The college radio station broadcasts live from The Beach on Friday nights. David Bowie is playing and I am in the little room wondering if anyone would laugh at me.
I’ve haven’t been to The Beach. I’ve walked by in the daytime; there are no windows. It’s in a downtown hotel, one block west of where the pedestrian mall ends.
I love David Bowie. Not love-love like some of the people I know, but more like respect-love. I’m fourteen and have three Bowie albums so far but would probably say I have more if anyone were to ask.
I wonder what it would be like to be in a club when a Bowie song starts playing. The DJs never play Bowie at school dances; that song he did with Mick Jagger that doesn’t count.
David Bowie is going through a suit phase, all oversize and easy. His hair is short and neatly styled, modern dandy trumps Ziggy Stardust glitz.
If I was at The Beach and a David Bowie song came on I’d have to dance — have to. I can sort of see the crowd in my head, but can’t imagine how they dance. It can’t be the swervey-side-to-side moves everyone pulls at the junior high dances, where the boys are lined up together and the girls dance opposite.
I have my friend’s sister’s ID to get into The Beach next week. I turn up the Bowie and start to dance. If I practice enough maybe no one will laugh.
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Image: David Bowie, photographed by Greg Gorman for Harper’s Bazaar, December 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.
