Better than Nothing

by the Outfield

Let's find a hideaway tonight
Somewhere where we can be together
I'm tired of waiting for the right time
If this is not the Ritz whatever.

+++++++++++++

Imagine any four-door sedan built around 1982.
Now imagine a dance club parking lot filled with high school students from all over the East side on any warm Sunday night in the summer of '86....

Muted pink, sea green, pale yellow, and powder blue were the colors to wear. And, as Scott Davis always jokes, a majority of us were wearing Izod polo shirts with the collars up and a Members Only jacket to match.

Each of the cars was filled with the same usual suspects: Bruestle, Rowe, Poirer, and Cripe; McHolland, Klein, and Leonard; Yavitch, DiSalvo, Weible, and Macy; Davis, Bussard, Lane, and Love; Patty O'Neal with Jean and Jane Collinsworrh; Rina, Tonya, and Heidi; Friedman, Moore, Warschauer, and Butler; Gorgias, Schmidt, and Shalosky.

Green plastic 2-liters were stowed between legs and under bucket seats. Cans of beer were covered with fake plastic wrappers that said 'Caco-Calo' and 'Spryte' that someone had bought at Spencer's in Eastland or Waterbeds and Stuff. It didn't matter. Just something to conceal the truth.

Just before "After the Gold Rush" opened for teen night, everyone gathered in line behind the old building. Its walls were covered in 1970s era dark oak paneling. There were one or two police officers patrolling the line. These were the same guys patrolling the parking lot, trying to find anyone drinking or smoking pot in the parking lot. There were never any arrests, just requests to put it out or pour it out.

I remember someone carrying whip-its - small nitrous oxide cartridges, which they'd 'huff' to get high, basically cutting off oxygen to the brain. Whomever it was, he did a few huffs while the rest of us watched. Others still drank or smoked in line, careful to hide between the crowd and the side of the building. Sometimes you'd smell beer-breath or a breeze of pot. Again, the security was always a few steps behind.

I remember someone in class saying "I couldn't imagine going to 'After the Gold Rush' without being stoned or drunk. It must be boring as hell." I think it was Donahue, but I can't say for sure.

Being one of those sober ones inside, it wasn't really boring, because there was a lot to fill the sense - girls dressed in their best, Mitch Brown was playing good music (for the time) in the DJ Booth, People were trying to pick others up or be picked up. This all happened in a bar with a cowboy-bar theme. It was probably part of the 'Rhinestone Cowboy' movement right at the end of the Disco era, where every bar had a mechanical bull and a bar full of drunk macho men dumb enough to prove their manhood.

Even something as boring as going to the restroom had an element of interesting to it. - in the same way as going to the bathroom at the CI near Ohio University or the restroom at the Indy 500 is - a sensory overload.

People were pressed together - the line for the boy's room had a long wait. The line for the girl's room was beyond a long wait. So much so, that I remember a few pre-going-in excursions with girls for alternative places to go to the restroom.

Sometimes it was the Burger King or Taco Bell on Tussing Road. More often than not, girls would find an exterior wall to the Racquetball Club or they'd drop trow and lean up against a car in the back part of one of the car dealerships along dealer's row.

I remember specifically took down her pants. I will tell you this - she had long blond curly 80s hair and a leather jacket on at the time. She squatted and leaned against a car in the back of the Honda parking lot. She made me hold her leather coat. I stood next to Doug Leonard and Brian McHolland - a 'safe distance' away.

The sound of her (and her friend's) peeing as it hit the blacktop made either Leonard or McHolland laugh. We were told to stop, but we couldn't. It only got worse as two rivers of urine zig-zagged downhill through the parking lot, cutting through rows of brand new cars.

And, even though we were in the less lit part of the lot, it didn't matter. The whole lot was illuminated in bright white light. So...unlike Bryan Donahue, I could not imagine how much more funny going to Teen Night would've been if I had been numb to experiences like that.

Drunk people are too funny to miss.