It Takes All Makes and Models…

Life lessons from Starsky and Hutch.

Originally published in SHareCon 2008 zine.

When I was a young teenager, watching Starsky & Hutch in first run, I desperately wanted to be Starsky. Carefree and harmlessly (even delightfully) eccentric, possessing a jaunty walk and a ready smile, Starsky was the living embodiment of the “new” peanut-butter-&-jelly-burrito hero. Neither a brooding loner cowboy coming in from the dusty plains, nor a fervent leader of epic slave rebellions, Starsky was the epitome of the wise-cracking champion: a trickster, much like Bugs Bunny made human, and all the more admirable for retaining a whiff of wet paint fresh from the cartoonist’s brush. My hero.

In contrast, the only wetness that clung to the all-too-real Hutch was his feet of clay and sopping forehead. Despite his matted bangs, Kenneth Hutchinson was and remains, thanks to the staying power of DVD, a long, lean, luscious icon of white gold. That lovely exterior clothed a soul capable of great feats of heroism, stoicism . . . and even the occasional dash of cruelty. Let’s face it—Hutch is moody and tetchy. Eccentric, too. Like and unlike his partner, Hutch’s weirdo factor was partly a product of his times, but with more an aura of distraction, impermeability even. Addressing his plants or piling the back seat of his crappy LTD high with flea-market treasures felt natural enough, but even to my youthful eye the womanizing felt forced, more project than passion. Despite my early suspicions about Hutch’s sexuality, or perhaps because of it, I made out with my first boy while watching S&H. And let me tell you, I was at my most Walter Mitty-esque, imagining I was Starsky fooling around with Hutch while the Star Trek fanboy copping a feel was, no doubt, showering me with his best Captain Kirk imitation.

Besides inspiring my budding love life, Starsky and Hutch became my living example of Damon and Pythias, the friends so suffused with love that they were willing to die for the other. If you are unfamiliar with these two ancient gentlemen of Syracuse, look them up—their tale has all the earmarks of a great fan fiction. You’ll like their story. But the admirable friends of Syracuse were dust and bones, whereas our boys were prime beefcake, so it was from Starsky and Hutch that I learned about heroic friendship . . . and to yearn for it not only in my head, but in my life for true. How better, my secret heart murmured, to honor these two heroes who embodied the one ideal I would still honor thirty years later, than to work to keep their cult alive?

Now, when I mention the word cult in reference to S&H, I’m pleased to find it performing double duty. That Starsky & Hutch is a bona fide cultural phenomenon with all attendant rights and privileges (having its own convention is a prime example of cult status) warms my heart. What warms my spirit more is to imagine the status our boys could have risen to in the ancient world, where it is not difficult to imagine the lovers rising to the status of divine heroes, worthy of libation and devotion. Certainly, in a strange echo of the far-distant past, the Torino on my shelf and the posters on my wall are reminiscent of mindful items found on the household alters of Pompey. Starsky and Hutch hold a deep and abiding place because they became (in my efferent heart) the first gay couple I knew, and I honored them for their bravery and abiding devotion.

My course set, I “dedicated” myself to the alter of fandom, and began my metamorphosis into a proper fannish acolyte. Conventions wouldn’t appear on the fannish horizon for the better part of a decade, but audio cassette recordings of episodes, iconographic drawings lovingly tinted with my mother’s makeup, photos cut from Tiger Beat, and the odd scrap of gossip from Rona Barrett’s magazine would sustain me through the dry years. Once I found fan conventions, it wasn’t long before slash zines found me. Ah! I couldn’t have been happier or more self satisfied with that copy of Code 7 in my hands: Many others saw my guys the same way I saw them! I wasn’t alone in my beliefs any longer.

What followed was natural enough at the time: all-SH gatherings, writing my first fan story and drawing my first illustration, then getting them published. I even had my tenure as the librarian for the S&H Lending Library. I’ll never forget the Christmas that I accidentally tucked a copy of the Lending Library letter into my sister-in-law’s Christmas card! The mix-up went over well, and the missive was generic enough (read—no mention of throbbingly erect pee-pees) that my chops weren’t busted too badly. And then there was the time I left my RenFaire job early to attend an SH:101 mini-con, only to come back and be confronted by men in chain-mail loin cloths wanting to hear about the drinking and smoking going on at my weekend of Starsky & Hutch debauchery. Imagine their disappointment when I told them there was no drinking and smoking, only a skit wherein one fan with a long pony-tail whipped it around and pretended to be a helicopter. Imagine my surprise when I found myself confessing to this pseudo-Viking horde my belief that Starsky and Hutch were early role models of a positive gay relationship on network television—and getting solemn nods of approval and agreement all around.

Ten years ago I had a conversation with myself that went something like this:

Kath: “What would be the big deal if you came clean with the so-called mundane folk around you regarding your S&H fetish?”

Self: “Do you have to use the word fetish? Are you trying to get us fired?”

Kath: “You’re in college, working nights at a gas station to pay tuition. If they fire you, just leave it off your curriculum vitae, babe.”

Self: “You can do that???”

Kath: “Yupperoo.”

So it was, with a slightly elevated heart rate, that I awaited my moment. When a loud eccentric customer who would have set our Huggy’s eyes to rolling exited the shop, I turned to the station manager and said laconically, “In the words of Detective Hutchinson from Starsky & Hutch, ‘it takes all makes and models to fill this four-lane highway we call life.’ ” The manager stopped, thought, and then gave a blink of comprehension. “Candy-apple red Torino, white stripe, 1970s—right?” I nodded agreement. “Car and guns,” he said enthusiastically. “Chests and buns,” I answered with equal verve. “Pretty good, Kath. You got any episodes I could borrow?”

And thus started my career as an “out” fan.

I learned a lot from our guys over the years, but self-knowledge is the hardest acquired. Since my teens I’ve yearned to be Starsky, and I’ve always felt a bit of disappointment that I wasn’t. You see, I am Hutch. It’s just taken me a long time to grow up enough to feel comfortable being tall, blonde, and tetchy. But you know what? Hutch is a pretty groovy place to live, babe. And life has shown me again and again that it really does take all makes and models. . .

. . to fill this four-lane

highway we call life. “