Being a young person is such complicated work
Double Vision with Charlie Adley
That hall had never looked so vast. My back clung to the wall, beside the backs of all the other boys, while across the wooden floor, clinging to the other wall stood the girls.
To gain admission to a legendary Scout Hall Disco, we’d formed two long queues arching away from each other, boys in one and girls from two of nearby schools in the other.
To us English Public Schoolboys, females were an alien species. Across the Quad we eyed each other from afar, pointing and laughing now and then, daring to dream just a tiny bit, our individual fears still eased by the safety of numbers.
During the night we danced with – or as near as possible to – as many beings with different bodily bits as possible, but now it was the business end of the evening.
Time for the last dance, always a long slowy, the make or break moment of the evening.
Tension filled the air as powerful teenage urges collided with pure terror.
You had three ways to approach it: if you’d already ‘got off’ with a girl (as loosely defined a term as your own Irish ‘shifted’) you were sitting on the edge of the stage, ostentatiously exploring far-distant parts of her lung with your tongue.
However, if you were not superhuman and entwined with a lass from Northwood College, you either had to go for it or admit defeat, by uttering a barely believable
“Nah, don’t fancy any of ‘em!”
To the sound of that week’s number one (10cc’s ‘I’m Not In Love’) I decided the time had come. I’d identified the girl I was going to ask. Somehow I’d found out that she was called Christine, and I also knew that she was wearing Charlie perfume, so I could greet her by name, ask her to dance and then maybe make her smile by telling her my name.
As plans go it was far from great, but it was all I had, and man, fwooh-hooh, she was beautiful!
Despite being at that time an insecure unhappy boy, I was born with a daring spirit. As a gasp rose behind me, I strode out into the empty dance floor.
Driven by a teenage libido matched only by my huge inexperience, I felt as if I was rowing single-handedly across the Pacific Ocean.
To read Charlie’s column in full, please see this week’s Galway City Tribune.