Don't You Want Me, Baby?

I was working as a waitress. In a cocktail bar.

Okay, I was fifteen and I couldn't get into a cocktail bar. In another couple of years, I'd be "dating" a bartender and spending most of my senior year in one. But here it is the spring of 1985, I am in grade ten, and my totally awesome boyfriend and I have matching hair and upright shirt collars. The trouble with my bitchin' upright collar is that the inch-deep layer of cover girl foundation tends to rub off on it. Fortunately, my strand of pearls is manufactured of unabsorbent plastic. I think they add just the right touch of class to my shaker knit sweater and harem pants. Virginal, yet material.

I have just finished supper and am about to walk down the main drag to loiter outside the brand spanking new coffee and donut shop and smoke cigarettes with twenty or thirty of my peers. From there we will perhaps adjourn to a dance at the protestant high school, where adult chaperones cast a blind eye to sin, and where we will dance in parallel rows, facing each other, shuffling from one foot to the next in time with the beat. Su-su-su-dio. For the last dance, couples will lock arms around each others necks and rock in place to Jack Wagner crooning that all he needs is a little more time. To be sure. What he feels. Isn't only his mind. Jack Wagner has hair just like me and my boyfriend. He came to the mall last summer. That's when I was hanging out around with the break dancing group, Le Crue. With the two little dots over the U. They were so wicked, with the fingerless gloves and all, and one of them could really moonwalk. They were all white guys, of course, except two guys who were half asian. There is a black guy at school, though. He's Irish.

In between dancing, we loiter outside the gymnasium, smoking. The boys are drinking Molsons in the parking lot, which is mostly empty, as few of us have cars. The girls are drinking sparkling rose wine from raffia-wrapped bottles and later, when we vomit, it is pale pink, like Love's Baby Soft.

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Patrick and I watched back to back episodes of VH1's Greatest 100 Songs of the Eighties last night. I want to actually parse the list later, but thought I'd establish my cred first.

I was there. Totally.


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