During my sophomore year in college, I lived in a dorm room with porous walls. This enabled me to hear much of what went on next door.

In this instance, that meant nothing scandalous, unless you considered the music of Cole Porter disreputable. For me, it was sheer pleasure to listen to the guys next door thump on the piano over and over, and join in belting out hit songs from “Kiss Me Kate”.

The year was 1948 and this show had proved a smash on Broadway. Porter’s riff on Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew charmed New York audiences, and its clever lyrics and catchy melodies set people to singing the music. My fellow students next door never tired of repeating these songs.

I listened to Porter’s lyrics with a kind of scandalized delight. Better than anyone else, Cole Porter knew how to insinuate sex-charged situations and titillating ideas into his songs. In those days I was still straight-laced enough to have felt some ingrown guilt at enjoying the master’s frequent double entendres.

Listening to such classics as “Always True To You In My Fashion” and “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” could evoke pleasures forbidden by the strict codes of my Catholic upbringing.

But a performance of Kiss Me Kate offers myriad pleasures, some of which have nothing scandalous about them. Elsewhere, Cole Porter is much more direct.

Even then, though, as in the case of “Let’s Misbehave,” and “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love,” there is a kind of adult playfulness that, long ago, gave me new ideas of the grown-up world.

Cole Porter brought a sophistication to music that contrasted with most of what I had heard in my pre-college years. My Aunt Mary, a lady schooled in Victorian manners, used to take me to irreproachable shows such as the operettas of Sigmund Romberg.

The operetta that I remember best was The Student Prince, a show that would now strike most theater goers as dreadfully sentimental. My aunt did not have to worry about Romberg leading me down forbidden pathways.

This column takes its spark from what was billed as “A Cole Porter Cabaret” that I recently attended with some friends. Put on by the American Repertory Theatre, this revue featured five talented actor/singers of the ART troupe, along with a superb pianist who played some thirty songs with panache.

My favorite Porter song came early, much to my satisfaction. For me, “So In Love” shows him a master of the language, as he was, along with a deviser of haunting rhythms. The first bars are pitched lower than most of his songs and that, in my book, gives this song a certain enchantment.

The last part of the song suggests some of the ambivalence Porter found in romantic love. The dark lyrics ─ “So taunt me and hurt me / Deceive me / Desert me .   .   .” express his view that love often has little to do with happiness.

With time, mere sophistication in song lyrics tends to wear off. But not Cole’s. He manages to combine references that, not new to us, retain much of the freshness they had all those decades ago.

Consider, for example, the last song on the ART program. ─ “You’re the Top.”

The bedazzled admirer produces a list of excellent people and things to highlight the excellence of his dear one. Among them are personalities and objects that were familiar and popular in 1934, when Porter wrote this song.

These examples maintain their freshness, thanks in part to Porter’s virtuosic rhymes. The object of his affection is like Mahatma Ghandi, Garbo’s salary, the nose of the great Durante, and, of all things, cellophane.

Then, in what is perhaps a 21st-century addition the performer sings: “I’m the nominee of the G.O.P. or GOP” and quickly adds “but you’re the top.” Would John McCain be flattered to be included in this fashion?

Porter, admittedly, shows himself often cynical about love and human relations. Much of his life was marked by pain, after a disastrous riding accident. Moreover, he was a gay man who felt obliged to conceal his sexuality from the general public.

I regard him as a true poet, a man inspired by language and unsurpassed in his ability to manipulate it creatively in popular song. Having had the opportunity to hear his songs sung on stage in the ART show, rather than to play them hesitantly on my piano, I am currently celebrating his work.

It’s a long way back to the melodies that wafted through the walls of my dorm room. Fortunately, however, there are some continuities in life: I still enjoy hearing over and over the songs that used to enliven my nights and days.

Not everyone admires Cole Porter, I suppose. But after sixty years his words and music continue to get under my skin.

Richard Griffin