Dance Hall Daze

We finally took over running the dances.

Of course, there came a time when my grade became the seniors, Grade 12, and 13. Were we the role models one would expect of such mature individuals? We who cursed throughout our high school years, gambled in the halls, were nearly expelled, raced about town, spent all our money on gas, and video games and LPs? We rose to the occasion, as you’d imagine.

I recall Sean Quinn spinning a few dances. I remember Chris Cooper doing the same. Where did they get the music? Did the school have an album collection? I don’t think so. It did have its own sound system or lights, as far as I remember, but I won’t say that under oath. So where did all that music come from. From us. Chris had oodles of albums, milk cartons full of them. We all did. (Personally, I didn’t have any milk cartons, although I was always on the look-out for them, if never actually laying my hands on them; the world had gone metric, and the new ones weren’t compatible to LPs.) But not one of us had enough to run a dance with. There were too many types of music for one person to have copies of everything everyone wanted. So, we pitched in, much like, I believe, all the disk jockeys prior to us must have done. I remember Chris borrowing a number of albums from me, from Mark Charette, Garry Martin, and John Lavric, as well. And I recall the dances being as good as all the others we’d attended, but different. We spent as much time behind the table as in front of it. Well, they did. I’d hang out there with them, but I wanted to be dancing. I wanted to have my arms around a girl.

The Christmas dance was our finest hour. It was hopefully going to be the best one yet. We all helped to hang decorations, set out the chairs and such. And when all was in place, we still had hours to spare.

I went home to get myself all dolled up. Silk shirt. Parfumed. Probably Hai Karate!

Chris and John went over to Dan Loreto’s house. I suppose they may have gone home first. I suppose they must have eaten something. I do know that Mario Loreto Sr. fed them homemade wine. John, from what I gather, understood homemade hooch. Chris did not. Mr. Loreto handed them small glasses of homemade wine, strong as moonshine, light on the tongue as air. They had one, then another. John begged off a third; Chris did not. I don’t know how many glasses slipped past Chris’s lips, but there were more than a few; there must have been. Undoubtedly, more than enough. Because those glasses did not hit Chris directly. It was a brutally cold night. And Chris and John and Dan were numb with it.

Their supper finished, the wine drunk, they made their way to the school, in advance of we participants, to deliver the music and begin the night’s festivities. And that’s when the wine hit Chris. To say it hit him like a ton of bricks sounds like a cliché, but you’d have to have seen Chris, and not fail to imagine that Monty Python 16-ton weight not resting atop him.

I arrived. The music was playing, newish stuff that no one danced to yet, but familiar enough that it set the mood, got people excited, got their feet tapping and their adrenaline pumping. It was loud, spilling out into the hallway from the gym, into the hallway, out through the door and into the street. I stowed my parka in my locker, changed from boots to shoes and began to make my way to the gym.

That’s when I saw Chris, held aloft between John and Dan, headed toward me and away from the gym. Chris was polluted. No doubt about it. He was drunker than I’d ever seen him.

“Jesus H. Christ,” I said, like any good Catholic boy would say within the confines of a Catholic school, “what the fuck happened?”

John was calm. He also wore a grin that stretched from ear to ear. But he was calm. “Well…” he said, drawing that out with a chuckle trailing after it, “Chris dipped into the pot a few times too many.” He explained what had happened, how it happened and when it happened. And he said that Chris was okay when he left the Loreto’s, but upon leaving, he declared that he may have had a little too much wine. They bought him some coffee somewhere, but it had little effect. Chris was getting drunker by the minute, beginning to stammer, weaving on his feet. But what was to be done? The dance was about to begin. They drove to the school, Chris claiming that he would be alright the whole way, an obvious lie by all reckoning, but duty called. And Chris was never one to shirk his duty. Back out in the cold, he seemed to get a little better. Hope prevailed. Not enough, but, one can always fall back on hope when all else fails.

They thought we could cover for him. There was John, Garry, Renato, Anthony Lionello, Sean Quinn, and hell, there was even me, who could pitch in and get Chris through this nightmare. We could feed him albums, spin them for him with a little coaching. It was going to be alright, they told themselves. Hope prevails.

Of course, once they got Chris to the gym, and into his seat behind the turntables, the heat hit him anew, and it was obvious that Chris ought not to be in faculty’s view. So, they needed to get him outside, and most likely home, before all went awry.

And that’s when I came in.

“All we need to do,” said John, “is to get Chris a little air,” bustling past me.

And right into Sister Fay.

She looked Chris up and down, and inquired as to Chris’s state.

“He’s just a little under the weather, Sister,” John explained.

Sister Fay was not convinced, I imagine.

Chris looked up, took the principal in, and said, “Oh, hello, Sister.”

And promptly threw up all over Sister Fays’ shoes.

She was horrified. We were horrified. We also had to bite our cheeks to keep from bursting out laughing.

Somehow, she allowed that he had the flu, even though the smell of wine was rising from his pores in a flood.

How’d the dance turn out?

It was one for the books!