by Wanda Morrow Clevenger
Getting wasted wasn’t the primary goal. Neither was dancing. Both backdrop, secondary bit-players in the small-town extravaganza. Our Town for the ’70s. Leaving with a guy, being seen leaving with him, the band’s muffled last hoorah cut off as the car door thuds shut, warm vinyl against bare ass was the goal.
Every Saturday night was the same: same place, band. Same faces, too, for the most part. Sometimes it was with a repeat horn-dog, but more often a different guy in a different backseat helping to spread the good word. And it was always good: the beer, the music, the sex. It’s what we lived for.
Coliseum’s dingy three-stall john was perpetually crammed with females in varying degrees of lucidity. A reeking toxic dump of cheap perfumes necessary to mask two hours of dancing and excessive consumption. Estee floated in a floral plume around my waist-length hair, worth every hard-earned penny of the twenty-five-dollar price tag. Nectar blossoming against damp skin barely restrained in halters enhanced the passion during the slow dances, though not needed. The Guild’s rendition of “Silhouettes,” everyone’s preferred grab and grope song, dialed up pheromone levels on its own.
A row of firm plums, ripe for the picking, crowded a narrow shelf vying for face time. Tender youth pressed as close to the mirrored wall as a tube of lipstick allowed and wiped glisten away with quick fluffs of Maybelline?a cresting sea of faded bellbottoms and proud nipples poking through spaghetti-strap tanks. Loopy chatter dwarfed the sound of flushing.
Invariably a rush to pee, powder your nose, and get back to your guy before his attention wandered or he got into a fight?no girl wanted to miss the start of the last set. Whoever you ended up with, still clinging on in hopes of a farewell fuck in the parking lot, was who you danced McCartney’s “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five” circle dance with.
On Saturday night all was fair. Every girl wanted a piece of the night to call her own. Every guy just wanted a piece. Blaring music melded into background noise; cocky band became scenery bought and paid for with the price of admission; stamp on the back of the hand was a brand marking you old enough to know better.
Getting some in the parking lot at midnight was never a sin. Getting caught by two overzealous cops who thought they were making a drug bust?we perps naked and obviously not smoking?was considerable bad luck. Facing down the cops, my lace panties stuffed into my accomplice’s back pocket while scared shitless I’d be hauled in for screwing, was beyond terrifying. Being released with a warning, then cajoled into finishing the job we’d started was less than romantic.
Having those events exposed was worst of all. Watching one week later, along with two hundred drunk others, as a band member produced my panties, smelled them, then put them on his head like some Easter pussy hat is something I’ll never forget, or forgive.