This is an outtake from Club Paradise, Chapter 2. By the time the story was complete this section felt too long to me, so I cut almost all of it. I'm posting this now as a stand-alone tribute to the great Meat Loaf, who passed on last night.
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Just then the lights started spinning and the DJ came over the mic:
"Ladies and Gentlemen, it's time for the famous Club Paradise Floor Show. I guarantee this one is gonna knock you guys over!"
This was followed by an air horn blast.
"And for all you guys on the floor NOT getting dances right now, this is the song to get -- it's gonna be a long one!"
The moving lights snapped into two tight spotlights, revealing two people standing at mic stands. There was a man with wild shaggy hair dressed in a loose, ruffled silk shirt, and a woman in a matching white sheer.
Jangly guitars kicked things off. The man grabbed his mic stand Elvis-style and sang along to the track.
"Well I remember every little thing as if it happened only yesterday -- parking by the lake and there was not another car in sight."
The projector lit up behind them, showing a giant lake, from an overlook perspective. The comically large ruffles on the man's shirt shook as he swayed.
"And I never had a girl looking any better than you did."
A spotlight snapped onto the woman. She looked every bit the Vegas showgirl stripper, in a gauzy diaphanous shawl over top of a teeny tiny white bikini. She spun in place like a model ballerina.
"And all the kids at school, they were wishing they were me that night!"
He singled out a guy at one of the front tables, pointing at him on this lines. The guy gave a fist pump in response.
"And now our bodies were oh so close and tight" The man moved around the front of the stage, singing over the track, and circled behind the woman, coming around to her other side.
"It never felt so good, it never felt so right." He was running his hands all around her body but not actually touching her. She alternated between staring at him with searing desire and looking away faux demurely.
"And we were glowing like the metal on the edge of a knife. Come on, hold on tight!"
His hands landed on her shoulders, and slipped down under her sheer before she spun away leaving him holding nothing.
On the first chorus of "Paradise by the Dashboard Light", the DJ threw a projection of the club logo on the back wall above them: "Club Paradise", spelled out in neon pink cursive script.
"Though its cold and lonely in the deep, dark, night; I can see paradise by the dashboard light."
The singer dramatically gestured at the woman next to him, who opened her cherry red lips to lip sync the next verse.
"Ain't no doubt about it, we were doubly blessed. We were barely," -- at this point the DJ came on the mic and said "NINETEEN", blocking out the younger age in the actual lyric -- "and we were barely dressed."
