Memoir

Discovering the Throbbing Heat of Friction (I Blame 1983)

Even if my poor mother tried to keep me from leaving the house looking like a 12-year-old lilac-colored Maxi Pad, I wouldn’t have listened.

I blame my mother.

I mean, that’s what any self-respecting broad would do. Right?

That’s not entirely accurate. In all fairness, even if my poor mother tried to keep me from leaving the house looking like a 12-year-old lilac-colored Maxi Pad, I wouldn’t have listened.

No. I blame 1983.

It was my first dance. I was in the seventh grade and it was the junior high spring dance. I didn’t know what to expect, I’m sure I fantasized in my Barbie world it was something it probably wasn’t. Regardless, plans were made to meet up with my friends at the gym, and I set out to primp for my night of magic.

Hungry Like the Wolf

My Olivia Newton-John hairstyle — or what I believed to be my Olivia Newton-John hairstyle — was only slightly outgrown. Shades of winter evident without any sun-kissed blonde strands weaved through my muddy mullet.

I didn’t need to do much with the curling iron, as my Toni Home Perm crimped together in a nice tight frizz, flattening out at the top of my head in that perfect de rigueur small-town style. (Otherwise known as the bad perm.) I crowned the look with a delicate gold headband that stretched across my forehead, shining subtly beneath my mall bangs.

I stood in the bathroom applying makeup from my mother’s arsenal as I rocked out to my K-tel albums, swaying my hips to a little Rick Springfield and Juice Newton. Oh yeah, baby. So hardcore. I applied blue eyeliner and blushed my cheeks a fine deep mauve. My heart skipped a beat, excited to put on my brand new totally tubular valley girl outfit. It was going to be so wicked.

Let’s get animal! Animal! I wanna get animal..let’s get into animal….

My new outfit was light purple.

The waist of my short culotte jumper was adorned with a skinny violet belt. The shoulders were enormous and puffy. I had little white socks that folded down and flitted out, and…purple pumps. Yes, ladies and gentlemen. I was the pretty purple poster princess of the early 1980s.

I am surprised I wasn’t beating the boys off with a big puffy purple stick. (Not a euphemism.)

Again, I blame 1983. But, man, show me a picture of anyone who didn’t look like a damn candy-colored granny panty-styled sanitary napkin. The kind that attached with a belt.

I was ready. Hungry like the wolf and eager to rock my little white socks off.

Turn Me Loose

I walked into the back of the school and immediately hunted for my friends. Kids were everywhere. The air was hot and sticky, and the echo of music filtered through the corridor of the back wing where the cafeteria sat dark in the shadows.

My face flushed as I entered the gym and felt the vibrations; I took in the atmosphere of the dimmed lights and saw my fellow classmates. The girls were on the dance floor, the boys were mostly looking surly to the side — and all also dressed somewhat like idiots, but perhaps not as badly as I.

My friend Katie ran up to me in excitement, pulling me in, screeching to me about the live band.

Friction.

Ooh, Friction. The fact that we had this live band of young men who seemed to be channeling rock stars in throbbing pleather pants here in our little town was simply beyond us, at least at that crossover age.

With the dawn of MTV, seeing and touching and experiencing music was something we obsessed about. Granted, that’s the way it has affected all generations on some level, but video killed the radio star and whatnot.

It sounds stupid, but this band was our band. This band played at our first dance. Not only that, but they had long hair, the outfits, and the lead singer looked and sang just like Mike Reno. It doesn’t get much more legit than that. (Hell, he probably had bad hair and no teeth. But in my head, in my memory, Mike Reno.) They even had autographed black and white photos for sale in the lobby. I mean—we freaked out.

At some point early in the evening, the girls charged the stage. “Stage” being used loosely here. It was really just the section of the gym under the scorekeeper thingy, but it may as well have been Madison Square Garden that night. We ran up to where they were playing, just like it was a real concert instead of a dance. I distinctly remember them singing “Turn Me Loose.” We went wild. We screamed. We went bat-shit crazy like they were mega-stars. To us they were.

We giggled and we laughed and we were jealous of the girls who brought cash and could buy an actual signed photo of the band, and boys? What boys? Where they even there?

It was so hot in that gym. The sweat dripped off of me. I had boob sweat stains on my little purple jumper and I didn’t even have boobs yet. (“D’jou hear ‘bout Kristi Walter? She’s a carpenter’s dream. Because she’s FLAT AS A BOARD. Har Har.”) (My D-cups are laughing right back atcha today, asshat. But thank you for making me feel completely self-conscious about my body at 13. I appreciated that, dawg.)

My hair looked like an electrocuted poodle (except for the flat spot down the middle, of course), powder blue eyeliner ran down my face. I think the night was a success.

I’m sure at some point I had to run out of the gym, even at my first dance, to get air. It didn’t take too many dances to figure out that I get panic attacks when I feel crowded in by too many people and get a mean case of the crazy eyes.

The music starts pounding to the syncopated rhythm of my heartbeat (wait — isn’t that a lyric to a song?), I see giant lips moving everywhere but see no faces and hear everyone’s voices at the same time. I can’t breathe, my face feels like it is burning at 200 degrees, if that’s possible without it exploding or death or melting like the wicked witch, or all of the above. After I act a little dramatic, run out, and get a little something to drink or fresh air, I’m good to go again. Not much changes over the years.

Friction, for whatever reason, became glorified because of that dance, and I’m sure we all remembered them to be cuter, better, and more talented than they probably were. Although it probably isn’t fair of me to make assumptions or judgments based on the fact that they played a small-town junior high school dance in 1983. They very well could have been even cuter and more talented than my memory serves, who knows.

I’m not sure they realized that for one night they really were stars to a bunch of prepubescent tweens. I guess I can’t speak for everyone. I could be the only geek that felt that way, although I know I wasn’t the only one standing in front of them screaming like they were the Rolling Stones. That night of my first dance, listening to that band with my friends and dancing and carrying on like it was a real live concert just for us in the gym of our school, I felt like I had gone from 12 to 13. From girl to teenager. I felt like I was growing up.

We didn’t see Friction again until they played at our prom. I’m not sure who was responsible for that, but I do know that there were several students who agreed it was only fitting that the band that symbolized the beginning of our teenage years would be the one to lead us out.

But that time I wore a sizzlin’ electric blue satin number.

I blame 1987.