I'm a good dancer. Not a great one, but a good one. I don't know every single step or style, but I have rhythm and I can figure out what to do with it...and have fun with it. And I give it my flavor; and it's a flavor that, when combined with someone else's flavor on the floor, doesn't come out tasting too bad. That to me is a pretty good dancer. My definition is open for argument. But do it on your own time.
My feet are throbbing and calloused from dancing two nights in a row in shoes that were too flat. I wasn't at the club (those days are long behind me); I went to a graduation party on Saturday and an anniversary on Sunday. There weren't tons of single guys to posture for (because let's keep it real, there is a moment in everyone's youth where one of the main deciding factors as to whether or not an event is worth attending is the level of probability that there will be eye candy in the form of the opposite sex. Shoot, they didn't even have to be that cute. It just needed to be a guy I didn't grow up with.). No, they were local congregation parties with lots of families and old friends. But there was music. So I was going to dance.
When I think about it, I really am truly thankful to be past my teen years. Two nights in a row I watched as awkward teenage boys (some chronologically that young, some only that young psychologically) nervously held up the walls; others in their late teens or early twenties, alternating between playing with their phones and examining the dance floor to see if anybody was worth getting up the nerve to approach. And then there were my dear girls. Poor girls, song after song, just siting their with their friends, waiting to be picked. There were the few brave that I was proud of, who just danced in groups with other girls instead of standing around like livestock. There were moments where the floor was full, youths were satisfactorily paired off (or maybe not so satisfactorily, but hey, they were dancing) and all was well in the world. But all that uncertainty, all my fun being so contingent on so many outside factors-I just couldn't do it. The thing is, I used to. And I was miserable.
I think back to my years as an overweight adolescent-all brains and personality, but cute only to my parents and friends. I loved to dance even then. But I'd go to parties and know I wasn't getting asked. So I, instead, became the mascot. I'd be the first on the floor and do all the dances everyone else was too self-conscious to do, and before anyone else even got up the nerve to do them. It was my job to start the party, to break the floor in. It was either that or hold my girfriends' purses all night and that just hurt too much. I had to find a way to make the most of my situation. And for a while, it worked. For a few years there, you couldn't go to an English (or Spanish, for that matter) party in Contra Costa or Alameda counties, without hearing "Go April! Go April!" at least four times throughout the night. I was becoming a party staple-and for a while, I liked it. For the first time, doing something I loved made me cool.
But then I noticed that there were no other girls in the middle of a human circle doing "The Sprinkler" or pop-locking while crowds chanted. Other girls were sitting like ladies, or two-stepping off to the side with maybe one or two other girls. Or doing what I believed would always be beyond my reach-dancing with a GUY. I 'd look back at pictures later and not remember how much fun I had dancing. All I could see was a fat chick making a fool out of herself. When I started reflecting on that, dancing stopped making me happy and just started making me bitter. I wasn't the dancing queen I'd imagined I was. I was a dancing elephant-a circus freak.
It goes without saying that most things you don't appreciate until you lose them. Most people already know I have multiple sclerosis, and that the beginning of it all I found myself paralyzed on the whole left side of my body, completely unable to walk for 5 months. I didn't dance for about two and a half years-not because no one was asking, but because I couldn't. It hurt to go to my friends' weddings and have to watch while everybody shook what they had or didn't have, while I bobbed my head from a wheelchair and tried to smile and look "Special Olympics"-inspirational. But inside it hurt. And I promised myself then that if I could ever move again I would move until I got sore, every time, whether some clammy-handed boy thought to take me out or not; no matter much much I jiggled and bounced while doing it.
My MS has been in remission for a few years now, and I've also lost about 90 pounds since '04. I still jiggle somewhat, and that sickness left my left side permanently weaker than my right. The disorder is neurological which means, in basic English, that my brain and my body are not always on speaking terms. Sometimes I tell the left foot to do something and the right foot goes "No! Me first!" leading to coordination mishaps and guys getting frustrated with me because some days my brain follows the dance-floor lead without my legs coming along for the ride. But I keep smiling and I keep moving. I'll grab my girls, or I'll ask a guy, I don't care. The older I get that gets trickier because there are less single brothers at gatherings every year. But it's all good, I'll drag some 15-year old out-he'll be happy to even touch a woman's hand. Nothing wrong with being a dance-floor cougar. It ain't marriage, it's a DANCE (that's the other thing I had to change-it used to be that if guys didn't ask me when I was young I must have looked like Quasimodo to them. Maybe I did. But it wasn't like I wanted to marry any of them punks anyway so I shoulda just kept dancing!). When that music plays-whether it's a song I particularly like or if its one that gets played out at parties but I know everyone else will dance to-I forget everything-what I dislike about my appearance, what Mom and I argued about earlier that day, whatever personal failure I may be beating myself up about that week. It's just fun, straight up. If I could grab all those kids I saw this weekend and implant them with what I already know, what I know that they will later on wish they knew, I would. But I know everybody has to live and learn. I did. I'm just glad I got another chance to do it right.
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