When the student DJ dropped the needle on “School’s Out” by Alice Cooper, the dance floor filled at once. We danced like lunatics, throwing shapes for the girls we hoped were watching. Then came Elton John. The Supremes. The Bay City Rollers. Slade.

Then the music slowed. “Without You” by Harry Nilsson.

The floor emptied in seconds. My heart hammered against my ribs as I caught the eye of one girl. Before I could lose my nerve, I asked her to dance. My first time. I was fifteen. She said yes.

We started dancing, separated at first, but drawing closer together bit by bit. She put her head on my shoulder and I put my arms around her. Halfway through the song I was already imagining the wedding.

Then I felt a sharp tap on my shoulder.

Father O’Toole.

“This is absolutely unacceptable, Michael. You didn’t keep your distance. You’ll be barred from the next dance, and don’t let me catch you doing the like again.”

He split us up as if we were criminals. We never danced together again.

A few minutes later I watched Father O’Toole march back onto the dance floor and grab a boy by the ear. It was Pat Corcoran. The next time I saw Pat, he was like a shorn sheep. On my dormitory cubicle wall, Marc Bolan of T. Rex had long curly hair that would have had Father O’Toole reaching for the scissors.

I let my hair grow a little past my collar, not enough to be caught, just enough to feel I was getting away with something.

An samhradh sin, tar éis dom filleadh abhaile ón scoil chónaithe, d’fhreastail mé ar chúrsa Fraincise sa chathair, a bhí eagraithe ag an Alliance Française. Sa bhoth fuaime chúlaigh an saol taobh amuigh. Chuir mé na cluasáin orm agus labhair guth mná Fraincise isteach i mo chluasa amhail is go raibh sí ansin liom.

“Nos cosmonautes,” she said.

“Nos cosmonautes,” I said back into the microphone.

I listened to myself on playback. Is that really me? My own voice sounded as if it belonged to somebody else. By the end of the six weeks my accent had improved, and I had grown used to the sound of my own voice.

All summer I sang along with the radio hits. I knew every word of “Get It On” by T. Rex and “Starman” by David Bowie.

After the French classes ended, I got work in the bar at the new Springhill Court Hotel. I opened a credit union account with one thing in mind: my first electric guitar. When the rhythm guitarist in a local band decided to move on, I bought his fire-engine red 1965 Fender Mustang.

There was one problem. I had no amplifier.

I tapped into the innards of an old transistor radio and, by trial and error, found a way to make it work. It gave me maybe one watt of tinny, distorted sound, but I loved it. I learned chords from a book because I couldn’t afford lessons. I was convinced I was just months away from being a rock star.

After the holidays, I returned to school as a day student. At weekends I knocked around town. My parents even let me go to Saturday night dances in the Carlton, where there were no priests and no rules about distance.

The following summer, I grew my hair longer and wore denim and cheesecloth. By then I was a regular at the Carlton.