I cannot even remember her name.

I know that the donde boys and I strolled into the Disco Scaramouche that night along with some stragglers and the other kids my age on the trip, who I am certain turned out to be teetotalers, to find the place was busy but not jammed like my father's experience in the past.

Los dondes and I grabbed a table near the dance floor and within moments I was drawing deep straw-fulls of pina colada. Keep in mind I was 17 so the more sugar the better in my drinks to ward off the brutality of cheap well rum. I remember we were all laughing that my dad seemed to puss out and then, like the moment a boy realizes that Jergens is not just for soft skin anymore, I saw her.

Sleeveless white cotton dress, curly blonde hair, somewhere between Baby from Dirty Dancing and Kathleen Turner from Romancing the Stone was a marvelous young woman cutting a rug on the dance floor. She was dancing alone but had what appeared to be a disco employee dressed all in white shadowing her. He was older than I was and at the same time I looked right through him on each turn of the music to see the face of this beautiful girl.

I was a total fool at home when it came to girls. The station of my nerdy-ness and the years of stereotyping that go along with being with the same kids for 12 years had blocked my access to the real teenage wasteland so I often felt myself to be ugly or for some reason unworthy for courtship. I came to find out I simply needed some shitty rum, a little anonymity, and a major push from a fireman and a phone technician (the donde boys).

As I downed my 3rd pina colada I decided it was time. My gut was swimming and all that sugar and booze gave me energy I am sure was on par with at least medium grade meth. I rose from my seat in my light blue Don Johnson trousers I had gotten from Mervyn's onsale. I took a deep breath and straightened my back to reveal my strikingly lanky 6'5" 160 pound frame while my flowing black and white print shirt gave the impression I was hoisting the main sail on a human ship's mast.

I strode out to the floor as my eyes met hers. At this point I had 0 choice but to engage. I tapped the disco boy on the shoulder and straight out of a scene from Happy Days I said, "may I cut in?" I swear upon the graves of my ancestors that was what I said.

The only part more shocking than my dialog was the fact that disco boy took one look at my ghost-like complexion, looked back at the tanned and nubile girl to his left, and simply walked away.

There I was on the floor alone with a girl and we immediately spoke, or tried to speak over the sounds of bad 80s music. Instead of talking we decided to dance. Much like Napoleon Dynamite I may have been an angst ridden, nerdy kid, with a propensity for tall tales, but get me on the floor and I could move. In a matter of seconds I was spinning my girl about like a whirling dervish. I was like a giant rubber band in the day which made for an interesting site I am certain.

While I had excellent rhythm and unique moves. My sheer height and gaunt physique made me a spectacle of curiosity. Wow, that guy is really goofy, but he is kind of good I imagined most people to think. On this night though I was Denny fucking Terrio. I owned the Scaramouche!

I noticed after what seemed like 2 minutes but was more like 45 that the donde boys were gone and it was just me alone with a creature I had no idea how to entertain. It was hot and we were both pouring sweat as the music slowed a bit.

We decided to walk outside and sit on the steps and we must have taken a seat at  or very near the precise area of the steps where my father had been accosted by henchmen just a few years prior. All I knew at the time was that I could have been sitting on the stairway to hell and I would not have cared because I was so much closer to heaven than I had ever been before.

To this day I remember every feeling I had being alone with this girl on the empty steps of a Mexican Disco. I cannot remember a word we said, only that she was from Tyler, TX and as we stared at one another we said some silly things about humidity and Texas before our lips met in a salty perspiration soaked kiss.

The Scaramouche became Shangri-La and although I had never kissed anyone before that moment, I had practiced on my arms, in my mirror, and with my pillow so that when the occasion arose I would be less than a fumbling, nascent, tongue-heavy moron. I think that kiss was the first thing in my life that had ever exceeded one of my lofty expectations. In that fleeting moment I was convinced that coming to Mexico made me the lover I always knew I was. I was never going to go home I thought as we walked across the street to the deserted Plaza....to be continued