To say that I have never been much of a dancer is an understatement akin to calling the Grand Canyon a mere crack in the Earth’s crust. I didn’t start out that way, of course. Before I knew there was a wrong way to dance, before I knew what it felt and meant to be self-conscious, to feel shame about my body and how it moved, I would dance with my family. Too soon, I began to be told that I was too stiff, that I possessed no rhythm, that I overthought my movements, that my younger brother alone had gotten the dancing gene and that I should just leave that pastime to him. This handed me an unsolvable puzzle. How exactly can I improve at dancing, when that would require me to think less, when now I have to think about how it looks like I’m overthinking? Now it’s all I can think about!
I would watch music videos and be amazed by the people who moved their bodies and limbs with such effortless confidence and graceful assuredness, while a green-eyed monster the size of a semi sat upon my shoulder. I would try to practice my moves in the mirror, mimicking the fun dances that I saw on the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, feeling frustrated, perplexed, dismayed, and defeated. How could one be, at once, precise and methodical yet spontaneous and free? It simply did not compute. I guess I was not meant to be a person who would dance. And so I didn’t.
I never took to drinking, so there wasn’t much in the way of liquid courage to loosen me up and embolden me, or even to use as a scapegoat. So, when it came to parties with music, I was either a wallflower trailing the perimeter or stuck 2 stepping or doing something silly and exaggerated in a desperate attempt to draw attention away from the fact that I truly had no clue about what to do with my 2 left feet.
I recall going to my first, and I think only club for a friend’s bachelorette party. I was surrounded by hoards of beautiful strangers with hair done, nails done, makeup done, tanned and primped and polished and waxed and shaved and strutting their stuff in mile-high high heels and the skimpiest of shiny, disco ball-esque clothes, statuesque and buxom bodies sweating on, swaying with and slithering against one another like so many snakes that Indiana Jones himself would have forced to retreat with a torch. There was absolutely nowhere to sit, and here I was, torchless. It was my own special version of hell, realized. I wasn’t even afforded the courtesy of dying first! My discomfort palpable as I downed vodkaless vodka cranberries and virgin mimosas, my friend finally dragged me out onto the dance floor and started gyrating rhythmically, a small Mona Lisa smile playing upon her face. Steve Irwin’s voice narrated the scene in front of me as though I were watching an episode of The Crocodile Hunter,
“And here we have the bachelorette in her native habitat, her plumage indicating she is looking for potential suitors. Crikey, we’re in for a treat. Here comes the mating dance!”
Alright, I thought, we can work with this. Much to her dismay, and much to my own chagrin, I busted out such classics as the cabbage patch, the running man, and the shopping cart.
“USE YOUR HIPS!” she exclaimed, placing her hands on mine and trying to force my jagged movements like a less intrusive but still unwelcome ventriloquist puppeteer. But, as legend has it, hips don’t lie. Mine certainly didn’t.
Nearly one danceless decade later, on a whim, a couple of friends and I went to a 90’s party at Brooklyn Bowl in Las Vegas. We resurrected our chokers, windbreakers, hooped earrings, and fanny packs. This awe-inspiring, Energizer Bunny of a rainbow masquerading as a DJ played all of the songs of my people, Backstreet Boys, A Tribe Called Quest, Destiny’s Child, Spice Girls, N*SYNC, refracting and reflecting the light of this time by singing all the lyrics and dancing with this infectious energy that everybody in the first few rows definitely caught. “I love it when you call me Big Papa,” and I did love that so much and I wish more people would do it but I also loved everybody and everything about this moment. This joyous nostalgia overtook me like a riptide and swept me into the sea of bodies on the dance floor. I threw all caution and overthinking to the wind. I channeled my inner Will Smith and was a jumping, twisting, two-stepping, fist bumping, rump shaking, still cabbage patching fool! I may still have looked like a flailing octopus juggling on dry land, but I was a confident flailing octopus juggling on dry land and having the rip roaring good time of my life doing it! My step counter informed me the next day that my foray into fun resulted in my dancing for 5 miles! That night, all of the rugs and the Goridan knot were cut. It took giving away exactly all of my fucks to be able to move like I felt I was somebody special.