Don't Ask Me

That was some party the other day—apparently it's still going on. That's very cool. Truth be told, I've never been much of a party person. I wasn't invited until my first real party until college, and even then I think the invitations were obligatory because I was in the vicinity when friends of friends extended them. There are many reasons why I never went to parties. Maybe it was the way I looked, or dressed, or behaved. Maybe it was the crowd I ran with. One strong possibility could be the fact that I can't dance.

Can't. Not, unfortunately, won't. The first school dance I went to was an absolute disaster. It was the second-to-last day of middle school and my friends were strongly encouraging me to ask the girl I'd had a crush on for nearly 3 years to dance. I hung back in the shadows along the wall most of the night, occasionally stepping out and then returning with a snack instead when I chickened out. They made fun of me relentlessly, although I didn't see any of THOSE nerds dancing with anyone either. Hypocrites. At any rate, I'd finally sucked down enough apple juice and Hydrox to make my move. It was a move born of desperation because, unbeknownst to anyone, it would be my last chance. I hadn't told any of my friends that I was going to be going to a different high school. I forget the exact reason why—I think my parents asked me to keep it quiet for some reason. As far as my twelve or thirteen-year-old brain knew, this might be the last time I'd see ANY of these people, let alone females since it was an all-boys Catholic high school I had been “sentenced” to.

Bad eighties dance music blared in the cafeteria as the lights flickered. She wasn't far away when into my path stepped one of my middle-aged stout teachers. “You're not dancing; you should be having fun!” she said as she took my hands and dragged me out on the dance floor. Has anyone out there ever felt relief and regret at the exact same time? On the one hand I was off the hook from the scary moment where I declared my long-secret feelings to the prettiest, most-talented girl in school and waited to be accepted or mocked. On the other hand, I was robbed of the opportunity to turn my life around, my last chance at happiness.

I finally excused myself politely, and looked around for the girl. Somehow, I found myself back along the same wall in the same shadows with the same friends making fun of me. One of them said they saw my dream-girl, that she hadn't left, and something as rarely felt as hope and confidence swelled within me. I cast myself off once more into the sea of intimidating cool kids writhing and leaping and doing moves I'd only seen in still yearbook photos. This was it. I was going to be face-to-face with destiny. I was going to be face-to-face with...my dad?

It was after 10PM, my bedtime. Truth be told, this was the time my dad normally went to bed. He yelled at me and said I had to get up for school the next day, and I protested that so did everyone else there and it was less than a half-day--we'd only be in long enough to get our final grades. He grabbed my wrist and I yanked it free, determined not to look like the baby I was acting like, to have this be everyone's last memory of the town nerd. I would go willingly, and not make a scene. As I headed for the door the teacher from earlier tried to get me to dance again, but I pulled away and stormed out and got in the car where my mom, also concerned about me, was anxiously waiting. I didn't speak to either parent the whole ride home. As an adult, I can only imagine what it will be like someday when I have to make a tough choice for my own children's well-being, even if it means they hate me for it at the time.

There were dances in my high school, when they'd bring in girls from our sister school. I never went. I didn't socialize much with anyone in that place until junior year, when my friend Mike, then a Freshman, got me out of my shell a little, introduced me to things like Nirvana and Pink Floyd. The closest I came to a dance was senior year, when I worked Friday nights on the student cleaning crew. My responsibility was to clean every window in the school, and one night when I got to the cafeteria there was music blaring and inside there were so many pretty girls in plaid skirts. I would say the cafeteria windows were never cleaner, and my supervisor wondered why I was late for my checkpoint. When it came time for the Senior prom, some of the guys in my class that I had started to at least talk to encouraged me to ask someone from my town. Everyone at this school came from different towns, and many had similar situations to my own where they had friends in their local public high schools. Though I'd only seen my middle school crush once in four years at the train station, and hadn't talked to her much when we did go to school together, I decided to call and ask her. Every day up until about a week before the prom I'd dial six out of seven digits and hang up.

I'm very self-conscious and while I've been known to head-bang like a dweeb when no one's watching or in my car where I forget people are watching, I tend to limit my movements. One Summer in college I went with my friend Mike and this other kid from our high school to a local amusement park that let you record a video against a green screen. We chose Slam by Onyx, and proceeded to make an infamous video of three white boys, two overweight, leaping around like the The Star Wars Kid. I just thank GOD the internet wasn't popular yet then. That video, which I can only hope my friend destroyed years ago, forever burned the image of me having an epileptic seizure to bad hip-hop into my brain.

Alcohol tends to get me up from my table at weddings where I make a real Elaine out of myself. My sentiments about dancing and weddings echo what Chandler Bing once said about avoiding his own erratic movements on the dance floor for fear of alienating women. I've done all right with slow dances but I'm clueless with what my generation considered dancing. I don't think my ex-girlfriend minded my lead feet. I've got photos of us from a few weddings and her smiles seem to be out of admiration rather than amusement. She had seen me jumping around too, once at a fashion show my friend was having at a New York club.

There's something liberating about dancing, a sense of being alive. Against my better judgment I've been drawn to it again and again, like a moth to a flame. A song will come on the radio and it's a conscious effort for me to remain motionless. Sometimes it's impossible to keep from singing along, although my adventures on a short-lived public access karaoke show are probably a post for another day. In the gym tonight, an entire Good Charlotte album seemed to be playing. Bloody Valentine. Hold on. The Anthem. As I pedaled, I could feel my shoulders moving in time with the pop-punk rhythms, fighting to make my mechanical motion more musical. I knew people were around me and would laugh, so I fought it, but it wasn't easy.

Maybe that's the secret to dancing, though. It isn't about how someone looks or what people think. It's about a loss of inhibition, and if it can be achieved without alcohol, then it's a happy person who can dance without caring what people say or think. I can only imagine how nice that must be.