Punk rock dating chapter 74

Punk rock dating chapter 74: Disco Daycare...

Flashback forward:

January 8th, 2100:

Bernadette had stepped out to pick up Dorothy from the daycare center. I was alone at home, making dinner (Olde Country Pork and Rice, my signature dish) and listening to the radio (WFRM: New York's home of the Electric Slide) when I heard the turbulent hush of a disheartened diva...

"At first I was afraid, I was petrified...."

I dropped my chafing-dish and stood chaste before Gloria Gaynor as she laid bare her celestial sorrows...

"Kept thinking I could never live without you by my side..."

Unexpectedly the song, like Gloria's spirit, grew stronger:

"I learned how to CARRY ONNNNN..."

The minor chords had fooled me...This wasn't just some "woe-is-me-cry-in-your-coke-spoon" Disco Lento...

Strings began to swell feverishly...The hushed piano had given way to the sinuous strut of that supple beat...The hi-hat sizzled like make-up sex...Surely there would soon be a heavenly chorus of backing vocals to support Ms. Gaynor in her hour of need...

...But wait...

...It never happened...

This is the sound of one woman, still standing despite what her man has done to her (you go, girl...change those stupid locks...)...No double-track! No back-up vocalists! Gloria truly is all alone! But is she beaten? ohhhhh nooooo......

Never in all my travels in time and space had I experienced art that so ebulliently captured the ardor of human preserverence...

Sorrow, sex, suffering, salvation...IT WAS ALL HERE!

Sure! You can beat me up! Throw me down! Take my seat! Pork my wife! Steal my shoes! Borrow my lawn mower! Tape over my ballgame! Ruin my wedding! Fire my secretary! But, Honey..I WILL SURVIVE!!!

I spent the afternoon doing the Continental Hustle and waiting for Bernadette and Dorothy to come home...

...but they never arrived.

In a panic I called the holo-phone, but there was no answer. I ran out into the driveway to get into my 2100 hybrid gas/antimatter Gremlin to search for them when I noticed the interstate was a symphony of 12-car pile-ups...

I looked over and saw my neighbor, who had just been out watering his lawn, face down in the freshly cut grass. I moved closer to check his pulse. It seemed to still be going strong, yet no life danced in his eyes...

I walked along I-78 for five miles and saw the same scene everywhere...Pyramids of burning cars, crowds of warm cadavers, bathed in deathly silence...Could my beautiful wife and daughter have suffered this same ghastly fate? Could I really be the final soul to still roam this once thriving Earth?

The answer finally came when I spotted on the horizon a solitary man, stumbling in his blood-soaked suit...Certainly he had suffered unspeakable trauma...

"Friend!" I called to him. "What happened?"

"I...I don't know..." he murmured, seemingly in shock. "There I was...just driving home...listening to the radio...and suddenly the car in front of me stops...I was going too fast! There wasn't enough time!"

"Everyone appears to be have experienced some sort of brain death...This doesn't make sense! I...Wait! You were listening to the radio?"

"Yes."

There had been rumblings in the Zodiac underground that SCORPIO may have been planning some sort of telepathic attack... Was this it? It must have been! But how did I survive? And why did this poor wretch who stood before me yet live? Were we immune to psychic attacks or...?

"I was listening to the radio too! Maybe we were spared somehow because of that..." I postulated.

But that didn't make sense! After all, I'm sure most of these living corpses had been listening to the radio in their cars too, since that was not an uncommon activity...

"What were you listening to when all this went down?" I asked the man.

"I will never forget it! Time stopped...Every moment an eternity...The song forever burned in my mind...'I Will Survive."

"Wait! We were listening to the same radio station! WFRM!" I shouted. "The Disco station! I wonder if there was a frequency in their transmission that blocked the effects of the attack!"

The man stared at me with glassy eyes. "Station? I wasn't listening to any station... I was listening to "Gloria Gaynor's Greatest Hits" It was my own album..."

Could it be?

Could the Gloria Gaynor classic actually have the ability to counteract the effects of the H.O.T Bomb?! A song so strong that even the Bee Gee's "Tragedy" wasn't enough to keep it off the charts?

After wandering the wastes for some time, I decided it was time to do something about this. I was preparing my Time-slide to go back a couple of hours so I could pluck Dorothy and Bernadette out of the time-stream and take them back to 1979 with me, when a glacial chill sailed the seas of my spine...I was in the vicinity of an ill presence...

"Escorpion."

"Orion...Old friend..."

"I think you finally might have destroyed any semblance of friendship we might have had, Sir..."

"I have no regrets," Escorpion shrugged.

"Oh, you will..." I promised.

I set the controls of my Time-slide device, thought of an especially fond childhood memory (my first love, Cindy Anderson, handful of chicken grease, giving me a strident hand-job...) and I was off...

.............................................................................

"I Will Survive..." I answered Julie.

Clement had downloaded my consciousness into the H.O.T Bomb, I could feel the greedy telepathic tendrils of the "Mind Death" beginning its base broadcast to the brains of a nation...

...To counteract its effect I sang into the Psychic Projector what is now considered to be the definitive version of "I Will Survive" (an honor previously held by Phil Kelsey's 1993 Classic 12 Inch Mix)...

...But would clairvoyant karaoke be enough?




Tomorrow we find out when Achilles breaks a heel doing the Hot Chocolate to Orion's authoritative version of "Born To Be Alive..."