No. 697 – Theme from Shaft

Performer: Issac Hayes

Songwriter: Issac Hayes

Original Release: Shaft

Year: 1971

Definitive Version: None

I’ve known this song since it came out, so it’s probably one of maybe a dozen of songs on this list from when I lived in my family’s first house, on Norway Drive.

Until I was two, Dad, Mom and I lived in a four-unit, two-story brick townhouse in Upper Arlington. We then moved just outside UA into Columbus proper, where we lived until I was 7. Jin and Scott were born in that house.

And I remember it well. It was a three-bedroom ranch with a formal (though not too large) living room, a dining room and a kitchen. The basement was cinder block, although Dad finished one part of it—even building a desk. It was the TV romper room if you will. In the laundry room, he built a gigantic train layout.

But the gigantic cabinet stereo was in the living room, along the wall next to the front door, and it was on this stereo that I heard the Theme from Shaft for the first time. Dad bought the 45, I guess, because he liked the waka-waka guitar, so that’s how I know it.

I don’t remember whether the following story occurred after this song came out, but it seems like the appropriate song to tell it, so here goes: I had my first encounter with sex when we lived at Norway Drive. It wasn’t my first sexual experience per se, but, in hindsight, it was the first time that I was awakened to the possibility that there was something more going on with our bodies than meets the child’s eye.

One night, my parents were having a party. I don’t remember any details, because typically when my parents had other adults over, I had to make myself scarce—in-the-bedroom, don’t-come-out-unless-you’re-dying scarce. I had plenty to occupy myself, so it wasn’t a big deal, and I’d get to stay up just a little later than normal on those nights.

On this night, Mom was preparing something in the kitchen, and I seem to recall that at least one other couple was already there, and, as usual, everyone was in the kitchen. Mom or Dad—I can’t remember who—asked me to take plates or napkins or something into the living room and set it on the coffee table, which at this time, was under the huge plate-glass front window that looked over the Cranbrook creek and the vast palatial estate that was our—and our neighbors’—unbroken front yards.

I set the stuff down and I noticed something intriguing sitting on the coffee table. It was a magazine that had a picture of a woman who didn’t appear to have very many clothes on. The word at the top—Playboy—meant nothing to me.

I opened it to the centerfold section but not the centerfold itself, which I since learned is an almost automatic place where the magazine opens. On the page there was a full-color two-thirds-page picture of a topless brunette woman standing in front of a window. (This was before Playboy showed anything uncovered below the waist.)

And I remember to this day the thought that ran through my head: Isn’t she afraid someone might see her without any clothes on?

That’s right. It wasn’t ohmigod, boobies! It was concern for this unnamed woman that someone might see her naked through the window she was standing by. I didn’t comprehend that the person who took the picture obviously was seeing her naked—not to mention a host of others in the room I had no way of knowing about when I was a kid—let alone, well, me.

And as I was contemplating this situation, someone—I think Mom—came into the room with another plate. Although I didn’t grasp why, I was keenly aware that I was seeing something I wasn’t supposed to, and I shut the magazine abruptly and left the room.

I don’t recall that anyone said anything to me about it at the time, but I also don’t recall ever seeing another Playboy sitting out in the open. No, if I wanted to look through Playboy—and before long, I definitely did—I had to search under Dad’s side of the bed. As I became a, shall we say, more self-aware young male, I was thankful that Dad wasn’t too careful about his hiding spots.