I should, before proceeding, mention one person who, although not a role model in the contemporary understanding of the term, was a person of awe-inspiring character.

Some people stand out from the crowd, not in the extravagance or weirdness of their dress or behavior, but in their self-assurance, soberness, quiet dignity, presence of mind, and awareness. Not easily distracted, they pay homage to all eventualities. Such persons know what they are about and what is about them and are compellingly attractive to me.

Stan was such a person, clean-cut, handsome, tanned, tall, well-proportioned and elegant, tout ensemble a presence impressive and unforgettable.

Stan was not a person one might expect to see in Devito’s coffee bar on Orpington High Street on any Saturday. But then his cosmopolitan cool, which it was impossible to imagine ever being ruffled or demeaned, was so attractive and reassuring that there was likely no venue where he would not be welcome or look out of place.

Mr. Devito, the owner of Orpington High Street’s most popular chic coffee bar, chose as an adversary in life a portion of his clientele, namely, us teenagers who gathered there regularly on Saturday mornings. Two circumstances in particular set Mr. Devito’s squat five feet of Italian rotundity into brief outbursts of acrimonious castigation, which sometimes went as far as evicting an offender. As he frequently swept in from the rear of his establishment to reestablish decorum and economic viability, it was in one’s best interest to have a drink in front of you and your shoes upon the floor rather than upon one of Mr. Devito’s seats.

This particular sunny Saturday morning, we were sitting as usual in Mr. Devito’s coffee bar. I had purchased the weekly groceries with all haste, thereby gaining freedom from the box for the weekend. It was the most critical time of the week, when household duties threatened personal liberty most. From Mr.Divitos, it was our custom to continue on to a local pub. For now, we were seated in the busy coffee bar, all wide-eyed and expectant, eager to exploit any potential for fulfilling adolescent yearnings. I must have expressed in the conversation a desire to hitchhike to the south coast because a guy sitting in the next booth, having overheard our conversation, turned around and, addressing me directly, gave the assurance that if I wanted to, I could avail myself of a lift to Hastings that very night by being at Mr. Devito’s at eight o’clock.

It was a personal offer I accepted in a mood of adventure, so that evening, I was waiting as arranged, with my sleeping bag on the seat beside me, a drink in front of me, and my feet on the floor.

The coffee bar was quiet at that hour, with only a murmur of conversation coming from the handful of customers at the back of the long, narrow room. As the calm continued, time began eroding my expectation as I stared past the counter through the open door of the coffee shop and into the empty high street beyond, as lifeless and suburbanly dead as it was on any night. The espresso machine, usually a source of bubbling and hissing cacophony, was silent, as was the jukebox, which would normally be playing nonstop the strident, twangy melodies of late 1950s rock and roll. Johnny and the Hurricanes playing “Red River Rock” was one such popular choice. Its hypnotic melody, which unfailingly stirred our blood and raised our hopes, must have been another bane of Mr. Devito’s life. I might have found relief from the oppressive moment by putting a coin in the machine. I never did that, so the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Duane Eddy, Chuck Berry, Roy Orbison, and The Big Bopper, to name a few, remained silent, their vinyl 45 rpm records remaining stacked and undisturbed in the juke box.

However, before I was forced to resign myself to a negative outcome, Stan walked through the door, bought a drink at the counter, and, to my great surprise, sat down opposite me. I assumed immediately that he knew why I was there. He shoved two pounds into my shirt pocket and then indicated, in a few words, that something was going down. I was inwardly agog, and Hastings was already forgotten as the night’s events began to unfold with sudden, unexpected intrigue. I assumed the role of a faithful lap-dog waiting in the shadows to receive any directives from its master. I was under Stan’s patronage, and that gave me an impunity that all of his scallywag friends observed by carrying on together as if I were not present. I could relax and observe to my heart’s content, and the practical joker, still wearing the same double-breasted blue blazer he had worn earlier in the day, encroached no further upon my sovereign independence under Stan’s protection.

The venue for the night was a house somewhere in London’s vast halo of sprawling suburban ugliness, a home that, in daylight, without any positively identifying information, would be practically impossible to again locate. Although not a party of adolescents, it contained essentially the same basic ingredients: loud music, mixed company, booze, and as much sex as was humanly possible considering the sad and sorry state of the English sexual revolution.

I stored my sleeping bag behind a sofa in the darkened front room. Music was blaring out from an unattended record player on a small table beside the fireplace. Young adults came and went, moving between the house’s rooms, absorbed in the superficialities and stereotypical behavior of partygoers, with nothing but hot air and hype to camouflage their neurotic, nervous dispositions. It was a casual party without any formal reason for being or a recognizable host to set the tone, which, as usual on such occasions, would sooner or later descend into desperate drunken disorderliness. In this case, it was sooner rather than later.

Stan had disappeared. Loud, boisterous sounds were coming from the kitchen, into which, after trying the handle of the locked door a few times, I was allowed access. Scallywags had commandeered the room. They were busy frying up whatever they could find in the refrigerator and the cupboards, which they were rifling with great enthusiasm. Denying an uncooked sausage its rightful place in the sizzling pan upon the stove, Nobs Norris was dangling it from the unzipped fly of his pants and, to his great amusement, giving a raunchy display, thrusting his hips repeatedly forward as if winding up for a limbo.

Back in the front room, I barely had time to find an unobtrusive corner before Stan reappeared and told me in hushed, decisive tones to get my gear. Sensing urgency in his voice, I quickly retrieved my sleeping bag from behind the sofa and began to follow him out of the front door. Just at that moment, a loud commotion erupted behind us, from within the house. It was the unmistakable sound of violence, gripping and fearful in its threatening suddenness. In the brief moment that I looked back, a partygoer had emerged hurriedly from a back room only to be propelled immediately back into the room by a forceful fist landed with deft and bone-splintering precision upon his chin and nose, the bloodied site now of the sudden and unexpected assault upon his dignity. As I followed Stan out into the street, an outburst of vehement protestation could be heard, followed by the unmistakable sounds of breaking furniture and bodies falling violently against walls.

From within a car parked on the other side of the street, a woman began screaming hysterically. One of the scallywags yanked open the back door of the vehicle and, reaching inside, slapped the young woman’s face forcefully, the smack clearly audible amid the ruckus all around. We walked hurriedly away, taking advantage of the semi-darkness to leave the scene before the police arrived.

That night, I slept at Stan’s, and awoke the next morning somewhere just outside London’s commuter belt in the quiet of the Kentish countryside. Before we had arisen, the double-breasted blue blazer arrived. While Stan dressed, the two of them discussed various matters seriously, of which I had neither the inclination nor the presence of mind to take note. It may have been more than a coincidence that the practical joker was there early that morning. But as he refrained from even acknowledging my presence in the room, I tended to dismiss the possibility.

There was, apart from his raffish and obstreperous idolizers, another reason why Stan could not be considered a role model. Those particular friends of his with their indomitable macho pride, quick ribald humor, taunting aggression and exuberance for having a good time at the expense of nerds like myself were one disqualifier but there was another more profound and fundamental; there was no such clearly defined position as ‘role model’ in those days when individuality really was a virtue and any imitator immediately frowned upon and dismissed as a fraud. At the time, talent and charisma were actually required to become a celebrity.

Stan was, by reputation and not vain boasting, a champion of the Amateur Boxing Association. He was also a barber, and his salon was in the village of Otford in Kent, where, as I imagined, he worked whatever hours he desired, trimming local thatch in an atmosphere of convivial, relaxed confidentiality. In all ways, Stan’s life was enviable; he was a stand-up guy, at home in the city or the countryside, independent, self-employed, good-looking, popular, considerate, and together. Beside him, we were insignificant, insecure worms. If we were insipid urbanites, he was universal.

The cut of his jib was the detail of Stan’s attractiveness that conferred upon him personality and cool antecedent to any other virtues he may have had. The condition of his faded blue jeans was the ultimate ‘coup de grâce’ that gave him almost worshipable status. Any rare person in that decade of blossoming rock and roll capable by whatever means of transforming a new pair of Levi Strauss’s original and indestructible unshrunk stiff dark blue denim jeans into a personalized faded hip-hugging statement of enlightened masculinity or femininity possessed a ‘savoir faire’ that extended beyond the realms of fashion consciousness as far as I was concerned. Asexual and a quintessential symbol of potency and style, the faded blue jean was best displayed in the discreet playgrounds of the suave, young, and beautiful.

No more, though. Soon, Tom, Dick, and Harry, and manufacturers, would be getting in on the act. Every imitative male and female backside with the slightest inclination to be fashionable, squeezed with unrelenting determination and resourcefulness into the tightest pre-shrunk factory-faded pair possible, thence to parade with unsurpassable inelegance before one and all. Whatever happened to modesty?

Is it a fact that we outlive fads and fetishes? Grandpa has been wearing blue jeans for some years now, and who knows what is cool currently when it’s not considered gauche to be treading on your turnups, having more pockets in your pants than you know what to do with, displaying part of your underwear, and having your hair as disheveled as the hair on a drowned rat.

That morning, as Stan conversed with the blue blazer, it was the details of his attire and the dignified way he dressed that held my interest, rather than the content of the chat. First, there was the personalized denim, made soft and supple over time with care, with a rise, width, and length meeting the precise demands of haute couture. Followed was a quality cotton shirt tapered to the waist and snug at the wrists, tight but not clinging, with only the top button left undone.

In those days, quality was tangible, and the feel and look of a well-made shirt, a pair of soft English leather boots, or a fine jacket were something to appreciate and cherish. I never failed to halt at specific shop windows while walking in Bristol’s Gloucester Road, Park Street, or The Christmas Steps to admire the choice garments displayed therein, particularly the best of English footwear, which was always inordinately priced and beyond my acquisition. I studied them with insatiable fascination.

Well, no doubt I have totally overdone the adulation of Stan and his blue jeans, but please, how nice it is to indulge in occasional approval, commendation, and praise rather than disapproval, condemnation, and criticism. I am not implying that there is any benefit in being either artificially morbid or bullish, because hopefully we will find that, if ever released from such prejudice, to be a persistent ebullient advocate of positive thinking, or a morose activist angry at an unjust world, requires an unhealthy degree of denial, and frustration the inevitable outcome of such bias. If life is not an accident then perhaps there is such a thing as ‘reality’, in which case would it not be propitious to see that for good or bad, and a belief that the truth is liberating the only really positive incentive to go forth with valor to discover the real value of human life, and whether the length of one’s jeans figured at all in that equation.