Have you ever heard a song on the radio, a really great song, but missed the name and then never heard it again? This is the story of a song that haunted me for years.

I first heard The Song (as it became to be known) at Paris New York, the dance club my best friend Kathy and I used to sneak out to when we were in high school. Hearing it was an epiphany of sorts. Euphoric. The Song was audible bliss. I couldn't decipher the words, but I didn't have to, it just made sense: the music, the voice, the way the song made me move. I danced to it near Ted, the impossibly beautiful older man who was the lust of my teenage life. Being near Ted, dancing within feet of his godlike presence, was the pinnacle of my existence at that time.

After hearing it at Paris a few times (Ted never failed to dance to it, nor did I) we started to call it Under My Skin since that's part of the chorus. Somehow I finally found out that Under My Skin is actually a little ten minute ditty by The The called Uncertain Smile. To this day it remains one of my favorite songs ever.

The thing that made the song even more mysterious is that there are two versions: a twelve inch DJ mix and the regular version from the album. The first time I heard it at Paris, I heard the DJ mix. When I finally bought the CD, it sounded off. Something was missing, something I could not place. Years later, when I was in college and a regular at Limelight, I discovered that one of the DJs, Dave Kendall, had the special long version of Uncertain Smile. I nearly fainted from happiness when he played it. It was instant time transport; I was no longer dancing in a former church in New York City, I was whisked back to a simpler time: I was back at Paris New York, dancing near Ted. I seriously contemplated stealing the record from Dave Kendall while he was wooing a girl with complimentary drink tickets. I probably should have, it would have saved me a decade of anguish.

For years I searched every bin of every used record store everywhere I went hoping to one day find the illusive twelve inch. No dice. I could hear the alternate mix in my head like ghost music, the missing parts of the song echoing through my skull. More than ten years of fruitless searching passed before I realized I had the perfect tool to locate anything I could ever possibly yearn for: eBay. It took two searches and the record was mine.

But before you think, "What a happy ending!" be forewarned, there is always difficulty to contend with, at least in my experience. My record arrived intact, but since I had no turntable, I couldn't listen to it. Yes, pity me. The song remained trapped in vinyl, mute in its cardboard sleeve.

A few months passed before it occurred to me that I could bring the record to my mom's house and listen to it there. The first thing I did when I got there was place the record on my old, broken down record player. I lay on the floor, staring up at the pink ceiling of my former room. The quality of a record is so unlike the unblemished cd sound we are used to now. There are scratchy dust noises when the needle hits the vinyl. Static. Fuzz. You can hear the mechanical revolution of the turntable. It's electric.

But the best part is when the song starts. Oh! The Song! At long last. I shivered and closed my eyes and slipped back in time. A decade constricted. It was pure heaven.