Michael Roth was a young Jewish prince. His family owned a line of elite department stores in Texas called Roth/Harris, which for a time, even trumped its other Dallas rival, Neiman/Marcus. In other words, Michael had tasted and seen things I as a kid could only dream about—Europe, skiing, tropical beaches.

Michael was a good kid but he was also a total spaz. In peewee league sports, he was always assigned positions where his spaziness could be reigned in. In baseball, he played catcher: He never could catch a pitch but he wasn’t afraid to charge. In soccer he was a ruthless fullback, taking the scalps of 3rd and 4th grade forwards foolhardy enough to advance the ball beyond midfield.

Michael was also one of the most popular kids in school. He had a cool older brother and sister who lorded over the high school and drove expensive foreign cars. His house was nestled in Preston Hollow, an exclusive neighborhood with well-manicured hedges, which was also home to another classmate, Amy Boone—a direct descendant of Daniel Boone, whose parents owned the neurotics’ pleasure garden, The Container Store. T.I. titan, Ross Perot lived minutes away.

The Roth’s postmodern pile sat across from a creek. You had to drive across a small cement bridge to get to it. I had looked through my parent’s book of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture and I was sure that the Roth’s lived in one of Wright’s creations. Mrs. Roth was beautiful. She had delicate, sinewy features, and was going gray gracefully. One of her front teeth had a slight crook, which gave her the most wonderful lisp. OK, she was a MILF.

I know all this because one glorious day Michael invited me to spend the night at his house. Now, whenever I spent the night at a friend’s house, it always seemed to be the same horrible nightmare. My friend would become unhinged over some small thing his mother asked him to do, like put his Legos away, and he would lash out at her. I would shrink into the corner and hope for an end to the madness. My mom would have never tolerated such craziness in her house. My parents believed that order was far more important than the hide of one child. And Michael’s house was no different. He was a brat, used to getting his way.

After that one evening at the Roths’ where we dined on gourmet food and took a bath so hot it burned my brain, I never spent the night again. Michael and I sort of drifted apart. He was very popular after all and I just wasn’t. I see now that many of my sleepover invites had a lot to do with me being the only black kid in the class. I think the mothers were trying to broaden their young son’s horizons. I can just see the parents saying to each other, “We can’t not invite the black kid.” So I was hardly surprised when I was invited to Michael’s bar mitzvah, even though we hadn’t really hung out since we were kids.

When I got the invitation, my older brother had been diligently studying men’s fashion in the pages of GQ Magazine and since I wanted to be like my big brother, I also kept myself abreast of all the sartorial dos and don’ts. Hence, I picked out my outfit for the bar mitzvah with great care—a tweed jacket I’d gotten for Easter, with a black Polo tie, hunter green Genera shirt, and of course my Bass boat shoes. I was rocking the Kanye West look, sans irony, at the tender age of 13.

I dressed not only to impress the Roths but also Kate Mulvehill, a cute, Scott-Irish new kid in school who had rich golden hair, freckles, an upturned nose and a lilting laugh that knocked her lovely chin skyward. I was smitten with her. Thoughts of her took up most of the space in my head. (This was before the days of medicating children so my deluded longing was raw.) I was determined to have Kate, or at least to make all my longing disappear, and I thought Michael’s bar mitzvah was the night it was going to happen. She’d smiled and exchanged hellos with me when we walked into the synagogue, and she’d made a face at me during the service to express how boring and long the service had been. I was so in there!

After the ceremony, crudités and drinks were served. Michael’s parents approached me and thanked me for coming. Then Mrs. Roth complimented me on my outfit and I blasted through the roof into fashion Valhalla. I’d gotten a compliment from the queen of the Roth/Harris Empire. I could die now.

After cocktail hour, the kids all piled into three chartered party buses and I rode with quiet wonder at the depths of the Roth Family’s riches. We were driven downtown to the West End Marketplace. Once a mess of abandoned warehouses, the West End had been converted into a shopping center complete with fancy restaurants and a Planet Hollywood. Could it get any cooler? Michael’s parents rented out an entire floor of the building. The raw loft space afforded great views of all the Dallas skyscrapers. There were amazing gourmet treats and all the soda and candy we could stuff into our grubby little mouths. It was shaping up to be the best night of my life.

As I saw it, I had cultivated my relationship with Kate since the 5th grade, and now the moment had come to step it up and go steady. I’d waited and waited for the right moment. Unfortunately I’d waited too long. Just as I was about to make my move, my friends informed me that some of Michael’s New York cousins were dancing with Kate. I took off like a shot for the dance floor where I was in for the shock of my young life. Kate and another girl, Amy Moye, were surrounded by Michael’s four cousins. And they were Freaking.

For anyone who doesn’t remember, Freaking is a ridiculous dance from the 90s: The man leans back, crotch aimed at his dance partner, knees bent and one hand raised toward the sky. With his female partner straddled between his legs, the man makes a bridge with his other arm, so that he has three points of contact with the floor. In short, Freaking looks like the MTV Grind’s version of the bridge yoga position.

So the boys were Freaking Kate and Amy who were dancing in total ecstasy. I watched in horror. On top of the ridiculous moves, these boys’ fashion was atrocious—genie pants with patent leather shoes and steel toe tips, vests and rayon shirts, with Looney Tunes ties. Stuff like this just wasn’t done in Texas… at least for another couple of years. I wanted to run over and break up the junior high orgy, to grab these gatecrashing Yankees by their scruff and toss them out of the party, but instead I found a dark corner and remained there until it was time to go home.

The next morning my father drove me and my friend David up to the mountains near Norman, Oklahoma for what was left of a Boy Scout camping trip. David and I had missed the first night of the trip on account of Michael’s party. We drove in total silence. I felt like I’d been hit in the back of the head with a frozen sledgehammer. My father, as always, was playing the Four Tops in his impractical rear-loading CD player:

“Baby I need your lovin’/Although you’re never near/Your voice I often hear/Another day, another night/I long to hold you tight/’Cause I’m so lonely….”

I actually listened to the words for the first time that day. When my Dad tried to eject the disc after the sixth repeat, I went ticking-clock berzerker. These songs were speaking to me. I still associate her with the Four Tops… and freaking.