Jezebel or Jail

I’m coming out of Peet’s with my Noah’s…my usual Saturday Breakfast with the Boys...when all of a sudden I sense a chill…the rustle of a pencil skirt…the flash of a crown. Uh Oh. She’s found me. Mimi…Queen of the Memes has personally waved her wand at me…and I’ve been ducking her.

Not so sure…how you all got Jezebelic and Dancing combined…but who am I to question the Queen’s proclamation? Oh no….not me…I ain’t spending the weekend in her dungeon. However… with a perfectly executed arabesque…I respectfully bow out of tagging anyone else.

Before I even started kindergarten my father determined I was a bit of a klutz. Back then they called it “clumsy” and in my case it meant crashing into coffee tables and door jams while sporting a never ending series of bruises along the ankle and shin. Constant scrapped knees and knocking stuff over landed my little butt in ballet class. When we moved to California the first things they found were a new school, a new church and a new ballet teacher.

I took ballet lessons with a smattering of jazz and tap (oh my….how I love tap dancers) until I was well into my teens. Requirements of being a ballerina began to interfere with boys, field hockey, and eating whatever I wanted to…so I gave it up. An additional and more important benefit was NO MORE RECITALS. At that age they started wanting you to solo on toe. While I love to dance in a studio or in my livingroom with a friend…I loathed performing to the point of hatred. I would subsequently give up piano lessons for the very same reason. No more e-phn recitals. Why as children we were not allowed to learn dance and music without being thrust onto a stage in front of an army of parents and grandparents armed with every photography device known to man…I will never understand.

Ballet gave me an incredible education in music and movement, and an appreciation for many of the talents not found in science class. But I’m a grownup now. In this world one finds several stereotypical dance situations I tend to avoid.

First there is the group event….wedding, company Christmas party, class reunion…They cue up the dance music, the woman’s expression lights up as she tilts her head and smiles all cajolingly. You just KNOW she is saying….”oh puleeezzz huunnny….I luuuuuuve this song.” Typically the male response is adamant as he shakes his head…”oh no…no way are you getting me out there.” And you know after a few minutes of pouty lips, pleading eyes, and whispered promises while swaying in the chair in her own little lapdance she is going to stand up…pulling her guy upon to his feet and off to the dance floor. He is gonna make a big show of grudgingly going along with a “what can I do about it” shrug and an amused little smirk on his face. (everytime I see it happen…it makes me want to smack someone)

Then there is club dancing…where if you are my age and single…people stand around in little groups eyeing one another over the top of their drink…some avoiding eye contact…some bolding catching your attention. These days, everybody has a “wingman” for crying out loud…a buddy who seems to think they know better than you whom you want to dance with. The last thing I need is some recently divorced, out on his own for the first time, silicon valley venture capitalist, looking down my dress, trying to yell into my ear about how hot I am or how successful he is. Bleck.

Or worse yet…some tight gabardine-panted swinger stuck in the era of disco...a white suited Manero wannabe lookin’ more like the Czech Brothers being wild and crazy guys. Shaking his pelvis and waving his arms…nowhere in the same vicinity as the beat of the music…at a decibel level which will make me deaf far into the morning…Oh my Lord, just take me now.

Don’t get me wrong…with the right person … I love to dance. Slow dancing can be wonderful…in my mind slow dancing is foreplay. I only slow dance with someone with whom I have a far more developed relationship….and very rarely in public.

The one dance I’d still want to learn is...The Tango.