When
you have the choice to sit it out or dance,
I
hope you'll dance.
Lee Ann Womack
When I hear a bow drawn across the strings of a
fiddle in 3/4 or 4/4 time, my chest gets tight and my legs ache. I need to
dance. It's like needing to sneeze but can't. It's visceral. Humans are
hard-wired to dance. All cultures dance--except Southern Baptists.
When I was in college, I dated a boy who, incidentally, grew up to be a judge. He loved to dance and was the best country-western dancer I ever partnered. We'd drive over from Georgetown to go dancing at the Skyline Ballroom.
The building is still there. It's been through many permutations from lingerie modelling to an oriental buffet, but its glory days were as a country-western dance hall where some of the legendary country music musicians played.It was a classic Texas dance hall with a low slung ceiling and a hardwood dance floor. There were picnic tables and benches shoved against the wall with small, round red plastic ashtrays on the top, along with years of the carvings of adolescent obscenities and for a good time call. The beer came in pitchers. If you didn't drink beer, the choices were bottles of tepid Big Red, Coke, and Dr. Pepper, served like an afterthought with no glass and no ice. If anyone asked for water, it came straight from the tap along with the assumption you were ill.
I remember the truckers and the ranch hands. Dancing with them, I was moving in a space smelling of Dial Soap, starch and bleach. To this day, it is cleanest smell I know. No talk. Only dancing. How men that large and rough could float me around a dance floor remains a mystery to me. At the end of the dance, my partner would steer me back to David with a nod to him and a deft touch to hat brim and thanks for the dance, Ma'am to me. That's heady stuff when you're twenty.
We drifted apart to other people, and I stopped dancing. Not at once but less and less until I wasn't dancing at all. I never had relationship with another a man who danced for the sheer love of it. David and I would have danced with a hog if it could waltz and two-step. Instead, I spent my life with men who danced as a grim duty if they danced at all. Sad for them but sadder yet for me because I knew what we were missing.
Unlike sex and riding a bicycle, the time does come when we've forgotten how to do things we once loved because we stopped doing them far too soon. I despise the platitude, It is never too late. It's an excuse for the worst kind of procrastination. It's soothing self-deception so we don't have to face the fact that there is time now gone that we can never recapture.The day does come when it is too late. My body doesn't remember the steps or how to stay in time with the rhythms--except in my mind.
Fortunately for me, the nature of social dancing has changed. No one needs a partner or a lot of space. Now if I'm moved by the music being piped in, I dance in public restroom stalls. It's a real treat to be in a restroom limited to one person. I lock the door and use up the entire space. Public restrooms are now my dance floors, kinda sad but better than no dance floor at all.
I rarely dance at home because in upsets the cat. But when I know Bruce Springsteen is queued up on my playlist, I throw the cat in the closet and just let it rip.
When I was in college, I dated a boy who, incidentally, grew up to be a judge. He loved to dance and was the best country-western dancer I ever partnered. We'd drive over from Georgetown to go dancing at the Skyline Ballroom.
The building is still there. It's been through many permutations from lingerie modelling to an oriental buffet, but its glory days were as a country-western dance hall where some of the legendary country music musicians played.It was a classic Texas dance hall with a low slung ceiling and a hardwood dance floor. There were picnic tables and benches shoved against the wall with small, round red plastic ashtrays on the top, along with years of the carvings of adolescent obscenities and for a good time call. The beer came in pitchers. If you didn't drink beer, the choices were bottles of tepid Big Red, Coke, and Dr. Pepper, served like an afterthought with no glass and no ice. If anyone asked for water, it came straight from the tap along with the assumption you were ill.
I remember the truckers and the ranch hands. Dancing with them, I was moving in a space smelling of Dial Soap, starch and bleach. To this day, it is cleanest smell I know. No talk. Only dancing. How men that large and rough could float me around a dance floor remains a mystery to me. At the end of the dance, my partner would steer me back to David with a nod to him and a deft touch to hat brim and thanks for the dance, Ma'am to me. That's heady stuff when you're twenty.
We drifted apart to other people, and I stopped dancing. Not at once but less and less until I wasn't dancing at all. I never had relationship with another a man who danced for the sheer love of it. David and I would have danced with a hog if it could waltz and two-step. Instead, I spent my life with men who danced as a grim duty if they danced at all. Sad for them but sadder yet for me because I knew what we were missing.
Unlike sex and riding a bicycle, the time does come when we've forgotten how to do things we once loved because we stopped doing them far too soon. I despise the platitude, It is never too late. It's an excuse for the worst kind of procrastination. It's soothing self-deception so we don't have to face the fact that there is time now gone that we can never recapture.The day does come when it is too late. My body doesn't remember the steps or how to stay in time with the rhythms--except in my mind.
Fortunately for me, the nature of social dancing has changed. No one needs a partner or a lot of space. Now if I'm moved by the music being piped in, I dance in public restroom stalls. It's a real treat to be in a restroom limited to one person. I lock the door and use up the entire space. Public restrooms are now my dance floors, kinda sad but better than no dance floor at all.
I rarely dance at home because in upsets the cat. But when I know Bruce Springsteen is queued up on my playlist, I throw the cat in the closet and just let it rip.
ªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªª
Once in a while on impulse, I'll pull off of the
loop onto the access road and flip on the hazard lights. I sit looking through
the windshield at a small, sagging building, now a blight in the midst of a
medical complex. If I look long enough, the complex fades along with the city lights and the stars show up again. The dilapidated building shrugs itself back
to the plain, sturdy one I loved.Through my thin, cotton dress, I can feel the sleeve
of David's starched shirt as he grabs my hand and we trot across a dirt parking
lot toward the open doors. Waiting inside are friends, beer and hours for us to use up dancing to
music from a fiddle, guitars, and an upright piano.
I turn off the hazard lights and pull back onto the freeway leaving the girl behind and taking the woman--with an ache in her legs--home.
I turn off the hazard lights and pull back onto the freeway leaving the girl behind and taking the woman--with an ache in her legs--home.
Beautiful story Jo! You are such an amazing writer :)
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