Hands off, Jon . . or not. . .

I'm not used to having my most cherished fantasies come true. As always, there's a story behind this-all.

At some point in my Mad Men worship, I decided I wanted a t-shirt with Don Draper on it. A reasonable request, I thought.

I found what was touted as the Official Merchandise Site for all that stuff, an outfit called Gold Label. Don't be fooled, this should be called Chintz Label. I ordered a "fitted" women's t-shirt which was called "moderately loose". In a size Large, because I didn't want to order an X-Large. I always see that as Size Elephant.

After paying $40 and waiting a few weeks, I got my t shirt. The package seemed awfully thin, as if there wasn't anything in there. I took it out. It would have fit a slim 10-year-old. I should have known from the picture, which was so skinny on the bottom it would never accomodate the most modest female
hips.

It smelled bad, like a synthetic which had been sweated into, real Star Trek stuff. It brought to mind the petroleum-based crimplene of the '70s. The logo was that smooth, paintlike, shiny layer that cracks in the wash.

To their credit, when I complained about it, the company sent a refund and didn't even ask for the shirt back. I'm glad, because they probably would have sent it back out there.

SOOOOOO. . . (Is anyone interested in this? I thought so), I went to Plan B and looked on eBay. Like Alice's Restaurant, in nearly every case, you can get anything you want.

For $20, a black tee, size Large, brand Gilden. It came promptly, and did not disappoint. It was made of real cotton, topstitched shoulders, and the only fit problem was the length, so I had it altered to bring up the hem 4". I got it from tees-aplenty. Remember that name, folks.

But the most gratifying thing about my gorgeous new shirt is the placement of Don Draper's hands. They are squarely over my breasts, and in pinch position.

I can dream, can't I?

Hey, if you're not cool enough to know what Mad Men is, why are you reading this?

Let us now praise famous men. Famous men like Jon Hamm. I don't care if he has a silly name. Where has he been all my life?

Jon Hamm is one of those actors who was sleeping in a pupa for 10 years before finding the role that not only defines him, but a whole era. The show's executive producer Matt Weiner has been quoted as saying, "Mad Men IS Jon Hamm."

Watching the show is like the Time Tunnel or something. I step across the thresshold into the wonderful land of Ahhhhhhhs. Period details don't just leap out at me, they jab me: the "Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy" TV campaign jingle I hadn't heard since I was five; the "High Flight" TV signoff while Pete Campbell was screwing an anonymous sweet patootie (with her elderly mother on the other side of a folding door); Don Draper's little kids running around with dry cleaning bags over their heads.

I could go into all the machinations and intrigues of the advertising agency Sterling Cooper, but let's not, shall we? Recently they canned art director Sal Romano, my next-to-Don favorite, maybe for being gay or too nice or something. Meantime, Don trudges on. At the end of the third season, his company has disintegrated, his wife has run off with some ugly-looking Senator whom she doesn't love, and he has run out of Lucky Strikes for the third time today.

There is a weirdness about Mad Men (i. e. Robert Morse as the eccentric company Zen master, Bertram Cooper: where have we seen him before? He starred in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying in the early '60s, perfect period timing, not to mention Mad Men irony), a sense that, in spite of all the deja vu, we've never quite covered this territory before. A man can get his foot run over by a John Deere tractor during a drunken office party (causing the cynical Roger Sterling to quip, "It's like Iwo Jima out there"). A thick-headed husband can get brained with a vase. But most of all. . . most of all, we can spend some quality time with Don.

Don has many faces, the hardened masked face of the office, the creased-brow expression during the numerous boyhood flashbacks (the only part of the show I really detest), the softer face when he is with his kids (and in spite of being emotionally crippled, he really does love his kids), the roughed-up, carnivorous, rrrrrrrrArrrrrrw! face when he's in bed with some woman (a different woman every week). Yes, in bed he's a whole 'nother guy. Every once in a while, he even screws his wife. God, what a body, and he has that good man-smell that somehow mysteriously comes across on the screen. (Men either smell good - George Clooney, Harrison Ford - or they don't - Matthew McConnaghey, Brad Pitt). Just enough hair, and a build that is devastating but somehow doesn't call attention to itself.

So what would it be like to have sex with Don Draper? Has he read the Kinsey Report? (I don't mean that loser guy in the office.) Does he know what a clitoris is? Does he, "you know"? Do "everything", as Elaine used to say on Seinfeld? They can't show too much, of course. But it's implied. "I might scream," one of his conquests, a naive young school teacher, gasps. "Don't," Don replies. Another time, well, he ties someone up, but she deserves it because she's such a slut.

And what is Jon Hamm reallyreally like? The photos I see show a goofier person, his smile a little too broad. A person who can't quite believe his good fortune at being famous, at having a really juicy and challenging part at last (and according to legend, he spent a whole decade as a waiter). I think he's probably pretty hyper. But seems to have one steady girlfriend, un-Draperlike. He gave a long interview for the Advocate, and for a moment I was heartbroken, afraid it was maybe Sal he loved all along. But then they mentioned the girl friend, and everything was all right again.

Maybe. (But who is she?? I'll scratch her eyes out!)

The thing about Jon Hamm is that he is a somewhat more rugged version of Anthony Perkins in his youth. Perkins had a sort of supernatural beauty before age and AIDS withered him up into an old walnut. Hamm naturally has a sort of GQ look, that "I was born to wear a tux" aura that is so rare in men. Cary Grant had it, but I've never felt any sort of attraction to him (in spite of the fact that he was probably also a good-smelling man, if gay).

So how does JH smell? A hint of warm sandalwood; some aftershave remeniscent of Old Spice; a neutral deodorant we can't name; a soupcon of bourbon, but maybe from yesterday; Lucky Strikes, not the smoke but the unburned shreds of tobacco with its golden, molasses-y scent; fine quality wool; leather jacket worn earlier today; clean shirt, with the man-smell just barely sifting through.

Sheer torture.