood encased massive speakers were all part of dad’s hi-fi, imported from Japan on the USS Enterprise by my uncle who was serving in the Navy and who had gotten all the hi-fi equipment, including a reel-to-reel tape player, inexpensively for my dad.  Imported from Japan.  Perhaps it was shipped by a different slow boat, but I always imagined it all boxed-up on the navy bunk next to my uncle on that famous ship named after Star Trek.

I bought this LP (long-playing) record at the college bookstore under ridicule from my not-so-best best friend while we were at a high school math competition.  I was not a masterpiece mathmetician, only better-than-average, but I was on the team and I went to the competition, did my best, and I don’t think I dragged the team too far down.  After the competition we got to roam the campus without our teacher chaperoning us, and my friend and I went to the college bookstore where there were tons of LP’s on sale.  It was an LP one generation old, but it was new, cellophane wrapped and all.  It was only my second LP.  I had heard him only once or twice before on the oldies’ radio station which could only be received on FM via late night tuning; the signal was too far away during the day.  Or, when visiting relatives in the big city up north, mom and dad would tune into that radio station on the car radio, and perhaps that’s when I first heard him.

My mom caught me singing to the LP one time, and she smiled down at me while I was away in another world with those headphones on, listening to his masterpiece voice.  Later, mom said I sounded just like him.  It was her teenage era, she said. 

“Do you smile to tempt a lover, Mona Lisa?”  Yes, and do you sing to tempt me, a lover, Mr. Masterpiece?  Those pillow-soft lips, singing to tempt a lover.  His smooth-skin, slicked-back-hair portrait adorned the LP’s cover.  And thus was my hidden gay heart broken.  Then came summer, and my mood lightened.  Just the next song on the LP, full of soda, and pretzels, and beer at the drive-in movie theatre.  What a masterpiece voice in a magical mystery world of music.