the Police is not a bad way to start my Monday morning but the tiny bit of natural light poking through the blinds certainly is. I can’t think of the last time my alarm has been set before dawn. Get up and turn it off . Otherwise you’ll lie in bed and daydream about Peter an extra thirty minutes. Or an hour.
When I walk into Classic Hits FM 99 for the first time as an employee, Edward Maxwell’s door is closed. It feels a little awkward, not knowing anyone, so I sit at my desk and start poking around the small office. A vast collection of old vinyl records, alphabetized by artist, is squeezed into floor-to-ceiling cabinets behind the desk chair. I can’t help but pull a few out to examine. With each album I touch my mind flashes back. Steppenwolf’s first self-titled album with “Born to Be Wild,” Virginia and I, each dancing like a wild child, down the long hall in front of her bedroom. Chicago, Jay Stockley and I slow-danced to “Colour My World” in Alice’s parents’ basement. The Cars—Mary Jule and I screamed “My Best Friend’s Girl” at the top of our lungs in her Mustang with the windows rolled down almost every night the summer before we went to college.
When I get to the S section my eyes are drawn to the blue spine of one of our favorite childhood albums. Diana Ross and the Supremes Greatest Hits . If only I still had that gorgeous pastel poster of the Supremes that came inside the album. I check to see if it’s in this one and it’s not. Gone to the same place as the posters inside the Beatles White Album and James Taylor’s Sweet Baby James . Probably ripped off a bedroom wall and wadded up inside a trashcan by a mom who’s desperate to redecorate once her child goes off to college.
* * *
“Alice always gets to be Diana Ross,” Virginia whispered in my ear, and jumped so high her head hit the canopy over my bed. One more jump and she landed on the carpet with a big thud. I bounced to the mattress on my butt first and then sprung off the bed behind her. We hooked arms and skipped down the hall out to the den where Alice and Mary Jule held their noses and shimmied their butts down to the floor. “Come swim, y’all,” Mary Jule called while moving her arms over her head as if she were crawling across the pool.
Virginia ripped into the jerk. I stood there, eyes traveling back and forth between the two, wondering which side to join. Virgy looked at me like she’d kill me if I didn’t follow her. Not wanting the other two mad at me, either, I decided to go out on my own and pony around the outskirts of the room and back down the hall. It was Saturday afternoon and American Bandstand was on the TV. We’d waited all week to dance along with the teenagers. As ten-year-olds, teenagers were our greatest infatuation and we copied their every move.
The console housing the television took up one side of the wall in our den. Alice stood just two feet from the screen holding one of the finials from my four-poster bed in her hand. Mary Jule, Virginia, and I stood a few feet behind her, singing into our own finials. Clad in striped polyester mini dresses and white go-go boots, the four of us sang and danced our hearts out.
“I’ll sing Diana’s part, and y’all be the Supremes,” Alice turned around and instructed. None of us was gutsy enough to protest the fact that she was always Diana, so we took our places behind her. The music started and I felt the goose bumps rise as Diana and the other two appeared on the Bandstand stage. When they started to sing, we hummed and oooed along with them, swaying our bodies and snapping our fingers. Alice turned around to us again and put her fingers over her lips. When Diana opened her mouth so did Alice. “Stop in the name of love, before you break my heart,” she sang into her pretend mic, while the rest of us only got to echo, “Think it oh, oh-ver.”
* * *
Whether it was Diana Ross, Martha Reeves, or the head WHBQ Cutie,
When I walk into Classic Hits FM 99 for the first time as an employee, Edward Maxwell’s door is closed. It feels a little awkward, not knowing anyone, so I sit at my desk and start poking around the small office. A vast collection of old vinyl records, alphabetized by artist, is squeezed into floor-to-ceiling cabinets behind the desk chair. I can’t help but pull a few out to examine. With each album I touch my mind flashes back. Steppenwolf’s first self-titled album with “Born to Be Wild,” Virginia and I, each dancing like a wild child, down the long hall in front of her bedroom. Chicago, Jay Stockley and I slow-danced to “Colour My World” in Alice’s parents’ basement. The Cars—Mary Jule and I screamed “My Best Friend’s Girl” at the top of our lungs in her Mustang with the windows rolled down almost every night the summer before we went to college.
When I get to the S section my eyes are drawn to the blue spine of one of our favorite childhood albums. Diana Ross and the Supremes Greatest Hits . If only I still had that gorgeous pastel poster of the Supremes that came inside the album. I check to see if it’s in this one and it’s not. Gone to the same place as the posters inside the Beatles White Album and James Taylor’s Sweet Baby James . Probably ripped off a bedroom wall and wadded up inside a trashcan by a mom who’s desperate to redecorate once her child goes off to college.
* * *
“Alice always gets to be Diana Ross,” Virginia whispered in my ear, and jumped so high her head hit the canopy over my bed. One more jump and she landed on the carpet with a big thud. I bounced to the mattress on my butt first and then sprung off the bed behind her. We hooked arms and skipped down the hall out to the den where Alice and Mary Jule held their noses and shimmied their butts down to the floor. “Come swim, y’all,” Mary Jule called while moving her arms over her head as if she were crawling across the pool.
Virginia ripped into the jerk. I stood there, eyes traveling back and forth between the two, wondering which side to join. Virgy looked at me like she’d kill me if I didn’t follow her. Not wanting the other two mad at me, either, I decided to go out on my own and pony around the outskirts of the room and back down the hall. It was Saturday afternoon and American Bandstand was on the TV. We’d waited all week to dance along with the teenagers. As ten-year-olds, teenagers were our greatest infatuation and we copied their every move.
The console housing the television took up one side of the wall in our den. Alice stood just two feet from the screen holding one of the finials from my four-poster bed in her hand. Mary Jule, Virginia, and I stood a few feet behind her, singing into our own finials. Clad in striped polyester mini dresses and white go-go boots, the four of us sang and danced our hearts out.
“I’ll sing Diana’s part, and y’all be the Supremes,” Alice turned around and instructed. None of us was gutsy enough to protest the fact that she was always Diana, so we took our places behind her. The music started and I felt the goose bumps rise as Diana and the other two appeared on the Bandstand stage. When they started to sing, we hummed and oooed along with them, swaying our bodies and snapping our fingers. Alice turned around to us again and put her fingers over her lips. When Diana opened her mouth so did Alice. “Stop in the name of love, before you break my heart,” she sang into her pretend mic, while the rest of us only got to echo, “Think it oh, oh-ver.”
* * *
Whether it was Diana Ross, Martha Reeves, or the head WHBQ Cutie,
Similar Books
