Happiness Moments: Tainted Love

So I’m a day late for my weekly post, just didn’t have anything yesterday, to tell the truth, I still don’t. I’m a funny sort of writer, I’m much more inspired when things are bad then when they are good. And right now, things are pretty good, just had a really good vacation, had a slow and easy weekend, even my Monday, although starting far too early, was pretty mellow. I even made one of the best dinners of my life tonight, bacon wrapped, stuffed cabbage it was absolutely tasty.

But the work calls and if I don’t write a post on Sunday, it’s a necessity I get to it on Monday. But like I said, I’ve got nothing tonight. While driving back from campus this afternoon Tainted Love, by Soft Cell came on the radio and that always takes my mind to one place. A little bar where I grew up and the summer of 1983.

Where I grew up I had a friend named John, who happens to have three incredibly beautiful older sisters. They were legendary in the neighborhood, hell, the whole town for that matter. Kathy, the middle sister was my favorite. She set a model for women I would be attracted to for most of my adult life, slim, beautiful, long dark hair and big chocolate eyes. She was lithe and sensuous and around her I was a babbling idiot with a raging crush. She loved it, there is something about young attractive adult women that makes them enjoy playfully torturing younger guys with crushes. The sisters were no exception and Kathy was the worst, they loved touching my hair or whispering in my ear just to watch my face turn beet red.

I grew up in a weird time, I turned 18 during the Reagan years. The drinking age was 18 which was somehow offensive to conservatives. They were ok with me going to war at 18 as evidenced by the re-activation of the Selective Service Act, but God forbid I should have a drink. So although the drinking age was 18 when I turned 18 in August of 1982, it went up to 19 in January of 1983. So I was legal for 4 months, then illegal for 8 months, no grandfathering in, but once I turned 19 somehow I got grandfathered in for 21. Like I said, weird times.

It was also long enough ago that in New York drivers’ licenses were still card stock with no pictures. So it was not too difficult to change the 8 in the month of my birthday to a 3, just took carefully erasing half of the 8. It held up under casual scrutiny and the bar I wanted to hang out in that summer casually scrutinized IDs. So almost every night I got in and was able to drink underage. It was in that bar that I first heard Tainted Love and they played it often.

Occasionally from time to time the police would do a quick walk through and check for underage drinkers. They were mostly there I think to check out the women in the bar but it was still a problem for me. You see, my mother was the local police clerk, so I knew every single officer in the department. Not to mention my uncle and cousins were sheriff deputies and when they decided to really bust underage folks the sheriffs would join in as well.

So most nights they would stroll through and it was easy enough to slip out the back, or even slip by when they were taking to a pretty woman and avoid being seen. But one particular evening they were determined to bust underage drinkers. Officers, and a fair number, came in from both entrances and were being very determined. I was being squeezed into a vice of an underage drinking charge, I knew every officer who had come in, they all knew I was underage. I slipped into the middle of the bar and was looking frantically for a way out of this mess. I’m sure I looked quite panicked.

Then, the hand of an angel gently rested on my shoulder, “sit down she whispered in my ear,” I complied, when and angel speaks, you listen. As the cops closed in she sensuously climbed onto my lap and my friend’s sister Kathy looked me in the eye, smiled and began kissing me, very passionately. Apparently, having the tongue of a beautiful woman fully down your throat while on your lap makes you look of age. We made out for like 10 minutes, until the officers worked through the bar and took several people out of the bar for underage drinking.

In a moment, my night went from horror and absolute hell, to the most heavenly thing my young 19 year-old brain could imagine. She broke the kiss, looked around to make sure the cops were gone and gave me the biggest Cheshire Cat smile you’ve ever seen. I’m sure I looked stunned, I know I had one hell of a smile on my face. She slowly got off of my lap, leaned down, whispered, “thanks, that was fun,” in my ear, kissed me on my cheek and walked away. That was one hell of a night and Tainted Love always takes me back there.