I Wanna Rock and Roll All Night

In a recent post I mentioned that first week when I moved into the dorms here in Houston, before classes started in my first year of college, and me still a month away from being 18. Some interesting things happened in that week, and I’m in the mood to share.

For one thing, you have to keep in mind that I have always had ridiculously low self-esteem. For a variety of reasons, I entered college completely unaware that I was actually relatively attractive. I’ve never been skinny, but I had a nice shape back then, and I was young, free, and loving life, and it showed. Still, because I had no idea that I was even the slightest bit pretty, it took me a while to catch on to why upperclassmen were so… well… attentive. It started with my next door neighbor. The dorms (excuse me, residence halls!) in which I lived were co-ed by suite, as opposed to by floor. That meant that while the other set of residence halls had girls-only floors and boys-only floors, mine had mixed floors. Each suite was two bedrooms, with two people in each of them, connected by one bathroom. You would never find two female roommates and two male roommates sharing a bathroom, but you quite frequently found a female suite next to a male one. And as you may have guessed, mine was next to a male one (in that case, one of the rare single rooms instead of a suite). On move-in day, I followed the advice that some well-meaning O-team member had given, and left my door open so that people passing in the hall could stick their heads in and say hello. Sometime during the day, a guy stuck his head in and said, “Hi! I’m your new neighbor!” And my response, not realizing what it would sound like, was, “Oh, well then I’m yours!” (Go ahead. Laugh. It’s okay.) What I meant, of course, was that I was his neighbor. But you know horny teenage man-boys… Still, when we got past that little awkwardness, he was very kind and solicitous, offering to walk me to the bookstore to make sure I had everything I needed, take me to McDonald’s so I didn’t have to endure cafeteria food, etc.

In the next couple of weeks, I met a few more sophomores and juniors who were more than happy to show me around, help me with this, direct me toward that, take me here and there and everywhere… proofread my very first writing assignment… give me a massage. Yes. I fell for that. (But he was cute – I think I let myself fall for it.) Still, eventually I wised up, found myself a boyfriend, and got on with what I was there for – education. What, exactly, happened with that is a story for another day.

But there’s one story I wanted to tell here, just because it was so much fun. One small group of upperclassmen took a few of us freshman to a club one night. “Club” is perhaps a generous term. “Dive” would be more appropriate. But it was a dive in a good way – it was meant to be one, made no pretenses about it… Now, as I said, I was seventeen at the time. I have never in my life had a fake ID, either. So this club must have either been one that allowed minors, or they just weren’t carding at all. And I didn’t try to drink; I was still very much a non-drinker at the time. I was just there for the music. That night was KISS Tribute Night. Yes, just what it sounds like, a bunch of cover bands doing KISS songs. It was a blast. My favorite band? One called Cinco Dudes. They did three KISS songs in Spanish. Mariachi-style. Accordion and everything. They did “Sweet Sixteen” (but they did it as “Quinceañera), and, I think, “Beth.” And then they did the song after which this post is named. Yes. “Yo Quiero Rock and Roll Todo Noche.” And here I was, seventeen, blue eyes and long blonde hair, tight jeans, my black leather-and-lace tank top, dancing the night away in some dive in a city 2,000 miles from my home.

Can you see now, why I never looked back?