My attraction-repulsion to dancing goes back to before I could stumble.
I consider myself representative of a wide swath of U.S. adult males
who grew up without even a faint odor of dancing talent. Other odors, yes,
some acutely, egregiously evident at the 8th grade end of year dance at St.
Bruno’s.
The year was 1967. I was 13 going on 10, and woefully short for
even a 10 year old, in my not too objective view of things. Girls were generally
a head taller, and most were starting to sprout these strange and somewhat mesmerizing
protuberances which due to the height difference were exactly at eye level. All year long.
This was my first experience of being titillated.
So when the Sisters of Mercy (Edgar Alan Poe couldn’t have imagined
a more ironic name) announced there would be an end of the year dance for the
boys there was a sickly, pukey feeling: a coctail of equal parts fear and dread, but garnished with a certain nervous je ne sais pas qua - a heady brew of curiosity, anticipation, and a crazy feeling that perhaps by some strange millennial miracle this could actually work. It is this same strange fascination, this epic attraction-repulsion that plays out every time I dance years after. More about that later. Much later.
The song that was the rage at that moment was the Rolling Stones “Let’s Spend the Night Together”. Pretty tame by today’s standards, but in the 60’s this was incredibly
IN YOUR PARENTS FACE. Ed Sullivan - as staid and conservative a Catholic as any Sister of Mercy- allowed the Stones on his Ed Sullivan Show only on condition that Mick Jagger clean up his act and rephrase the refrain. I remember Mr. Jagger rolling his eyes
as he moaned “Let’s Spend Some Time Together”. But everybody under 20 knew what
Mick really wanted to do.
And somehow the Sisters of Mercy found out what Mick really wanted to do
and banned the song from the school dance. Damn. But you’ve got to respect the Sisters of Mercy. I still can’t figure our how in the heck they get hold of a Life magazine to find out about the Rolling Stone lyrics controversy.
I vividly remember the parish hall the June evening the week before graduation.
The boys were lined up against one wall, the girls against the opposite. The atmosphere
was tense. It was as if two armies were poised, ready for battle, Greeks versus Persians.
Sister Mary Catherine Marie patrolled the no man’s land between the two, Sister Mary Carmel secured the perimeter. Sister Mary Louise stood watch at the gate to ward off
the barbarian hordes of public schoolers (P-S’ers in the parlance of the day, pronounced ‘Pissers”.)
To this day I can’t explain how at a moment like this, when everything was poised
for great deeds and heroic action, the only thing I could think of was how dry my mouth was and how wet my underarms were. Betrayed by 13 year old chemistry, what should have been wet was dry and what should have been dry was wet. Big time.
And then the music started. Not Mick Jagger urging us to Spend the Night
Together, or complaining that he couldn’t Get No Satisfaction, but less threatening
and more Sisters of Mercy appropriate songs by Herman’s Hermits, Petula Clark, and
the Monkees. There’ll be no orgiastic bodies thrashing about tonight don’t you know.
Well, the sad truth is even if the volume was amped to the max and the Stones
unexpurgated version was blasting, there was no way we were venturing out onto the
barren empty “no-mans-land” between the battle lines. Why? Is it not obvious?
Put yourself in this predicament: all your buds are watching you. Remember
these guys are fully capable of teasing you for the rest of your life for any misstep.
“Hey Molina - you look like a spazz and dance like one too” ringing in my ears per omnia
saecula saeculorum. All the girls are watching you. Any embarrassing move will ruin your chances with everyone of them for all time. Your experience in dancing is the total gathered by watching the Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. You’ve never actually danced a step, you’ve merely watched. Except for the one time your Mom came into the den and danced the twist (awkward) but at least no one else was watching. You knew deep down you looked dumb, REALLY dumb, but also that your mother loved you and it was OK.
The bottom line: you don’t know how to dance, and any attempt you make will
look awkward in the best case, but most likely extremely stupid. So given the choice
of stepping out and humiliating yourself for all to see, you play it safe.
As you grow older, there are ways to cope with these childish fears - louder music,
darker spaces, flashing lights, alcohol, and mind-altering drugs come to mind. I’m not advocating these things, but to be honest, if I had flashing lights, alcohol and mind-altering drugs in massive doses at the parish hall that night I am sure I would have danced and had a great time. That’s about what would have taken to get me out there, or any of my friends who, like me, were hanging on to the wall like passengers on the Titanic, making small talk and trying to look cool.
I felt sorry for the girls. A good number of them could have and would have liked to dance, but all these nubile, freshly minted nymphs were matched with a tribe of midgets with bad breath and rank underarms. They deserved better.
* * *
High school dances were optional (I managed to be busy doing more important things almost every time) and at least were dark, loud, and largely anonymous. And
dancing - and calling it that was a stretch - meant doing your own thing. You could flail and lurch and bend and quiver any which way and nobody really cared. Your date would not even be looking at you, she’d have a far away spacey look like she was in a trance.
At least mine all looked like that - did any of you other guys have that same problem?
Never would you be close enough to actually touch your partner. It probably would have been really uncool, but here I am merely speculating because it never crossed my mind. It was so dark you couldn’t see who you were dancing with. It was so loud you had to scream monosyllables at the top of your lungs to communicate.
So in reality, it could barely be called dancing with someone - it was more like two separate people dancing in their own separate bubbles trying hard not to look at each other. Dancing zombies. I am not saying that all persons at all times in history are dancing zombies. I know I was a dancing zombie the few times I ventured out, a
dancing zombie with a dry mouth and wet underarms.
I never did the prom thing. Quite sadly, I never met a girl in my all boy high school that was worth springing for a tux, a corsage, dinner. You didn’t need to be a
business major to realize the return on investment would be not quite that of establishing an ice cream mine on the Moon. It seemed like quite the recipe for disaster - spending too much for so little on someone to you knew next to nothing about.
Well, there was one semi-formal Homecoming dance that I sprang for. At the
first school dance of my sophomore year I happened upon this surprisingly beautiful dark-haired girl named Lucretia (the only one I had known before or since. I have since learned to pay closer attention to names and their karmic implications. Lucretia as in wealth, lucre, success. Little did I realize I was doomed from the start). We danced - she swayed gracefully like an aspen in the autumn breeze, whilst I flailed and lurched and bent and quivered. It was dark, but not so dark that I could see she was ACTUALLY LOOKING AT ME. I tactfully adopted a faraway spacey look, but out of the corner of my eye I came to realize that not only was she looking at me, she was actually smiling at me.
This was actually way beyond anything I had ever experienced before or even imagined. Is this really happening? It almost made me forget how self-consciously
foolish I felt thrashing and flopping like a flounder on the dancefloor. When she most unexpectedly kissed me the hook was set.
Long tragic story short, I invited her to the Homecoming dance; she accepted;
I begged my parents to let me try out my brand new drivers license on her; wisely they
ruled that I could drive the family car (9 seater station wagon) and meet her at the dance.
I arrived at Homecoming breathless to find she was not there. Called her up, said she wasn’t planning on coming, either. End of story, except that when prom time rolled around I made sure I had better things to do.
For the last 42 years I have found better things to do than dance. A happy marriage, a demanding career, a houseful of four growing children kept me very busy. My leisure activities are physically demanding - I have been playing and coaching soccer
all my life and hope to continue into my 80’s. I have lately become a dedicated cyclist knowing that for my knees to keep playing soccer the cross training is important.
I’ve ridden across the Cascades from Klamath Falls to Eugene and hope to ride the
Oregon and California coasts in the next couple years.
With a long list of better things to do, and my extraordinarily poor early experiences with dance it was highly improbable and very unlikely that I would ever
willingly approach a dance floor. The social occasions requiring dancing were mercifully few and far between, mostly weddings. Dancing with a bride - my wife Maria, and later
my daughter Ana - was actually quite easy: 1.) everyone was looking at the bride; 2.) there was no way anyone could possibly see what my feet were doing underneath the spray of lace and silk of a wedding dress; 3.) most importantly of all, I was unselfconsciously and serenely happy. That last one actually worked better than flashing lights, loud music, and drugs.
Quite unexpectedly - miraculously is a ridiculous understatement- my pathetic stumbling on the rocky road of a dance-disabled life led to a precipitous fall from gracelessness.
It only took six decades.
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