We Went Clubbing.
The best thing about my new drinking life is that I could drink how, when and where I pleased. I had money and no reins.
Other than intoxication, the only thing I cared about was music. In Pitcairn, I could only listen to my favorite music after Larry had gone to sleep. Larry used to say, “That music will fuck up your singin’!” He believed in country.
But Larry was finally out of my life.
I loved bands like Devo, The Cure, Culture Club, The Talking Heads, Depeche Mode, XTC, Madness, Missing Persons, and INXS. They spoke to me.
In 1988, I could go to the places I’d always wanted to go, especially the Pittsburgh and Oakland bars where collegiate drinkers abounded and where America’s youth danced the night away. There were often live bands, and some huge names came to these tiny bars just before they got huge.
Having heard about these bars from the radio, I’d always wanted to go – but I’d been with Larry since before I’d been old enough to legally drink.
And I had a friend who, as long as I paid his way, would gladly go with me.
So, with money in my pocket from my new job as Shift Supervisor, Gregg and I headed out. We went clubbing. We danced at Metropol and Confetti’s, where Gregg exploded from the dull person he was sitting on our couch into an insanely obnoxious dancer who loved waving his rather hefty butt around to Da Butt, a song that I couldn’t stomach – but his dancing made me laugh.
It didn’t hurt that I was constantly inebriated. Gregg was never funny.
We went to Graffiti, where bands like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nine Inch Nails and They Might Be Giants played before anyone had ever heard of them. We went to The Decade where Bruce Springsteen, The Police, Aerosmith, U2, Stevie Ray Vaughn and The Ramones had played before they were big, and the bands who performed there felt touched by greatness.
We didn’t see any big names, although I was in a blackout most of the time so maybe we did.
The one I’d been dying to visit, though, was the Electric Banana – the venue with hardcore punk, the kind of place I’d dreamed of finding in London. Neither of us had any punk attire, but they let us in – and we thrashed and banged ourselves against the other patrons with great vigor, trying to fit in.
Even with copious amounts of alcohol, I knew I did not fit in at the Electric Banana. I was a drunk geek who wanted to be cool, and it was insanely obvious from that visit. After years of believing I was a punk rocker at the core, I realized I didn’t even like punk rock. We didn’t go back to the Electric Banana again.
But I bar-hopped in Oakland with the best of ’em – riding the bus into town, since it kept me from driving drunk. Sometimes we had to leave the bar early so we could catch a bus before the transit authority stopped for the night.
We’d flop down onto a relatively empty bus, loud and happy and wasted, for the long ride home.
I remember feeling like I’d been in a fairytale all evening. With its insanely boring interior and the cruel irony that we suddenly had to be fairly quiet, that bus always brought me back to a sad reality.
Something … was still … wrong. I just couldn’t remember what it was.
I was having too much fun being young.