“Girls are nothin’ to get shook up about,” Gilbert once told the Beav. “They’re something that just happens, like shaving and cavities.”

Unfortunately, Gilbert’s idea of a girl was probably someone like that little poochface who reads the news on Kids’ Beat. This story is about real women— that’s right, girls whose contents have settled during shferi&nt.

Real women likeilfdonna, the Detroitborn, Gay Paree-bred singing sensation who went from donut-whomper to fashion doyenne seemingly overnight. She has at least seven qualities in common with Philadelphia Cream Cheese & Peaches, three of which I can’t even mention or America’s Only will never see the inside of a convenience store again.

Let me tell you a few things about people from Detroit. If you ask them where in Michigan they’re originally from, they’ll hold up their hand, point at the base of their thumb, and say “here” and expect you to know what the hell they’re talking about.

This is the Motor City, where it’s still a quaint custom for little nine-year-old kids to ride mopeds full speed on the sidewalk. The only city in the continental United States where Fencl-Tufo Chevy Tigers Keychain Night is considered a legal holiday.

As befitting the rise of a sex goddess, wild speculation about her private life has led to astounding myths concerning everything from the circumstances of her very birth to a barely-restrained sexual prowess usually reserved for small, not particularly intelligent fur-bearing rodents.

Is she a myth? A menace? Total bloato hype? Or perhaps, like Cheech and Chong, so harmless, she’s dangerous?

Let’s take the Chrissie Hynde black lace kid glovelets off and find out!

MYTH #1: She wasn’t born, she was hatched.

Madonna Louise Ciccone made her singing debut in the key of WAAAAH! on AugufjMgi||J959 in is§tnicfcRochester, M'claHBlwst a hop Jikip and a dump away from this magazine’s very offices. It is not recorded what dance step she was rehearsing at the time, but knowing her, she was probably squirming around on her back like she’d just received a double dose of injectable pig wormer.

“Shee-it!" said the attending physician. “Will ya lookit the size of that mole under her snout? Looks like some little homesteaders tried to build a sod hogan on her lip!”

“Mm...mmm...mole?" Mrs. C. muttered, delirious with pain killers and hospital corners. “Ah...someday men will call it her beauty mark!” Mom cried out before fading into an exhausted slumber.

“She’s out again, doctor,” noted the head nurse. “Haw haw haw, wait’ll she finds out it’s a boy!” laughed the doc.

MYTH #2: She was born/ hatched a biological male.

The most shocking of the many rumors whispered about Madonna is that she began life as a little boy! I realize that believing such a bucket of hormone bait could be the result of weenie hacko and massive plastic surgery is on a par with imagining the world’s sharpest knives working at rotary speed like the amazing Mouli, but stranger things have happened. I mean, if somebody told you that disco music would be dragged back to the top of the charts in the mid-’80s by an ex-punk band drummer named after Jesus’s old lady and Italian to boot, would you have bought it?

Furthermore, Mr. Wise Guy, if it’s not true, then what are we to make of the tweetybird’s own statement that, “From the start...I was a...guy”? It’s right there plain as day in her biography, Lucky Star, not to mention this comment from video producer Ed Steinberg: “Madonna is incredibly...like...Michael Jackson.” The prosecution rests.

MYTH #3: She’s been sex>crazed since infancy.

Examining Madonna’s early childhood turns up several factors that could indicate a pre-adolescent hump-urge whammy.

First and foremost, she lost her mother at the crucial age of six. Some say it was cancer, others say she finally died from the sheer mortification of being responsible for her daughter’s ridiculous first name.

A scant two years later, Papa Ciccone married the family maid, undoubtedly to avoid scandal (featuring Patty Smyth). We can only guess what effect this had on an impressionable eight-year-old who didn’t even know what scant means.

A last-ditch attempt at ramming a desperation Catholic up-bringing down her soon-to-be-famous throat didn’t help. From the start, she just loved being “with” her male classmates. “I felt a lot of...them,” she has since admitted, and who’s counting anyway?

MYTH #4: Her high school ballet teacher involved her in the misuse of controlled substances.

Legally speaking, we wouldn’t touch this subject with a 10-foot Slurpee. But she has stated, “He was constantly putting...stuff...in my ear.” If that’s not the misuse of a controlled substance, what is?

MYTH #5: Driven by her insatiable need for sex, she moved to New York City to enlarge her fooling-around territory.

Madonna’s move to New York in 1978 is still legendary. She took up residence in a dilapidated apartment building down the street from Dunkin’ Donuts, where she was allegedly employed as a Bavarian Cream Taster.(Myth #51/2).

Her sleazy conquests reportedly included such now-famous-then-slime names as Robert Christgau, Mario Cuomo, Andy Warhol, Edouard Dauphin, Jim Farber (or was it Feldman?), the New York Islanders and Lou O’Neill, Jr.

“All I wanted to do,” she says now, “was make...all the Lower East Side.” MYTH #6: She practiced bizarre

sexual perversions, including “dates” with a school of blowfish and a particularly well-endowed squid.

“Let me...experience...a sucker,” she’s said to have begged the aquarium attendant.

MYTH #7: She slept her way to the top.

While auditioning for an “avant garde” play, she came to the attention of writer/director Stephen Jon Lewicki, who recalls: “From the moment I met her, I knew she was...a...role [sic].’’ Roll in the hay is what he means. She was so aggressive, she even made house calls— “She delivers,’’ he now insists.

Further evidence was gleaned from Adam “Point Me At The’’ Alter, whose management team had a hand in (yuk yuk) guiding Madonna’s young career:

“Madonna is very...bad,” Alter says. “We tried to get her...bothered...all day...she was turned off. It’s funny...now she’s doing all the things we wanted her to do four years ago.” And in public, no less.

“Get her in the right circumstances,” he winked, “...and she’ll... perform...the big race.” The big race? C’mon, Adam, why don’t you just say what you really mean?

Even today, her biographer, Michael McKenzie, admits “It is noteworthy that Madonna’s fabulous success was achieved without...musical... talents.”

Adds Alter wistfully, “Madonna...is...nothing. N-0-T-H-l-N-G...it’s sad but true.”

MYTH #8: She gladly traded sexual favors with absolutely anyone she thought could help her career.

“Everybody wanted a piece of Madonna,” recalls Adam Alter bitterly.

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 33

Superscout Michael Rosenblatt picks up the narrative: ’’[Producer] Mark Kamins had told me that there was this incredibly attractive female singer that I should...offer...to...the guys from Wham!” How low can you go-go?

Of his initial encounter with her, Kamins offered dreamily: “When I first met Madonna...I could feel it...l learned so much.” I bet you did, dirtbag!

MYTH #9: Rosenblatt received more favors than anyone because he was in a position to deliver the recording contract she was cruising for.

“Madonna is great,” snickers Rosie. “She will do anything to be a star ...and...I can...get laid a lot.” Madonna herself offers no defense other than a feeble, “I love...the masses.”

MYTH #10: Perhaps the most spiteful piece of gossip, and my own personal favorite, is that she sexually assaulted Rosenblatt with a power rake in front of several startled guests at a lawn party she mistook for a fund-raising “affair.”

Blatt implies this sordid tale is more fact than fiction. “Madonna...forced me. She was so warm and...so much fun...that everybody...gave us ...money.” He was so appalled by her table manners that to this day, he insists, “I sort of hate...Madonna.”

☆ ☆

As I was wrapping up this lurid tale of lust ’n’ greed, I began to hear still more rumors— insidious talk that many of the quotes here attributed to Madonna’s friends and business associates were somewhat fudged, which is secret journalistic lingo for taking words completely out of context and putting lots of dots in between.

Being an absolutely secret journalist myself, I could give a whiz. However, there’s this faraway voice on the telephone who will, for punishment, make me listen to every single word the mailroom said about my last story. Seeing as how I’d rather submit to big, rusty railroad spikes being pounded into all my bodily orifices or even death by Jane Fonda movies, I figgered I’d have to try and scare some real verbal Tater Tots outta her or else.

Although Madonna was busy bigtime preparing her wardrobe for distemper vaccinations, I was granted five whole minutes of her valuable time which she coulda spent chasing patrolboys through the streets of New York or rotating on fire hydrants or God knows what kind of pansexual shenanigans.

Being an advocate of the John Mendelssohn school of celebrity inquisition, I decided to put her off guard by wearing a Lisa Robinson mask and telling her I was from a fictitious rock magazine called Rock Video Idols.

It worked. As the luckiest star lounged about in her colorful-kitchen-towel-assortment striped shirt worn long like a dress and clinched at the waist by a stupid wide belt straight out of the Creedence Clearwater Collection from which a bizarre assortment of jewelry picked up at a going-out-of-farming sale dangled, and her vaguely military-cut hat covered with assorted medals that made me wonder whether I should salute or ask her if there are any good seats left in the mezzanine, I peppered her with brilliant queries.

Me As Lisa: “What do you have to say about the charges you screwed your way to the top, you stupid slut?”

Madonna: “I’m a...sexual person.”

M.A.L.: '“Tell me, just how important is the mindless urge to procreate to you?”

M.: “...just another thing to do.”

M.A.L.: “Oh, how very blase, Renee.”

M.: “...there has to be...something.”

M.A.L.: “Jesus K. Rist, woman! Anything that don’t crawl off the plate!”

M.: “...my life...it’s...not in control.”

M.A.L.: “You’re telling me! Now put on your thinking cap and tell me, did it ever occur to you that maybe you’re just plain easy?”

M.: “...I’m...simple...”

M.A.L.: “Not to mention in heat! You’re nothin’ but a lousy—”

M.: “...go...a...way...now...”