Saturday evening was “opening time down on Fascination Street.” Stephen and I went out to the Halloween street party on Cedar Springs for the first time in several years. Overall, it was a very casual evening. We ate at Buli’s, and after walking around the “parade route” a couple of times and checking out the hot costumes, we came home in plenty of time to catch the opening of Saturday Night Live. You know it’s a good night when you get home before 10:00 pm!

There was a time once—perhaps around the time when I received this cassette (which was a gift from Michelle and Alf (spit! spit!) for my twenty-third birthday—when I would’ve stayed out until the sun began peeking over the horizon. Walking past what used to be Below Xero, the greatest dance club of the early 90s in the gay district of Dallas, brought lots of things back to me: dancing there with Marc and Toni to great house, dancing there with Michelle and Sophie to great retro 80s, and dancing there with James and Daisy to heaven only knows what they were playing that evening.

All I remember from that night was James doing back-flips on the dance floor because it was Tuesday and so few people were out. Only the die-hards who had sworn to party every night of the week were there. (Thank you, Daisy, for joining that mad, mad crusade.)

It was at Below Xero that I first heard Deee-Lite’s “What Is Love?”—the B-side to “Groove Is in the Heart”—another two-track that brings back memories of dancing with Marc and Toni all those years ago.

There was a time once—about a year before then—when I listened to the EP of “Lovesong” over and over again over a weekend until I forced myself to fall in love with someone (Toni from the previous paragraphs, in fact) I had previously despised. It worked. And now I still feel a tinge of regret years later for the love I let die.

Thinking of Toni reminds me of the two-track of Peter Murphy’s Deep, which I had borrowed for a few weeks. Now Peter Murphy himself reminds me of the love I once let die after trying so hard to cultivate it to a song by the Cure over the course of a weekend. Indeed, “poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the permission of another.”

In my final semester in college (as an undergraduate), I produced a performance art piece with Maureen—another love with other songs in mind—entitled “Rain and You” and based on the lyrics to the songs on Disintegration. I’m not quite sure anyone got what was going on: I was dancing and writhing on the floor after waltzing with Maureen. We were dressed in black. I think there was a rainstick involved and perhaps a few other props, perhaps sponges soaked in water. “It was sweet; it was wild. And oh, how we….”

Saturday evening was “opening time down on Fascination Street.” Stephen and I went out to the Halloween street party on Cedar Springs for the first time in several years. Overall, it was a very casual evening. We ate at Buli’s, and after walking around the “parade route” a couple of times and checking out the hot costumes, we came home in plenty of time to catch the opening of Saturday Night Live. You know it’s a good night when you get home before 10:00 pm!

There was a time once—perhaps around the time when I received this cassette (which was a gift from Michelle and Alf (spit! spit!) for my twenty-third birthday—when I would’ve stayed out until the sun began peeking over the horizon. Walking past what used to be Below Xero, the greatest dance club of the early 90s in the gay district of Dallas, brought lots of things back to me: dancing there with Marc and Toni to great house, dancing there with Michelle and Sophie to great retro 80s, and dancing there with James and Daisy to heaven only knows what they were playing that evening.

All I remember from that night was James doing back-flips on the dance floor because it was Tuesday and so few people were out. Only the die-hards who had sworn to party every night of the week were there. (Thank you, Daisy, for joining that mad, mad crusade.)

It was at Below Xero that I first heard Deee-Lite’s “What Is Love?”—the B-side to “Groove Is in the Heart”—another two-track that brings back memories of dancing with Marc and Toni all those years ago.

There was a time once—about a year before then—when I listened to the EP of “Lovesong” over and over again over a weekend until I forced myself to fall in love with someone (Toni from the previous paragraphs, in fact) I had previously despised. It worked. And now I still feel a tinge of regret years later for the love I let die.

Thinking of Toni reminds me of the two-track of Peter Murphy’s Deep, which I had borrowed for a few weeks. Now Peter Murphy himself reminds me of the love I once let die after trying so hard to cultivate it to a song by the Cure over the course of a weekend. Indeed, “poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the permission of another.”

In my final semester in college (as an undergraduate), I produced a performance art piece with Maureen—another love with other songs in mind—entitled “Rain and You” and based on the lyrics to the songs on Disintegration. I’m not quite sure anyone got what was going on: I was dancing and writhing on the floor after waltzing with Maureen. We were dressed in black. I think there was a rainstick involved and perhaps a few other props, perhaps sponges soaked in water. “It was sweet; it was wild. And oh, how we….”