I’m sitting in the little room with the new cordless phone in my hand. Frankie Goes to Hollywood is playing on the university radio station that just switched over from cable to regular FM so now I can actually listen to it. Now all I have to do is stop myself from calling the request line and asking to talk to Mark.
He’s up at the station right now, probably — no, certainly. His brother has a show and Dean told me Mark said he was going up there with him. Dean is Mark’s best friend and the cause of all the trouble.
I don’t see why Mark cared that I went to that party with Dean and we sort of made out, but it wasn’t for long and we were both drunk. His mouth tasted like nachos. Mark isn’t talking to me now even though he’s the one who said we were too young to be having any kind of exclusive thing. And he’s the one who went out with that Lisa girl last week and almost surely, 100 percent made out with her.
I just want to get things straight – and get my records back. If he’s at the station he might answer the phone. He’s been getting his sister screen his calls from me at home.
I shouldn’t call. I can’t. It’s too desperate. I pick up the phone and punch in the numbers for the station, but quickly press end before it has a chance to ring.
*
Image: Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Welcome to the Pleasuredome, i-D magazine, October 1984.
Welcome to the Little Room is a series of 250-word re-imagined vignettes from my ’80s youth with a focus on music and style. It appears weekly on periodicult.com.
