On December 31, 1979, I was six years old and living in New York with my sister, father, and his girlfriend. It had been barely a week since the most joyous Christmas of my life, and I felt like Richie Rich, thanks to all of the presents I received that year. This had not always been the case for us because we were quite poor, so I was the six-year-old version of grateful. My mother had left us a year before, but the girlfriend was doing a good job as a substitute, so I was also the six-year-old version of happy.

My almost-family was all gathered around the television that night to watch Dick Clark rock-in a brand new decade. Children don’t drink on New Year’s Eve, but parents do, so many of the sober daily rules went out the window. Bedtimes were ignored, snacks were not limited, and there was absolutely no concern that we celebrated the year’s passing by vigorously banging pots and pans together in our tiny little apartment, which was surrounded on three sides by other tenants that might not enjoy such midnight clamor.

Dick’s big guest that year was Blondie, and although Disco’s death-warrant had already been signed, she was at the apex of her career. She performed Heart of Glass in her perfect, sultry-sweet voice, wearing a short, light-colored, sleeveless dress; I fell hard, and was in love for the very first time. I had gleefully sung along with Blondie’s songs on the radio, but there were no videos back then, and only four television channels in my house, so I had never actually seen her. This was my first crush, but your first crush is an anomaly, so you don’t recognize it as the inevitable birth of desire it represents; you are just suddenly obsessed for reasons you cannot possibly imagine.

I peppered my family relentlessly with questions about the young singer that night. I did not yet fully understand basic mathematics, so I was certain that there was some way in which my age might catch up to hers and we could be together forever. My father was a sweet man and told me that there was always a chance. I was off to bed early that morning with visions of Mr. and Mrs. Mike and Blondie; Hollywood power-couple with matching blond mops.

By the end of the following year, I had turned seven, my father was dead, and my sister and I had begun a childhood experience of being passed from family member to family member, until we were old enough to fend for ourselves. For me, that would be the ripe old age of fifteen.

The summer of my sixteenth birthday found me legally emancipated, and living in Collinsville; a small suburb of Saint Louis on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. I was renting an apartment with a friend of mine named Greg, adjacent to a house owned by his Uncle John. Greg’s Aunt Shelly and two nephews also lived in the attached single-story home, and a small laundry room and interior door separated our domiciles.

Greg was twenty at the time, and all of his friends slowly became my friends. We had parties nearly every single weekend and always had a keg of cheap beer chilling in a blue, plastic barrel we kept in the back yard. Being emancipated and having older friends meant I never experienced the typical teenage anxiety over locating alcohol. If none of our older friends were around, Uncle John was always willing to procure whatever beverages we requested. John also liked to party with us, and was adept at making our young female guests uncomfortable by his mid-thirties drunken advances. He had a removable front tooth that he would reveal, along with a description of the empty space’s use when pleasing the ladies.

That summer, our group of friends planned a trip to the river in Southern Missouri where John had grown up. I rode down with Greg and his uncle in John’s old, white pick-up truck, with our iced-down keg in the bed; its tap pulled through the rear, middle window. Greg and I would take turns crawling out of the passenger side into the bed to pump the tapper. We never stopped speeding down the highway for these turns, and I don’t remember ever being concerned that the two possible outcomes each shot at pumping were success or death.

It was a Labor Day weekend, so most of the group was staying until Monday, but I had to return to my job as a waiter in a pie restaurant on Sunday morning.

Late that Saturday night, I awoke to hear John and Shelly screaming at each other in the front lawn of John’s mother’s house, where we were staying. He had come home late and Shelly was rightfully convinced that he had been cheating on her with an old girlfriend that still lived in the area. He was, and we all knew it. John was not a good man, and most of us knew that too.

An hour later, after the rest of the group had fallen back to sleep, I heard Shelly continue to cry as she packed up her car. The boys would stay one more day with their father, but she was going home. I rose and walked outside to help her stuff the car. I liked Shelly; she let me live in her house for very little rent and would often save some leftover dinner for me. Homemade dinners are a rare treat for teenagers fending for themselves.

As I helped her, Shelly did her best to stop the tears while questioning any knowledge I might have as to the nature of John’s infidelity. I played dumb, of course; an easy task for all sixteen-year-old boys. When your greatest aspiration is to someday fly the Millennium Falcon while drinking a beer and rocking out to AC/DC, playing a fool comes somewhat naturally.

The next morning, I too left a day early to make my shift at the pie restaurant. The Pantry was over-staffed for a holiday Sunday, so I was sent home almost as soon as I arrived. Shelly’s Buick was in the drive when I pulled up to the house and music was coming through the doorway between her home and our little apartment.

I changed clothes and sat down to relax on the couch in our tiny living room (which doubled as my bedroom), when there was a knock at the door. With almost no hesitation, the door swung open, and there was Shelly.

Shelly was not particularly tall, kept her hair shoulder length, and wore no makeup. She was in her mid-thirties, and life had given her some premature wrinkles around bright blue eyes, but she was still beautiful. Her features were small and doll-like, and the walls of her home displayed pictures of her in her glory days. Shelly had always been gorgeous in the simple way most men of her era preferred.

“Do you want to come over and smoke with me?” She asked; leaning against the jam in short jean-shorts and a thin, faded flannel shirt that had been washed a thousand times, unbuttoned to the clasp of her bra. Until that moment, I had been sitting on the couch contemplating the demise of my boss, as well as the entire pie industry, for having me drive all the way from my river trip, just to be sent home early. My boss was suddenly forgiven.

Minutes later, I was sitting on the firm couch in the main living room with my land-lady/Uncle John’s wife, smoking a tight-rolled joint. It was a dark brown hide-a-bed couch from the eighties with drink holders built into the arms and padding created by hundreds of buttons pushed deep into the fabric. I have always liked firm couches; they are easy to jump from if you have to.

The ranch home’s living room actually had two full couches and several chairs. The place did a lot of entertaining and the small boxy television on one side of the room was eclipsed by the giant stereo along the other. On the record player, Shelly was spinning a Charlie Daniels album. I listened to mostly pop music then, but I knew Charlie Daniels well because it had been my father’s favorite band.

“I used to date him.” Shelly said, her head bobbing.

“Charlie Daniels?” I inquired excitedly.

“No”, she replied, “Taz… He plays keyboards, but he also plays bass sometimes”.

Shelly went on to describe her short career as a much-too-young rock and roll groupie, prior to motherhood. She detailed her adventures, while swirling the ice in her glass and waiving it around in dramatic gestures. As she did, a slow smile began to cross her face and she time-traveled to a time when she was more desirable; a time when a man would never dare cheat on her.

I watched her crawl into the distant memories of herself, as we worked our way through her record collection. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Cream, and James Taylor were all on the afternoon’s menu, as one by one, Shelly would pull records from the stack. Each playing came with a small tale of better days and debauchery, and every story was better than the last. My lesson in rock-groupie lifestyle reached its zenith when she retrieved Blondie’s 1978 album, Parallel Lines. Placing the needle in the correct spot, Shelly began to describe a teenage, drug-fueled orgy that she had attended with band members from Blondie, including Debby Harry herself, while Heart of Glass pounded from the speakers.

Now, before we get any further, it should be noted that “groupies” are the Holy Grail to teenage boys. The idea that you can achieve something so special that a handful of beautiful women will do anything for you, on that basis alone, regardless of how ridiculously stupid you can be, has certainly fueled some of the greatest advancements in human history.

Shelly and I danced around the living room to the remainder of the album and by the time it was done the memories had melted away twenty years, right along with any inhibitions. We kissed for hours on that couch like the teenager only one of us was, but the other was channeling.

Later that night, Shelly and I drove to a park situated alongside a large lake, fed by the Mississippi river. We had sex there, on the hood of my Mustang, while Pink Floyd’s The Wall blasted from my stereo. I recall the incident as being just like a Whitesnake video, but it probably looked as uncomfortable as a Woody Allen movie. I had moved in with my girlfriend when I was fifteen, so I was more experienced than you might think- but Shelly was an ex-groupie sexual dynamo for Christ’s sake; one with first hand carnal knowledge of Debby Harry! She kept asking me to slow down, but warnings like that are hard to heed, so in a flash it was over.

By the next morning, all of our friends, as well as Shelly’s family, had returned from the river trip. John and Shelly continued to fight, but memories of youth and hope had turned the tables on the argument, so John’s excuses held no power. She stood her ground and detailed his many abuses before finally demanding a separation. In almost no time at all, she was gone.

The parties at the house became even more frequent after John’s wife and children moved out. Several other friends optioned the open rooms and the home became a frat house, minus the education. I got my own room by cleaning out a large interior closet space with no windows. Sleep was even harder for me back then and absolute darkness afforded me the occasional extra hour.

A short time after Shelly moved out, I found myself sitting around a small bonfire in our back yard with a drunk and sad Uncle John. He was lamenting the loss of his family, as drunk people tend to do while paying the price for infidelity; with tears and stories. John began to describe all of the things that made his wife special. He told me that I would probably never know a love like that, and I quickly agreed.

I didn’t stay at that house for long following the incident and never slept with Shelly again. I was scared of John, and constantly imagined what he might do to me if he found out that I’d had sex with his wife. Within a year, I hopped on a bus for Seattle on an adventure to experience the new rock coming from the Pacific Northwest, and I don’t know if John ever discovered our transgression.

My day and night with Shelly taught me a lot about women and the way they need to feel desired. I don’t know what happened to her after the divorce, but I have always hoped she found what she deserved.

I would go on to live a life filled with many regrets, but Shelly isn’t one of them. I will always feel grateful for my forbidden day of rock and roll, time-travel, and statutory rape.