get a room – my near encounter with depeche mode

• My teenage obsession with Depeche Mode did not end with the Black Celebration summer of 1988 in which I wore a green plastic concert band, for three months straight, in honor of my love for them. No, my delusional, “cool” maneuvers in honor of DM did not end there.

Fast forward two years to the summer of 1990, just a month after I had graduated high school and a month before I was leaving for college. Wouldn’t you know it, Depeche Mode was making a two-night concert appearance at our favorite concert venue (our only concert venue at the time), the Sports Arena, and of course, my girlfriends and I all had tickets. We felt it a perfect way to end our high school era, attending the “World Violation” tour, just before we were all heading off on our own, world violating ways.

Their stint in San Diego was to last two nights and our tickets were for the second night. So, the night before our concert, BFF Mariana, Amy and Lisa were all over at my house for a sleep over (pigtails and pillow fights were involved, I’m pretty sure). In between blasts of the pillows, we stared at the DP posters on the walls and fantasized about how we would somehow meet them. This is what young, delusional, obsessed girls do. Seriously.

Through some top secret G4 classified intel, or maybe a well-connected family friend, we learned that the DP band members were staying over night at Le Meridian hotel in Coronado that night after their first concert. We abruptly put down the pillows, hopped into my little Nissan and headed straight for Le Meridian; we were on a mission to meet our black-leather-wearin’ idols.

As we crossed the Coronado bridge, tummies in knots, jitters in full swing and “Violator” on highest decibel, we started to plot our stealth entrance into the hotel and into David Gahan’s heart.

“Okay, we’ll distract the valets while you two go into the lobby and look around.”

Just then we pulled up to the front of the hotel and immediately saw the shiny silver tour bus which they had undoubtedly just deb-boarded, and which most certainly housed their luggage, instruments and wacko drug/sex paraphernalia. We died. And squealed. And then returned to our game faces.

It was on.

Upon pulling in to the carport, next to the bus, THEIR BUS, the valet asked us if we were guests of the hotel, to which we sheepishly answered “um, no, but…” My acting prowess was not yet fully developed, plus I think I had peed in my pants a bit. You know how that goes. Any batting of the eye lids, or showing of whatever cleavage we (they) had, was to no avail.

Hot valet guy: “Sorry ladies, no one enters the property tonight unless you’re a guest of the hotel.”

Downtrodden and dismayed, we pulled away. I drove down the block a little bit and then parked the car in a dark area just around the corner from the hotel at which point one of us had the brilliant idea to sneak onto the property by foot.

Inner Monologue: Good thing we’re wearing black, we’ll totally fit in. No one will know what we’re up to.

So. We parked the car, and began walking up to the hotel. Before we even reached the front drive, two security guards popped out of nowhere, “Sorry Ladies.”

Shit, foiled again.

“He continued, “Sorry ladies, no one enters the property tonight unless you’re a guest of the hotel.”

As we got back in the car, one of said, “Well we tried.” And another one, “Yeah, it was fun anyway.”

But I was not ready to throw in the proverbial towel yet. I turned to the girls and said, “Well if the only way to get into the hotel is to be a guest, let’s get a room.”

To Be Continued…