Yesterday I took my last written exam and when I came out, my head pounding from complex verb constructions that still confound me and nausea from yet another essay on love and power and 18th century Spanish aristocracy from the point of view of a 19th century French writer (really applicable material...), I was ready to go out. It had been a while since my last wild night, so when Carolin, my favorite german, mentioned the words "Open Bar," I was there. I put on my best dancing shoes, toasted the end of exams with a few glasses of champagne, and headed to a party at the once hip and now "passé" club, Les Bains (an old Turkish and Russian bath house-cum-Euro disco par excellence). Carolin failed to mention where we were going before and, had I known, I may have expected less, but still, "open bar" is a pretty seductive expression for a girl that once drank 8 tequilas (good ones) and a couple of pints of guinness and felt like a million dollars the next day. So, Les Bains it was.

My only other experience in a Turkish bath involved a frightening old Turkish woman who possessed a striking resemblence to Rumplestiltskin in a bathing suit, violating every part of me with a sponge and scraping off layers of dirt and skin until I was a painfully raw pink then cruelly dousing me in ice cold water, leaving me to lounge naked without even a safety towel on a big, hot rock surrounded by a lot of titties and bush. I can't say this experience was much different, but replace the scary Turkish woman with hoardes of sweaty French boys confusing dancing with molestation and about 50 times as many people in the steam room. Same amount of titties and bush.

Anyway, when you are a group of 6 really hot girls (I was quite impressed by us...), there is no shortage of attention that is at the same time flattering and really upsetting. So, to the tune of merengue and salsa tunes that were big 4 years ago in the US coupled, of course, with cheesy Eurotrash beats, we kicked off our shoes--the best dancing shoes are really no shoes at all, an opinion shared by Hagador Spartacus--and went crazy. To amuse ourselves we didn't allow any guy to dance with us if they had there shoes on and you'd be amazed how many men were willing to bare their naked toes.

Everything was just peachy until there was a change of DJ. And this is the part of the evening that I would equivocate with the cold water being poured over me after 40 minutes of warm water, massage, and steam at the Turkish bath in Istanbul. I was suddenly plunged into traumatic memories of 8th grade when, and I kid you not, "Rumpshaker" ("All I want to do is zoom-a-zoom-zoom-zoom-and-a-boom-boom"...) came on. The association I have with this song was so strong that I was transported from a cheesy Paris club to Home Ec with Ms. Mertens (the world's largest nutrition teacher), sitting quietly while the "popular kids" (who of course are now either fat, single parents or fat, mediocre conformists working for their dad's landscaping business) officially adopted this song as their anthem.

I relived the anxiety of trying to figure out who would be my roommates for the 8th Grade Washington trip, desperately seeking anyone who was not Larissa Masny--a nice girl, but who's cruel nickname "Big Bird" made being her friend akin to ingesting social cyanide. And as if this one song weren't enough, it was followed by "O.P.P" (yeah, you know me). Thank god Kris Kross didn't come on or I may have collapsed into convulsions, sticky with sweat and spilled Grey Goose, my bare feet waving helplessly in the air

I actually had trouble falling asleep when I got home because of the flood of embarassment, anxiety, and shame I felt thinking about middle school. Slushy shoes and pubescent clumsiness causing a nasty spill up the stairs and then sitting in homeroom while Allan Jeffers whispered the exciting news to 8th grade demon Melissa Lehr (who, last time I saw her, had begun to actually take on the physical characteristics of a demon.) Concert day when all performers were required to wear black and white, guaranteeing my label as a band nerd, one that I would have to reclaim with artsy, intellectual coolness in high school. The uneven bars in gym class, where my low center of gravity guaranteed that I would never be able to swing my legs up and over the bar. Pushing down a boy who I had once had a crush on (age 7) at a dance simply because a queen bee told me to. Oh, how awful people were. How awful I was! And perhaps it is the latter that is the most traumatic. Other people will always be shitty, but to recognize it in yourself is horrific. And all of this self-hate from a terrible DJing decision to play Rumpshaker.