The Disco Devotee of the Decade

The confession you are about to read is true. After years of hiding a horrible secret, I’m coming clean.

I’m a former disco maniac.

There, I said it.

I loved the ‘70s, the polyester threads hugging my body, the puka shells and multiple gold chains dangling above my navel, the pulsating music racing up through my platform shoes, sending me into a hot samba frenzy.

The ‘70s were farrrrrrrr-out, man, and I’m glad they’re back in.

For many of my pals--most of whom consider the era an error--the return of the ‘70s is bad news.

They shudder. They grimace. They pray for me.

But I revel in its return. In my John Travolta white-vested suit and black Qiana shirt, I flex my knees and point to my creator in gratitude.

Musically, the ‘70s were a hodgepodge: the Bay City Rollers, the Sex Pistols, ABBA, Led Zeppelin, Sister Sledge, the Partridge Family. But for me, there was nothing like the thump-a-thump-a-thump-a-thump beat of disco--elements of soul music set to a vibrant Latin American beat, frequently with repetitive lyrics.

Barry White’s “Love Theme,” included his most memorable line, “can’t get enough,” which he repeated 37 times in less than four minutes. The disco diva herself, Donna Summer, repeated “Love to Love You, Baby,” more than 50 times in her extended mix of the same song.

Now those were love songs.

During the disco heyday, in the late ‘70s, I had “Saturday Night Fever” fervor and I had it bad: long Bee Gee style hair, a Tony Orlando-styled mustache and an uncontrollable Tony Manero (John Travolta’s character in “Saturday Night Fever”) strut that still manages to provide some hip action when the boogie side of my brain gives the command.

I was a discoid, all right.

I bumped, kung-fu danced, did the disco duck and spelled out Y-M-C-A on lighted dance floors in tight-fitting flared slacks, sans rear pockets to better show off my bikini underwear. I never left home without my feet planted in my favorite dancing shoes: 3-inch high, zippered-to-the-shins orange platforms.

I wasn’t alone, either. There were other disco clones around me, battling for spots on dance floors no bigger than paper plates, getting lost--under spinning mirrored balls--in the music that was our brief escape from a hard work week, studying for college finals or just celebrating another day of “Ah, Ah, Ah, Ah, Stayin’ Alive, Stayin’ Alive.”

In 1976, I was 22, just out of college and working as a police reporter from 3 p.m. to midnight for the San Antonio Express-News. Every night, toward the end of my shift, I counted down the minutes to getting down with K. C. and the Sunshine Band.

When the clock struck midnight, I busted out of my reporter’s cocoon and turned into Disco Fool. Destination: “Funky Town.” Mission: To “Boogie Oogie Oogie,” “Get Down Tonight” and “Shake Your Groove Thing” at a “Disco Inferno” in my “Boogie Shoes.”

And I was always prepared. In the parking lot of local discotheques I swapped my jeans and sneakers for body-hugging petroleum-based products. In the glove compartment of my pea-green Volkswagon, I stocked Aramis, Aqua Net and industrial-strength Listerine for use at a moment’s notice.

Looking suave and slick, I headed straight for the dance floor and lost myself in the machine-made fog and the glitz and glamour. That was, after all, what we were there for. Discos were a place to be seen, with foxes and hunks showing off the latest fashion labels on their rears--Chic, Foxy and Macho were favorites--and the latest dance steps.

Remember the hustle? For the first time there was an official disco dance, and people started trekking to clubs to get in on the synchronized Stepford dance craze. We’d line up in rows, no more than eight hoofers across and six rows deep, and step, step, step and then kick, step, spin. This we’d repeat for 20 minutes at a time. I, of course, never broke a sweat.

But who wanted to New York Hustle, Latin Hustle or even Tango Hustle when moi --the winner of disco dance contests--was around to make up my own? One dance, the Muscle Hustle, called for dancers to flex their arms in the air in a Herculean pose. It caught on at a few clubs.

When I had to be at home, I listened to records from my amazing disco collection. Fattening out my stacks of vinyl were Rick James, Thelma Houston, Vickie Sue Robinson, Parliament, the Isley Brothers, the Tramps, the Ritchie Family, three copies of the “Saturday Night Fever” sound track, 23 Donna Summer albums and a variety of her mixes and one-time dance hits by Ethel Merman, Eartha Kitt, Dolly Parton, Barbra Streisand and Barry Manilow.

In fact, there were disco versions of just about everything from the “I Love Lucy Theme” to the Broadway stage musical, “Evita” to the unlikely--but very danceable--”Star Spangled Banner.”

I even worked disco into my work life. I kept disco fans informed with a weekly column for the Express-News titled “Mr. Q’s Disco Review.” A line at the end of each column read: “Michael Quintanilla is a reporter who spends his off hours in discos--dancing, dancing, dancing, dancing.”

Indeed, I was a dancing devil. I hustled with Van McCoy. I freaked out with Chic. And like Gloria Gaynor, I survived.