Dancing Daughters

Thursday, August 13, 1998

At the Century Ballroom, they are currently promoting the Wednesday night dances on the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month as "Queer Swing". Actually, there is no difference between the Queer Swing nights and any other Wednesday, but Hallie started her dance teaching by bringing partner dancing to the gay community, and she doesn't want to lose that now that swing dance is such a huge craze with the public at large.

When I saw my buddy Michael Coffey at the beginning of the dance, I said, "I've been thinking of you!" I'd been remembering how funny I'd found it a few weeks ago, when Hallie asked him to please ask some men to dance. We danced together several times during the evening. When I asked him at the end of the night why he had stayed so much later than he usually did, he said that he was unemployed now! I told him that surely he meant to say that he was "between assignments"!

During the course of the dance, I recommended my buddy Earl to him as a very good lead (though straight) since Michael both leads and follows. I ended up introducing them! Earl later told me that this was the very first time he had danced with a man. He asked me if I was trying to get revenge on him for crossing me over the dance contest last week, but I swear that isn't the case at all! I didn't realize that dancing with a man would be any sort of an issue for him!

It turned out to be queer swing in other ways as well; I danced with a woman who is in my intermediate swing class, and a man asked me to dance, then immediately said "I'm just out of the closet!" I was a bit startled by this unasked-for confidence, since this was the first time I'd ever danced with, spoken with, or even seen the fellow, but I congratulated him and told him that he'd found the right place at the Century!

I stayed till the end, and had changed my shoes from my dancing shoes to my black leather keds as the last song began, but when a man came and asked me to dance, I said yes. As we were dancing, it came out that he was a microsoft contractor like me. Then it turned out that he knew my name (though we hadn't met in real life before) and had looked at this journal! I swear he wasn't stalking me, though. I'm not even clear whether he came to the Century because I've been talking about it. Hi, A--L---!

So he drove me the seven blocks back to my place, and we talked for a few minutes about shyness, and meeting people, and living in a new city, and the best places to learn to dance (stay away from those commercial ballroom dance studios, I say!) and stuff like that. I didn't ask him if I could name him here, so I won't, but will stick with the initials for now.

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My friend "Hyper" Dan (Lindyhype webmaster) often brings his daughter to the dances on Thursday nights at the Russian Center. I had been talking to him about bringing my nephew J--- one night, since his daughter is interested in swing dance but needs a partner that is her size. So tonight was the night!

I brought J--- to class, the first in the new session, and he watched us all learning the new steps. After class I looked around for Dan. At first I didn't see him. Then I recognized him; he had shaved his head "for religious reasons"! I was puzzled by this, but J--- got the joke; that's what one of the Brazilian soccer players said when he shaved his head before the last game of the World Cup. We walked down to the deli to have some ice cream. At first the kids were a bit awkward with each other, but after they challenged each other to a race and ran down to the end of the block, all restraint was at an end.

They did sit still for some basic swing instruction when we got back to the Russian Center, but Dan's daughter really wasn't in the mood for it, so they danced a bit, then played around outside. J--- watched the dancing after getting his fill of her fighting/flirting. He was very impressed by the couples doing air steps, of course! I bought a copy of Dan's video, so J--- will be able to study it at home.

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Someone contacted me from my yahoo personal ad today, then, after taking a look at this site, gave me the blowoff. He said he generally didn't like parties or being with large groups of people. This bummed me out, a bit. I love dancing, and I love being a part of the group of folks that I'm connected with now. But I do live a great deal of my life alone; I'm still an introvert who needs the alone time to recharge my batteries. I think part of getting to know someone in an intimate way would be spending time with them one-on-one. In fact, I don't think there are many folks that I'd say I know really well. But where did this gentleman get the impression that being with me would require joining in all of the activities that I do? Of course, maybe this was an excuse and the real problem was that he wasn't attracted to me. No arguing with that one!

Another demonstration of my difficulty in writing about my inner life here. I'm not a superficial social-butterfly type, I swear I'm not!

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