At Spit, High on Cocaine, Dancing. Happy Birthday to Me.

I celebrated the start of my birthday on the Nordic Trak, listening to the opening of She Sells Sanctuary by the Cult on repeat. Those first notes! When I close my eyes, I can smell the burn of late night, of bodies, alcohol, sex in the making, car crashes, overdoses, love. This morning I worked out for 22 minutes and 12 seconds and I listened to music and remembered what it was like to be 22 and so high on cocaine I believed dancing like a white girl from the suburbs who grew up with the The Preppy Handbook on her dresser was totally cool. Edgy.

The fact that I can push myself to burn and sweat feels like a miracle. My body is coming back to me!!! I can work out again without crying or feeling like I will pass out!! Hello, coming out of the fucking fog! Hello, light at the end of the tunnel!

Hello, love!

Then there’s Tattooed Love Boys: I tore my knees up getting to you. That beat! Chrissie Hynde! My friend carried the coke around in little folded paper packages. I never bought coke of my own; I never had to. I never wanted it that badly. Someone else always had it, and, in the 80s, it was so fun when someone shook your hand and left the tight square in your palm.

Do you know the song Reptile by The Church? Listen to the opening and imagine trouble. Now dance. What about A Forest by The Cure? More trouble, more dancing.

I think trouble is an overlooked grace. We work to be good, to do the right things, to make money, to pay our bills, to take out the garbage and to comb our hair, but a body can die of boredom in the effort to be good and right. A little trouble can be so healthy.

It’s so much better to be trouble than to be in trouble.

Some trouble has wings and tastes like Bud Light with the sharp drip of cocaine running down the throat. Flock of Seagulls!! I Ran!!

And then there is Rock Me Almadeus by Falco that makes you feel like a Euro club hopper when you are bouncing around in your black Doc Martins in the Fenway, high as a kite.

Run DMC always comes to the party because Daryl McDaniel has my favorite Moth story ever and because you can’t talk about the 80s without talking about Walk This Way.

I can’t talk about dancing in Boston without mentioning Aerosmith, and I can’t talk about music without talking about Dream On because I love if I were a song, I might want to be that one.

What about you? What song would you be?

Happy birthday to me.

Happy birthday to you.