“Absolutely not”, he said, shooting me down. I found myself pleading. “But I REALLY want to go,” I said, with that whiney intonation reserved for irritating/ desperate people, one I’m sure I employed as a teenager. My husband gave me the stern look.“ You will be twice as old as everyone else! And they will be on drugs!”
I want to go to a Rave, many, many years after my sell-by date.
I love to dance, and I can’t find anyplace to do it other than my living room. Which is fine, occasionally the neighbors will remark on it as my windows are always open, and spontaneous dance parties are the norm here. The only other place I have found to dance is the (only) bar near our house. I don’t know how to describe this place other than there must be a time-rifting porthole in one of the bathrooms, allowing all people from the 80’s to emerge totally in character. Think huge hair, leapord-skin pants, etc. You might find Bon Jovi there, or Sheila E, or many people styled in their likeness. (As an aside, the “tight pants as birth control” has been proven incorrect, so some of you guys might want to loosen it up a bit, since there is no real benefit to displaying your junk to the world. Trust me. Looser pants, please.) In a moment of desperation, the girls and I went there to find a dance floor. We were nervous, sitting at our table, penned in by lots of teased hair and erectile dysfunction. Suddenly a round of tequila was in front of us. “I figured we needed this, in order to survive,” said one of the gang, astute in her observation. Turns out that was all we needed, and then we were out there. This makes sense, as just about everybody can tell you they first abused alcohol at a school dance. How the hell else could one possibly confront the possibility of making a total ass of oneself, which was almost a certainty?
But even at thirteen I loved it, couldn’t help myself, employing what I’d hoped was a Molly Ringwald sort of quirkiness, and not just someone in the throes of muscle spasms. My first school dance was memorable. I was pulled aside by one of the older, popular girls, halfway into the evening. At first I thought she and her friends were taking me to a corner to beat me up. “We like, have been watching everyone dance,” one said, while the other finished her sentence..” and yeah, we think, like, you are one of the best girl dancers out there. For sure the best seventh grader, maybe even better than the eighth grader,” They were in ninth grade so I knew my championship would end there.
“Uh. Huh! Thanks,” I said, trying not to hide the fact that I was TOTALLY STOKED. It seemed not to matter to them that I’d recently gotten a perm shaped exactly like a pyramid, perched on top of my head. (This actually was the 80’s.) I had no idea what to say then, so I ran back onto the dance floor. Little did I know that the night would become even more eventful. I’d mentioned to a friend that my mom was away, and did she want to come over after the dance to watch a movie? This somehow transpired into a raging game of telephone, the message relayed as “Erin is having a party at her house, bring booze.” She neglected to tell me any of this on our way home. We discussed the finer points of the dance, and whether or not I now had an “in” with the popular girls, or if they’d go back to being nasty on Monday. The doorbell rang, shortly after we arrived. I opened the door to what seemed like the whole school standing on the doorstep.
“Party!” Someone actually shouted, shoving me aside. My newfound “friends” proceeded to wreck many things, drink, and have another dance-off. I was of two minds about this.
a) I was going to be in serious trouble, major, major trouble.
b) I was going to gain street cred, of which I was seriously lacking.
c) Actually it was all about b so I thought, what the hell, they’re here anyway. I tried to look relaxed, which actually meant I walked around telling people not to touch things.
The really worrying bit was that the two worst kids in the school were there, two brothers that said they wanted to be cops so they could legitimately beat people up. One of them was sitting on the couch teaching people to bend their knee and pull back the skin. “”Look! It’s a vagina!” he said, which was incredibly stupid and somehow the funniest thing people had ever seen. Then my brother came home. He said something along the lines of WTF, and I insisted that I had not invited these people over, and would he please help me get RID OF THEM? He put an end to the music, and the dancing, and told everyone to beat it. I was eternally grateful to him, and he even helped me clean up. We missed a few things though. The next day Mom asked me why there was a large pepperoni pizza under the bush in the front yard. I couldn’t really explain that one so I used the usual “I don’t know,” which was true.
My love of dancing was set in stone. If the ninth graders thought I was good, then I must be, and a lifetime of making an ass of myself ensued. Alcohol will most certainly be employed if I am to shuffle into a Rave as one of the elderly. But I really need to dance, and I figure the younger ones will be too hopped up to notice me, and I can just shift and jerk about in my own little corner, happy. ‘Cause I’m going, even if I have to sneak out to do it.