Good Or Shit: The Song That Time Forgot (NSFW)

It’s Friday at work. One of the girls has sent an email around with the subject, "Friday Vibesssss". It contains a YouTube link to Christina Aguilera’s 1999 hit Genie In A Bottle and the four of us have loaded it up on our individual computers, cursor hanging over the play button, index finger hovering over the trackpad, getting ready to press play at the same time.

It’s not the first time I’ve worked in a job where the women on my team synch their YouTube pages and dance at their desks. At my last job, one of the girls and I did this quite a bit, even coming up with our own online symbol to communicate when a desk disco is going on — *computer dance* — literally to dance at one’s computer while working.

If you were to look at my team this particular Friday, you would have seen four girls sitting in front of laptops, grooving in their seats, breaking out their air-mics, and seemingly getting down to the sound of silence.

And then I dropped the tune that everyone forgot.

“Oh my god! Amazing! I haven’t heard this song in years!”

“Right?!”

“This is a massive tune!”

“Right?!”

My workmate plays it three times. Even our boss gets involved, wiggling in his chair to 112’s Dance With Me.

It’s not the first time I’ve seen this track change people. Watched their eyes widen, and a smile takeover their face as that old familiar sound washes over them. But in my experience, it often leads to unbridled wanton behaviour.

For the past year-and-a-half I have been living in a large rundown flat in a former Victorian-era mansion in north London. While we’ve lost and gained flatmate’s in this time, myself and the two boys I live with — I’m gonna call them Norm and Liam — have been a constant and we’ve come to look at each other like family.

But it wasn’t always like that. Not until one fateful Friday night, a month after we all moved in, when we discovered a shared love of turn-of-the-century R&B.

Before I knew it we were draining every bottle of wine — some full, some half empty, some more vinegar than wine — in the flat, and dancing like cultists around a bonfire.

I arrived home with a bottle of wine in one hand and a burger in the other. “I really feel like a drink,” Norm said to me, so I offered him a glass of wine. He hesitated. He’d been on a detox and hadn’t had a drink in months. I told him it was neither here nor there to me and, after umming and ahhing, he gave in and poured a glass.

After that, everything moved fast. Before I knew it we were draining every bottle of wine — some full, some half empty, some more vinegar than wine — in the flat, and dancing like cultists around a bonfire. We were moving across the floor, balancing on the sofas, sliding across the dining room table.

No Next track was too cheesy, no Mase too naff, and I’m pretty sure we went through the entire Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.

At one point, pausing to roll cigarettes, refill wine glasses and breathe, Liam came home. He stood in the doorway and surveyed the scene — it probably looked liked we’d been having sex — then he sat down at the laptop and dropped Ginuwine, Fabolous and Jagged Edge. And it all kicked off again.

But when we played 112’s Dance With Me, shit got cray.

After about the third listen, I found myself doing a sort of handstand against my living room wall. Only, rather than having my body straight up, my knees were bent, my ugly, grey, only-round-the-house tracksuit pants were pulled down from my waist so that my arse, barely covered by a pair of lacy black knickers, was out for all to see.

I am not a body conscious person. I don’t have panic attacks about eating fat and sugar, nor do I go about in clothing or behave in ways that draw attention to my body. Yet there I was, Ugg boots up against the wall, arse out in the air, 112’s Dance With Me playing in the background while my flatmate photographed me twerking for Diplo.

Eventually the sun came up and the wine ran out. But a friendship was cemented; to this day this day we speak of that night as legend.

“Sorry, I know we’ve played it loads already,” Norm said, several times that night. “Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, I don’t care how many times we’ve played it. Allow it. Allow it.” And we played it again.

I see you, looking at me, I can tell by your eyes that you’re feeling me, and I really want you to get close to me, so won’t you, dance with me, dance with me...

“Liz, put some music on, yeah.”

“Like what?”

“Put that 112 track on.”

That’s how Saturday nights at my house often begin. And it usually means the evening is going to entail an endless flow of Prosecco, taxis from one side of the city to another, underground nudist parties, and twenty people in our living room dancing until dawn.

Allow it.

After the Friday work desk-disco, I get a text message from my colleague. She’s gone home and continued to play 112. We start sending each other lyrics and before I know it I’m sitting at a table in the pub doing the computer dance to my phone screen.

“Danced many a dance to this in my heyday,” She says. “I had totally forgotten about it.”

We have a company function coming up. “If we’re going somewhere there is music,” she says, “we are so requesting this.”

Things could get wild.