"I'll stop the world and melt with you..."

"Moving forward using all my breath": So I was thinking about the 1980s this week. Middle school. You know, that time when somewhere around 7th and 8th grade when the boys shoot up a foot over the summer, big goofy heads, lanky limbs, and out-of-sorts in so many ways. We had dances back then called "mixers." Oh, what fun they were... and terrifying! The girls were bright and delightful, the boys, dense and confused...

"Making love to you was never second best": Back-in-that-day (the days of big shoes and skinny legs, poofy hair and braced-teeth smiles) we were full of passionate intensity. Each dance, each date (often in groups to the movies or meeting up at the skating rink) was epic! Going out meant talking on the phone late at night, cord stretched as far down the hall as possible to get out of ear shot of a brother or parent passing by the stairwell a floor below. Long relationships might last even for a few months. Each time we held hands or actually worked up the nerve to steal a kiss, it was the best moment we'd ever had. Each time...

"I saw the world thrashing all around your face": My perceptions of those dances back then are warped no doubt, but my approach across the parquet floor, stumbling through the refracted mirror ball light toward a pretty smiling-eyes girl on the other side of the room was fraught with the anxiety that my ineptness was showing. I've learned since those middle school days that most of the time the girls were so nervous about being asked to dance, that they didn't notice our desperate awkwardnesses. Those girls who did notice were perhaps too worldly or fast for us more dorky boys. But we didn't know that then, and so had to summon our courage learned from watching various protagonists in John Hughes films...

"Never really knowing it was always mesh and lace:" We danced to the most horrid stuff back then; a horror only further compounded by this generation's glorification of 80s synth pop. But when we were in the midst of growing out of our grade-school naiveté and groping through the new world of adolescent socialization, the music's poppy sound and subtly dark lyrics were spot on.  One of the classics worth holding on to though was Modern English; remembered for it's one new-wave dance song Melt with You. Most people don't know the rest of their material which was most definitely not middle school dance music: post-punk, gothic, new wave lable-mates with This Mortal Coil and Bauhaus; this stuff was deep and compelling. Robbie Grey described their experimentally artistic album Mesh and Lace as a “barren landscape, [with] heavy drumming, distorted guitar, and wailing vocals….” (What a great description of the reality of middle school romance)...

I'll stop the world and melt with you": But each time we found our way across the dance floor, our hearts in our throats, our mouths dry with fear, trying to keep our eyes on the goal, but not daring to stare too much, we approached with a lurking fear; until that smile melted us. That smile! It reassured us. It made the moment real and immediate and manageable. And then we dared to look into those eyes and heaven was brought down to earth. As long as the DJ played music and the lights stayed low, time stood still...

"You've seen the difference and it's getting better all the time
There's nothing you and I won't do
I'll stop the world and melt with you..."

and it was good...