and Words
Deep in my heart, there’s a fire, a burnin’ heart
Deep in my heart, there’s desire for a start
I’m dying in emotion
It’s my world in fantasy
I’m livin’ in my, livin’ in my dreams
You’re my heart, you’re my soul
I keep it shining everywhere I go
You’re my heart, you’re my soul
I’ll be holding you forever
Stay with you together
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
I felt liberated upon graduating high school. Everything was rushing until the very end, only to be followed by an abrupt and eerie silence. I coasted for about a month. I bused or waited on tables for a bit, but not anything that I really remember. In some ways that summer was transformational. I survived high school by integrating into the realm of everyone. Never did I prostitute my values, but I wasn’t really being who I really was; I wasn’t my most authentic self. Though that was largely driven by the simple fact that I didn’t know who I really was. There were very few people like me in my high school, and basically no one with the same experiences.
One night that summer my sisters were going to a party to join friends from work, and I tagged along. The conventional teen parties that you see in movies take place in someone’s home when the parents are away for the weekend. This was different. A group of enterprising young people will rent out a location for a party; they’ll bring a DJ, buy a table-full of 2-liter soft drinks bottles, and charge you a cover. What was also different about these parties? We were mostly Asian-American teens and 20-somethings. I believe that this first one took place at the Fort Lauderdale’s Woman’s Club. We affectionately called them ‘Chinky’ parties.
Finding that there were other young people like me (apart from my siblings) was finding my home. Obviously, I always knew that they were there, but we were much too scattered between Miami and Fort Lauderdale. We rarely conversed or shared experiences; few of us ever attended the same high school. Upon graduation, we suddenly found freedom, and we could finally congregate at these parties. I had finally found my clan. No longer did I stand out as the token Asian person; I was like everyone else.
We often stayed until the last song and even wanted to continue to spend time together. We drove our fleet of cars to the nearest Denny’s so that we may continue. It was during one of these meals when I accidentally shook a ketchup bottle a little too briskly and the cap went flying off. It was everywhere, even in my friend’s hair. We all laughed about it.
There was one movie theater on State Road 7 and Oakland Park Boulevard that showed movies and served food and drinks. On Saturday nights, they would show a Chinese film at midnight. These were films out of Hong Kong and spoken in Cantonese. I could understand most of the dialogue, but still they had subtitles in both English and Chinese. Watching these films is where I first discovered actors like Chow Yun-Fat and Maggie Cheung. This was another place for us to meet. We called those ‘Chinky’ movies.
Though for years, it was simply learning about the next party, which got around by word of mouth. Every two or three weeks, we’d get word and jot down the location. At times that drive was over an hour but still we went. This was our opportunity to meet with our people, who were scattered all over the south-east coast of Florida. Many worked weekend jobs in the evenings. Our ritual became to rush home, get showered and dressed, and drive out to wherever this gathering was.
We occasionally met at clubs, like Club 1235 in Miami Beach. Patiently we’d wait for instances where these clubs did ‘Teen night’ since a number of us had yet to turn twenty-one. We navigated the stop-and-go traffic in South Beach for an opportunity to see each other. We tolerated the drive to spend our time together. Once there, we moved rhythmically to the music played far beyond the threshold of hearing loss. We congregated while bathed in disco lights, artificial fog, and reflections off the rotating disco balls.
The club scene was big in Miami; our parties played much of the same music that we’d hear at the clubs. We also got some European dance music that we called Nu Wave music. It was more subtle and perhaps a little less ‘beaty’ than the club music. It was anchored by a German group called Modern Talking, though there were others. Among those tunes, the one that got the most play was this one, “You’re My Heart, You’re My Soul”.
This particular song starts very distinctly; upon our recognition of it we would collectively rush to the dance floor from wherever we happened to be. It was our chance for self-expression through the fluid movement of our bodies. We each had our own style, both in the way that we dressed and the way that we moved. Our times at these parties alternated between dancing ourselves to exhaustion and taking moments to rest and talk. The exceptional songs naturally compelled us to get on the dance floor again. Lather, rinse, repeat. 😉
Between the parties, the clubs, the occasional late-night meals, and the long drives home, we would occasionally get home as the sun rose over the horizon. Our times together were spent spread over dozens makeshift dance floors spanning over a handful of years. Each night became a mixture of sweat, drenched shirts and dresses, and schmeared make-up, and the occasional mishap with a bottle of ketchup.
The years passed, and I finished my engineering degree at the University of Miami. I landed a job at Microsoft and moved to the opposite corner of the states to Washington. It was sadly time to officially be an adult. I had one last send-off party, thrown by my sister.
Though in that mess of stolen moments, as we all waited to align our plans for what we’d be ‘when we grew up’, we found kinship. It wasn’t until meeting those friends when I finally found myself, or at least a portion of myself that I didn’t know or understand. Once that phase of our lives ended, we figuratively scattered to the wind. I moved away to start work; some went to grad school; others got married. Regrettably, I’ve yet to find that again.
I miss those friends and those moments. And to this day, whenever I hear “You’re My Heart, You’re My Soul” I get the inclination to dance, even if it’s simply to remember those friends.