It's Saturday night. I'm posting this video simply because it makes me happy. Also this is some amazing dancing! I've lamented all my life (which means I should have given up a long time ago) that most men no longer learn to dance with a partner. My parents went out dancing to live bands with their friends all the time at small halls around southwest Iowa. All of my dad's friends could at least do the 2-step. Most of them could waltz and jitterbug and do other dances too. I loved dancing with them, but most of all I loved dancing with my dad, the few times I actually got to. When I was little sometimes he would let me stand on his feet, and then he'd dance around the room. And then when I was older and had moved out, a couple of times when I was home for a visit I went out with my parents, and I got to dance with my dad and his friends, men of his generation. We didn't always get along very well, but something about dancing with my dad made me feel like I was accepted as one of the grownups. I would give a lot for one more turn around the dance floor at the VFW in Fontanelle, Iowa, with him, but he died many years ago at age 46, with the promise of many dances left unfulfilled. I always thought I would get together with my friends and go to dances and dance like that when I grew up. I'm not sure why. The guys my age never learned in high school, so why would they know how to dance as adults? The manly skill of leading a woman around a dance floor died with the men of my dad's generation, with only a few exceptions, and the men of my generation didn't bother to learn. Oh, we danced a lot, but not together with steps and leading and dips and all that. In high school my best friend Carmelita and I taught ourselves out to jitterbug, but we had to dance with each other, because none of the boys could do it and they wouldn't learn. Pathetic.
I did dance with a few guys who were quite good during the disco era when I was a bartender. Don't laugh. It was so much fun. But it didn't last long, and then punk killed dancing. Now when I go out dancing, mostly we go out on the floor in a group, and usually it's just women dancing beside each other. It's fun. I love it. But it's not the same as dancing with someone, steps synced to the music and to each other, bodies pressed together, feeling the beat as one. It requires a level of trust and letting go and being willing to let someone else lead. Or being willing to lead, which is also hard. It's exhilarating and sexy and I wish I'd been able to do more of it in my life. In fact, if I were to ever start dating, I'd make a list of what I'm looking for in a man and dancing would be on that list. I mean he'd have to know how to lead and he'd have to be tall enough to turn me, even if I'm wearing heels. Hell, if I'm going to dream, might as well dream big and probably impossible, right? In fact, I think I'll just wait for John Travolta to realize I'm the woman of his dreams and ... well, nevermind. It's time for bed. Maybe I'll dance in my dreams tonight.
With zero ideas of what to write about tonight, I opened up my drafts folder to see if I had anything there I needed to finish and post. Turns out there are several -- one about a repulsive bar napkin, another about my first 3-way, last year's Christmas post -- but this one floated to the top. I decided to finish it up and post it, because I'd started this trio of posts titled "Three weird things about me ..." last September and never posted the third one. Here are numbers one and two, in case you're interested. Number three happened last fall, but it could just as easily have happened last weekend.
3. In the same vein as number 2 (hee. I said number 2), I'm also not a normal future mother-in-law (nor is my future daughter-in-law Montana normal; she's exceptional). (Oh, fuck me. Two parentheticals in one sentence. Who taught me to write?)
Friday night my son Drake and his fiance Montana were in town, so we decided to check out a blues bar that had just opened up downtown. The bar was almost empty when we arrived, but the guy playing slide guitar was doing his job, while his drunk bass player phoned it in beside him. The lights were way too bright, and the bartender couldn't make me a Manhattan because they didn't have any bitters. I ordered a glass of wine instead, wishing not for the first time that I liked beer, but I don't so wine it was. The server went to the back, then returned and said they only had red. I said I could live with that. She went to the back again, and when she came back she asked if I minded it chilled. I even agreed to that, although a gin and tonic was sounding better and better. She brought me the chilled red wine, and it was worth the $3 I paid for it. (For those readers who are local to me, I'll just say the place was all East Side. Through and through.) A curvy woman with a giant tattoo of the sun on her upper back -- I'll call her Lucy -- in shorts and a low-cut t-shirt came wiggling up and pulled me out into the space in front of the musicians to dance. She seemed to be a regular, but maybe she was just that gregarious. I felt a little awkward, but what the fuck. I'll dance with almost anybody. Eventually she got Drake and Montana up too, and tried to get the few other patrons up and dancing, but with limited success. It wasn't for lack of energy and ambition though. She was working the room like a down-and-out stand-up comedian. Lucy was one of those women who probably seems like she's tipsy even when she hasn't been drinking, but that night she'd started early, and it was after midnight. She asked about our relationships, expressed surprise that Drake was my son because he looks so old and I look so young, and wondered what we were doing later. Montana told her we were going to the dance club after we left there. She said to me, "You're going out dancing with your son and his girl?" I nodded, and she turned to Montana and said in her loud voice, "I tell you what! You'd better appreciate that. You don't see that too often, a mom who does that. You'd better appreciate her." She winked at me. Montana just smiled and nodded. She appreciates me, and I appreciate her. We're good. Then Lucy leaned in like she wanted to tell us a secret and said, "You two ought to go down there on 5th Street to that sex shop. You should do that together tonight." And then she laughed and laughed. Montana escaped slipped back to our table and sat down. Lucy held onto my arm and whispered in my ear, "I just was trying to stir up a little trouble." She laughed loudly again and returned to her spot at the bar. I sat down, choked down a swallow of chilled red wine and said to Montana, "We'd go to a sex shop together, wouldn't we?"
She said, "Sure, why wouldn't we?" "I don't know," I said. "Lucy thought she was stirring up trouble by suggesting it." Montana just smiled, and so did I. Later when I thought of it I wondered how Lucy would have reacted if I'd told her this story about how Montana got me up on the pole at the same club we were going to that night. I decided that would probably be too much for her. Or worse, she'd want to go with us and get up on the pole herself. I've had to learn the hard way not to get too friendly with the natives, and this seemed like a good time to practice. So that's my third weird thing. I would go to a sex store with my son's fiance, and she would go with me. And her mom would probably go with us too. And so would my daughter Elvira. Hell, we'd all go together, so maybe I'm not as weird as I thought. I mean that's four of us. Seems like a quorum to me. I don't know if I'd actually be able to buy anything if I went to the sex store with them though. I do have boundaries. Confession time is over for me, at least for the next 3 days. What are 3 weird things about you? Would you go to a sex shop with me?
