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:D
And, yeah, it was a more fun night on the job than I've had in a couple of weeks. I even danced. :o
This was after the real work was over, when my partner and I went to hang out at a club as we often do after a good night (both of us have some asocial tendencies, so maybe adopting another persona helps ameliorate that in a sort of Clark Kent-Superman way, and we have a lot of post-work fun being treated like sex objects for a while by the women in that place). I haven't danced in years...many years, actually. In fact -- wow -- just realized it's been easily a decade and maybe longer since I danced at all in public with a woman (man, either, for that matter). I've obviously done the Elvis martial-dance stuff -- always felt a bit of a kinship there in that he wasn't given to dancing, either, even though he moved onstage like few men ever did -- and so on, but dancing dancing is just different. I never was much of a dancer, by nature, and was always hard to get on a dance floor, but once I was up there I'd go for it (albeit in a fairly unorthodox manner of dancing, compared to the people around me who actually either learned this stuff from an instructor or from TV shows and films) and work out, hard, until the music stopped at the end of the night. I was always a very enthusiastic and highly aerobic dancer, once I got going, and tended to be pretty showy and otherwise the opposite of my normal 'default' demeanor. It's that same 'switch' that I make when I go on to perform, whether it's singing or TV stuff, or whatever else, or giving a talk, etc...it's all basically the same, and that apparent personality switch is a very common trait, it seems, especially among performers of any kind (and here I include lecturers and others, not just showbiz types like actors, singers, etc). I would even slide on my knees (not on a small, crowded floor, of course) and do all that funky stuff like my Dancing Machine alter ego was the world's biggest disco showoff. :-)
I'm hard to miss, too, because of my height. Harder to miss dressed like Elvis, of course.
I've been asked to dance before in this club and when we walked through bars and stuff (like Margaritaville) but I've always begged off by virtue of exhaustion -- which was usually true by the end of a night -- and I've plainly annoyed and offended some rather foxy mamas by turning them down. Luckily, my partner talked to some of them afterward to impress upon them just how much I'd exerted myself over the evening so I more often than not ended up getting a sympathy hug and a kiss on the cheek, at least, and am finally beginning to understand the whole 'wingman' concept. :D
Last night (this morning, actually) this really insistent woman tried to get me out on the dance floor and I just did my usual "I'm tired...f*** off" (okay, not quite like that) thing, being terminally dance-floor-phobic. I was busy, anyway, taking lots of pictures with lots of people and enjoying Close Encounters of the Snuggly Kind, but she kept coming back and putting me on the spot again. I finally gave in when a petite blonde conspired with her to get me out there and grabbed my arm to lead me off, which pretty much sealed my fate. The key was that the band introduced we pretend-Elvises, as they always do (but at least they didn't shine a spotlight on us, this time), and started playing "That's All Right." So I was kinda stuck. I had no idea what to do. Throughout the night I'd heard a few James Brown songs playing on PA systems and the like and every time I heard one I went into my James Brown dance impersonation (it's really not bad, though I drew the line at dropping down into a near-split...always good to have something else lined up if the Elvis thing falls through), each time prompting my bemused partner to ask what the hell I was doing. So -- naturally -- when I started dancing with this girl I was the Godfather of Soul, dressed like the King of Rock 'n' Roll. :D
It was fun, but I still was happy when the song ended (I finished by dipping her almost to the floor and she played it up well by laying out there with arms thrown out above her head and dramatic look on her face, pretty much like Fay Wray did in King Kong's hand...actually, she could have been a body double for Fay Wray) and I could escape the dance floor. I admitted to her that I had no idea what I was doing -- most of the people seemed to be doing one of those low-energy, formalized little country-style dances (one step, two step, half step, or whatever the hell) and I told her I didn't know how to do that, so I mixed my James Brown with a little '50s Elvis, a little '70s Elvis (restraining myself with the arm movements, though, not wanting to knock anyone out), a little Masai let's-go-kill-a-lion dance, and a fair bit of random hand-holding stuff, like some kind of psychedelic jitterbug and lots of twirling her around and dipping her way down (she must have weighed about 100 lbs and I could have picked her up with one hand, which is just as well because she seemed to trust me absolutely when, in fact, the odds of me dropping her to the floor were rather high). She was a great dance partner, and not only didn't seem to mind my funkily esoteric style, or non-style, but gamely followed me every unpredictable step of the way. She was pretty, too, though I really was too focused on trying to keep moving in some coordinated manner while not dropping her or sending her spinning out of control across the floor to really look that much at her.
My favorite part was probably when I put my hand around her waist, and she followed suit with mine, and I spun around and around at increasing speed with her whipping around beside me, until everything around us was literally a blur (my leather-soled boots on that slick dance floor really helped me spin quickly, just like they helped me with my James Brown moves). Neither one of us threw up and she seemed to get a kick out of that spinning, and then I threw the brakes on and dropped her into a low dip from there. I mean, if I could have just followed that with a bit of a tango (and, darn it, why didn't I think of that in the moment?), I would have been so swave and deboner that I couldn't stand being with myself. Next time, maybe. :-)
Not that I'm in a hurry for the next time...I'll undoubtedly offend many more women in that club and elsewhere before I relent to dancing again, but I did enjoy it even though it was under duress and even though I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Maybe I should take advantage of some of these dance request, though, because with a little practice I might actually have a chance of honing my approach into something a little less "Ripley's Believe It Or Not" and, besides, you never know how many potential love connections I've squandered with my cad-like behavior toward prospective dance partners. It's not like most men -- myself included, when I've been other than dressed as Elvis -- have the chance to get asked to dance by a bunch of attractive women, so I really do owe it to my sex (by which I mean my gender) to not drop the ball here, and not turn down such opportunities. It's good exercise, too, the way I do it! And, as always, what I lacked in coherent style as a result of my esoteric approach to dancing (more so this time than ever, because I hadn't danced in so many years) I more than made up for in enthusiasm and level of exertion -- I may not have been the smoothest dancer out there on the floor, but I was ten times more vigorous and committed in my physical approach than were those half-asleep half-stepping sons of bitches who were just going through the motions... :D
And, odd and incoherent as my dance may have been, at least I didn't bite my lip throughout. I didn't bite hers, either, though at one point I enclosed my right hand around her entire right breast (entirely by accident, during a spin -- I apologized, but she didn't mind).
Got to get on the good foot...hnyuh!!
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