my disco...

I went to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and had a great time. The displays were museum-quality, with many interactive elements. The best (and biggest) display was the disco one. It was in a separate room, with high ceilings and glass walls on two sides. It was fantastic—clothing that the disco divas wore (including the Saturday Night Fever white suit), tvs playing different things, disco music, a disco ball (surprise!), photos, newspapers, gay disco music (I always knew the Village People were gay!), and listening stations. Yay for Blondie! I began watching one of the videos, captivated by it for many minutes. People my age, and younger, and older, dancing, doing drugs, having the best time of their lives.

“Wow, how cool…I wish I lived in the seventies.” (Of course, women have come a long way, even in those thirty years.) Thinking of political activism, promiscuous sex, crazy dance parties…wow, what a time. Of course the fashion was AWFUL. My parents lived during the seventies, could have been at disco clubs, but they were nerds. (They also had to work for everything, pay for school themselves, etc—so I am very proud of them for that.) The only thing my dad embodied of the disco era was the bad clothes—he was very good in that category. Did I ever mention that to my mom’s prom he wore black pants with brown shoes? My mother hasn’t forgiven him for that one yet.

Then I remembered my raver days, my club days. Dancing till after dawn, parties in the middle of the woods in upstate New York, clubs where drag queens went into bathroom stalls two at a time, clubs where because I didn’t do drugs—well, I was the oddity. He-llo, I don’t need them, I’d say. And I didn’t. Swirling on the stage at Tunnel, dancing on the speakers at god knows how many parties, meeting people—oh the people—girls from Long Island, from Germany, boys in the army, high school dropouts, I met so many people. Impromptu parties where we lived or didn’t, making a mess, laughing and not caring; running around the city like we owned it. And we did—in our minds.

Now I’m 26, working full-time at a blah corporate job—just till late May, understand—and struggling to keep up with my school work, and plan a trip, and every so often, WRITE, run, play with kitty, speak with friends, radical cheerlead…and I miss that old me. I miss the girl who would jump up on the stage at a club, dance like an idiot, in some pretty shocking (slutty?) outfits. I miss dancing all night long, stinking like everything in the world as we’d leave the clubs, eating at diners afterwards, talking philosophically about the world…and to sleep through the day. I miss the fun. I miss it badly.

I don’t want those days back—I was looking for love then (even though I didn’t realize it) and I am madly in love…but I don’t want my time to be over. I want some more fun. Some more me. Some less ‘daily bullshit of life.’

Growing up can really suck.

See you in Ibiza.