Higher Ground

In 1994, I spent "Holy Week" with my girlfriends Melinda (American) and Margaroo (Australian) visiting another friend, Anita (Irish), in London. I put it in quotes 'cause there was nothing particularly holy about that week for us. We spent the days shopping and the nights in restaurants and/or at shows.

Just being elsewhere is fun. Yet being anywhere with Melinda is fun. I could tour a rendering plant with her and get the giggles. Melinda is the epitome of the loud American; however, thankfully, she's also beautiful so she can get away with it. Big smile. Warm personality. Non-stop entertainment.

Anita's flat, at the time, was in Croydon which is a short train ride into the London city center. So every day Melinda would unintentionally have the entire train car laughing at her antics. Everyone loved her. Young men. Old women. Babies. Margaret and I thought it was hilarious. Anita, on the other hand, was absolutely mortified.

Having had enough of us toward the end of the week, Anita went out with other friends so we were left to fend for ourselves. Not knowing what to do, we walked into Croydon that evening looking for a pub. Being Holy Saturday, everything was closed. They're clearly more observant in Croydon than expected or desired. We were directed by a passerby to a disco but, upon arriving, weren't allowed in because we were in jeans. Oh no, where else can we go? The bouncer told us that there was only one other bar open that night: The Blue Anchor. Okey dokey. Sounds good to us!

So there we were: three fresh-faced girls in bright, preppy clothes, including Melinda in a short, vivid red raincoat, stepping over a large number of barely visible people who were splayed across the floor in a blackened hallway (doing God-only-knows-what) just to get into the only pub that would serve us. We entered a dark pub filled to the brim with leather coated, tattooed, grimacing, metal heads. Hi! It's us! (Can you spot the tourists?) As difficult as it was to get to the bar, we somehow managed -- where there's a will, there's a way. And then we never left. We spent the night fully immersed in dangerously high decibels of Green Day, Faith No More, Nirvana, STP, Hole, Radio Head and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. At some point we started dancing with the locals. We were finally kicked out at closing time.

Whew! Happy Easter!

We awoke on Easter Sunday with neck aches from a night of head banging. Literally. I could barely move my noggin from violently shaking it due to an abundance of overindulgent, "when in Rome" dance-like-the-natives moves. To recover, slowly, we went to the cold, gray beach in Brighton with Anita and her snobby, self-absorbed, not-fun-at-all friends who refused to partake in any of the arcade games.

Even 16 years later, this ranks as one of the best nights ever followed by a dreary day jam-packed with colossal buzz kill. And to this day, I would much rather be noticeably embarrassed with happy-go-lucky friends than invisibly carrying on a boring, politically correct conversation with elitist wannabes.

I just want to dance.

I'm so darn glad He let me try it again,
'Cause my last time on earth I lived a whole world of sin.
I'm so glad that I know more than I knew then.
Gonna keep on tryin' till I reach the highest ground.