A Mega Fan Emphasizes the Moral Fiber of Material Girl : Sean Matlock has papered his walls with more than 300 Madonna posters. But the Brea clerk says the singer embodies a lot more important qualities than sex appeal.

Maybe you’ve had this problem: You’re relaxing at home reading Ayn Rand, and just as you’re about to make a crucial realization about objectivism and self-interest, the doorbell rings. It’s Madonna. “Jim, I’m feeling a little frisky,” she says. “Can I stay at your place tonight?”

After you rebuff her, she camps in front of your house. What can you do? Set a hose on her? Call a vixen-control truck? Palm her off on a friend?

Don’t call Sean Matlock. Though he’s a “mega fan” of Madonna’s he’s already thought this scenario through.

“I’m a fan, but I’m different in the respect that I’ve read these stories where people go camp out in front of her house or try calling her. I have too much respect for her to do something like that. I wouldn’t want her camping out in front of my house.”

Matlock, 25, said this to distinguish himself from fans who are nuts, an important point to make when standing in a bedroom where the predominant color scheme is “Madonna flesh.” Some 330 posters and photos adorn the walls and door of his room in a Brea townhouse--”I haven’t done the floor or ceiling yet,” he noted--making for a whole lot of bare navels staring back at a person.

He has 65 Madonna CDs from around the world, a pair of picture discs shaped like her body, heaps of magazines with her on the cover, the $50 metal-jacketed “Sex” book, a tour jacket, a doll, socks, a computer-rigged photo of him kissing her, a life-sized cardboard stand-up and a Madonna-emblazoned pillow case. He’ll often spend $250 on items during an active Madonna month--say when she has a new album or film out.

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Matlock had pets growing up, but never a consuming hobby. “I thought these mega fans were weird. I didn’t see how people could like someone so much. I was surprised to see it happen to me,” he said.

He didn’t care that much about Madonna for most of her career. He liked “Material Girl” and that was about it. Then, “Three years ago a friend called saying, ‘We’re getting Madonna tickets tomorrow (for the 1990 Blond Ambition tour). Will you come help us try to get a good place in line?’ Your place was determined by wristbands that were given out randomly. So I was just an extra body to try to get a good number.

“I decided to buy tickets for myself, and from that point started paying more attention to her. I don’t really know how it happened, but I started really respecting her and liking what she was doing.”

Matlock is a personnel clerk for the city of Brea (he also works weekends in a costume shop), where co-workers initially weren’t very supportive of his hobby.

“They’d hear all the negative publicity, and they’d bad-talk her to me. I think now they’ve learned to respect her just because of what I see in her. Now, they bring me in articles or tell me about magazine covers they’ve seen.

“People had said that she doesn’t have any talent, that she’s a bubble-gum artist. One person in particular was always telling me ‘Madonna’s going to get AIDS.’ She plays these roles where she’s wearing practically nothing, her bustier or something like that, and they take that image and think that she’s promiscuous. Madonna has said herself that she plays these roles. I think probably in her real life she is very different.

“If anyone plays safe, she must,” Matlock insists, citing her activism in AIDS programs. He also says most people aren’t aware of her involvement in rain-forest and animal-protection causes, among others. She was only 10 feet away from him at an AIDS Danceathon in Los Angeles two years ago, where “I was in shock, seeing her so close.”

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Despite all the time he’s spent collecting Madonna trinkets, he says he’s more interested in the person.

“I wonder about her all the time. You hear so much hype, you wonder what’s staged and what’s real. I really try to think what she’s thinking, through reading about her and all, but you never know when it might be distorted.

“A lot of her songs have double meanings, where she’s saying one thing but there’s this hidden agenda. I try to figure what she’s saying. For example, one of the songs on her new album (“Erotica”) I really like is called ‘Thief of Hearts.’ It’s about a girl stealing (the singer’s) lover, her male companion. To me, it was her singing about Warren Beatty and Annette Benning.”

Then there’s the “Sex” book, chock full of photos most personalities would have spent a fortune to keep from being published, instead of making a fortune by doing the opposite. “She’s not afraid to show what she’s got, that’s for sure,” Matlock said. “Some of the photographs of her are just beautiful.”

Again, Matlock thinks she has an agenda.

“I think she’s out to change the way people think, maybe not to make them believe something but to make them be more open, to not put people down because of religion or race or sexuality. She seems to be really open, and she preaches that a lot, that you need to accept people for who they are. The world can get in such a mess over silly things.”

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Though much of her work toys with sexuality and fantasy, Matlock says he doesn’t fantasize about that aspect of her.

“It’s funny, a lot of people assume that. I’m not interested in her that way. I think she’s a real intelligent person. I like her humor.” (As Matlock spoke, I was leafing through “Sex.”) “No, I like her music. I like her talent. But as far as sleeping with her or having a relationship with her, I don’t see myself in that capacity.

“If I could be anybody for a week, I think I would be her assistant, whose name is Melissa. It would be neat to work with someone that close. I’m more of a behind-the-scenes person.”

Matlock would like a career in the arts, but presently he’s going for a degree in human resources management and is working in his government job. He doesn’t think he’s ducking reality through his fascination with Madonna, noting, “Last semester, I carried 11 units and worked a 60-hour week, so it doesn’t take away from anything.”

If anything, he finds that Madonna gets him through the day.

“I put a lot of pressure on myself to be as close to perfect as I can get, to do a really good job in my work. I think she does that a lot too, puts a lot of pressure on herself. She can do a performance and 100 people can tell her how much they liked it and one can tell her he didn’t, and she’ll remember that one person. I think I do that to myself a lot.

“Sometimes, too much pressure can bring me down, say if things didn’t all go right at work, and I’ll come home and put in a Madonna CD and after the song’s over my whole mood is different. It’s totally uplifting to me. That’s what I like about her most, that she can change my mood.”