Like a record, baby.

A couple nights ago, I called Vic on her cell phone, and she almost missed the call because she's set her ring tone to "Walking on Sunshine" by Katrina and the Waves.

"Hello ... Oh, I'm sorry," Vic said, picking up the phone. "When the song starts, I sing along to it, and I forget to actually answer."

The song that always used to do that for me, though I don't have a fancy ring tone, was "Come On, Eileen" by Dexy's Midnight Runners. It reminded me of Wednesday Night '80s back at Boneshaker's when I was in college. I'd jump up and down in a circle waving my hands in the air when that song came on. It was one of the few I could lose myself in, without care that I was somehow being watched or that my stomach was somehow keeping a rhythmic bounce opposite the rest of my body.

The first time I thought my mother might be OK with me and the whole gay thing was, actually, an '80s music moment.

My mom and I used to dance together in our kitchen, a variation on some sort of swing dance that I now do with my girl cousins at family weddings. My mom, in teaching me, wouldn't really use music. She'd do a step, and she's show me how to follow through with another step. Eventually, you had a whole routine down.

But the best dance I ever had with my mother actually took place a couple years ago. I was out of college, hanging out in the living room and watching VH1. And my mother, who I think was making dinner, came in to tell me that the meal was ready.

Catching a glimpse of the television set, she asked me what was going on.

"Mom, it's 'The RuPaul Show," I said. "Please don't make me change it. Dead or Alive is coming on."

"What?," my mom asked. "What's Dead or Alive?"

"They sang 'You Spin Me Right Round," I said.

"Oh, so they're a band," she said.

"Yeah," I said. "Just watch."

And Dead or Alive, dressed in some sort of off-putting, death-metal regalia so that they looked like an anorexic version of KISS, took the mike from RuPaul.

"Um, I don't know if you should be watching this," she said to me.

Then, Dead or Alive started playing the song. The song.

And Mom recognized it.

"Hey, they play this at the bar Jerry and I go to," she said.

"Yeah," I said, "they play it at my favorite bar every Wednesday."

Then I started dancing. Jumping up and down and shaking my head.

And my mother took my hand, and she started doing the Twist. It was really funny.

And we just sorta rocked out in the living room.

My partially-deaf, former-music-teacher mother and her New Wave-loving, homosexual, dancing-though-disabled oldest son.

No one interrupted us. The song played out until the end, and we laughed as RuPaul came back on the screen.

"Is that a man?" my mother asked me.

"That's RuPaul," I said. "Surely, you've heard of her."

And we stood there, still holding hands from the dance, and giggled.