This story does have some looooovely humans in it, but I think it’ll be mostly a love letter to Basement Rave Place (Not its real name! The real name was like something a sitcom would name a gay bar, and I loved the name a lot!) As soon as Pagan Boy and I hooked up, the club (and the classically-decorated Greek diner across the way) was like our whole thing. (I mean, besides making out on his living room floor in front of Mystery Science Theater 3000) The dance floor (and couches, and stairwell, etc) at Basement Rave Place was where we were most beautifully, sexily, ridiculously ourselves.
As I flailed about (How to dance to techno, if you’re
not a skilled pop-and-lock kind of person? It’s sort of a cross of aerobics,
hippie dancing, and the Running Man. Above all, one always must move as though waving
a glowstick, even (especially?!) when you don’t have one) and Pagan Boy gothed
around, (See: dancing to techno except slower and slinkier and probably more
dignified.) our relationship was the exact opposite of my (not so) dance-y
night with Perfectly 1993 Guy—no frozen-with-self-consciousness anywhere for
miles!
When I talk about being a raver, you might assume ecstasy,
acid, shrooms. I WAS very good at acid, but not until years later. But every
time I went to Basement Rave Place with Pagan Boy, and this will be the
corniest thing I’ve ever said a million times, I was only ever high on dancing.
I’ll never be anything like a good dancer in any other context (Okay except
maybe in general ass-shaking terms.) but my body was absolutely MADE for dancing
to techno. The only things I ever ingested there (broke as I always was) were little
clear plastic cups of ice water, the most delicious and life-saving things in
the world.
Or sometimes, okay juice. And my BELOVED Camel Lights,
god rest their (Quit in 2003) souls. I was 19, the place was all-ages after eleven.
Pagan Boy and his friends were all early-to-mid twenties, they could’ve bought
me drinks, but I don’t think they did.
The club was small but it was everything I wanted in the
whole world. Above all, it was SO SEXY in a queer, liberated way I’d rarely
ever seen before. (It was temperature hot too. I sweat SO MUCH into my chokers
and Thrifty Shopper polyester minidresses.) Statuesque, androgynous women danced
on platforms wearing only teensy shorts and X-es over their nipples. (Oh boob
tape, I do love and miss you so! Maybe someday I’ll be almost naked in
semipublic again…)
The dance floor was checkered and the walls were doodled-upon
psychedelically. Blacklight lit up everyone’s teeth, the occasional rogue piece
of non-black clothing. It’s a tribute to how in love with the place I was that
I wasn’t put off by the presence of blacklit dandruff. Maybe it just registered
as so much more glitter?
In the club light, even more than he’d been in the
coffeehouse, Pagan Boy was just the dreamiest of dreamy goth dreamboats. To my
love-dazzled eyes he looked like a plush version of Robert Smith from The Cure
but with better-kempt hair and naturally fluffy eyelashes. He looked even
better with my blackberry lipstick constantly smeared all over his mouth.
I don’t remember when the first kiss was with Pagan
Boy. I think there was a brief moment when I wanted to be just friends, but it
was pretty quick that I shrugged and submitted to his kind and all-encompassing
embrace. Our bodies, our mouths, fit so perfectly together. He could hold ALL
of me, no problem. Every one of our showoffy dramatic kisses felt like a
fully-formed work of art.