NTKOG #68: The kind of girl who goes out on a Friday night and — god, it makes me cringe even to type this — attempts to dance.
I am: like the perfect storm of non-dance: I have no rhythm, am a total spaz, hate touching people, don’t really like music, and am usually too embarrassed from your attempts to dance to focus on anything else.
I am not: sure why we as a species dance anyway. Is it one of those things that’s supposed to emulate sex so potential mates can assess you? If so, why do so many girls wave one arm above their head and shout “WOO!” while doing it? Is that — is that something I should be doing in bed?
The Scene: Great Scott, in Allston. A corner bar (home of the burlesque drawing sessions I sketched on a while ago) that I had mistaken for some sort of heavy metal situation. When I went there one Friday night with Sister and two of her friends, though, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was nothing more than a PBR-scented hipster haven. Stupid-awesome hats of every description abounded! Skinny jeans and muttonchops for miles!
The live band for the night played mellow indie rock; afterwards, a DJ cranked out dance-your-face-off ’80s hits and fun mash-ups. The Adrien Brody lookalike who encouraged us to come said he and his friend came to dance their hearts out every week, and my sister needed no encouragement. So I navigated through the crowd with my fedora and overly heavy computer bag (bad planning, dude) and steeled myself up to dance. To really dance.
True, I have on occasion — in the right company, and when I’ve been mixing my clears and fermenteds — occasionally been goaded to give the natives a treat and dance for one or two songs out in a club. But actual instances of TKOG danceage are rare enough that I remember literally every one. And not fondly. Should give you an idea of my relationship with dancing.
The four of us pushed our way on the stage, and immediately I was caught in a thronging wave of communal gyration. Other people were not only touching me, but sweating on me. Fortunately, they were sweating straight vodka, for the most part. The contact buzz could only help.
We danced quite literally for hours. After a few minutes of looking around, it occurred to me: nobody can dance. Everybody looks friggin’ stupid. It’s sort of heartening, really, how we have this social covenant that allows us to FLAIL LIKE IDIOTS while riding the crest of a shared beat. Mass transcendence, almost.
Of course, those were just the good moments. The majority of the time, I was alternately wishing for another drink, or out-of-body teleporting in order to stare with scorn and dismay at my totally spastic limbs and chide myself.
The Verdict: I had hoped — I had really hoped — that this would be an NTKOG that I would dread, but would ultimately end up loving. Like hockey or beer-drinking. But alas, kittens, I am most eminently not the kind of girl who dances.
Even now, weeks after the alleged dancing incident, every time I go out to a bar and see people dancing, or watch a club scene in a movie or TV show and watch the writhing masses have the time of their lives, I flash back to my attempt at dancing and literally burn with shame. Oh god. Oh god. Never again. That’s all there is to it.
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
Serious answer – Yes, dancing is a form of mating ritual / courtship display, particularly if you go back from “European court dancing” with partners or in groups, with its highly ritualised steps and forms, and look at tribal ritual dancing (war dances like the Haka apart obviously), or things like modern disco and break dance.
As for how you meet people if you don’t dance, maybe you could try talking to them rather than waving arms and/or other body parts in their faces?;) (also a non-dancer)
Modern disco?! Must be a language gap error!
“Modern”, meaning relatively new style(s) of dancing. “Disco dancing” didn’t happen until the 1960s, and I was trying to include things like Jitterbug, Swing and Jive in ritualised steps and forms without explicitly saying so.
ah great scott, home of the world’s largest collection of ben gibbard look-alikes.
we have a bar like this where i live. i LOVE it. every thursday night all the hipster kids come out to sweat their faces off. i live for thursdays.
ps. it seems like at these kind of bars the more awkward you are the cooler you are. lolol
The Napoleon Dynamite syndrome?
I’m like this too but I really WANT to dance. I’m less hipster centric and more early sixties pop, though. Kudos to you for trying, though.
Also, you called us kittens. Does that mean you’re a reader of Tom and Lorenzo’s PR blog? Please say yes!
Oooh, I don’t read said blog yet, but take it I should add it to my reader? (I’m just kind of in the habit of periodically calling everyone kittens. It’s one of my favorite forms of universal address, right up there with “dudes and/or ‘ettes”.)
In the right circumstances, I’m as into getting tummy tickles as the next kitteh!
Eek! Ugh! Ouch! You lose 43 HP (sleaze damage).
You know what? I grew up dancing. I taught dance for 7 years and did it competitively for about 10. This white girl even taught hip-hop. But I will NOT go “clubbing” or dancing in a bar unless it is a two-step. I just refuse to enter into that massive sweaty mess of a dancefloor, where I’m bound to lose all inhibition and start dancing like I do when I’m not dancing to something choreographed… which is spastic.
And does everyone there really look like Ben Gibbard? Cause if so I’m on my way, and shit! I’ll even dance for him…
I feel your pain.
…and I still can’t believe I was there that night, too, and I missed you. Maybe you should come to the dance night down the street (in a few weeks) that I will be working.
And for the record, whenever I go to the pill, I usually get heavily intoxicated and then mock everyone elses dancing skills.
I saw you dance! To “Semi-Charmed Life!” I feel so honored!
TKOG, you shouldn’t be so worried about how you look when you dance! The fun of it is that everyone is bad at it (except like, Michael Jackson, but he’s dead), so you can just do whatever you want. I guess some people are just born without a love for it, but I think that is such a shame, as I am not one of them!
I’m sadly just dance cursed! It’s not just that I worry about how I look when I do it, because I know that everyone looks dumb — it also just doesn’t amuse me or come naturally to me, so inevitably I’m just left wondering: “Why in god’s name am I doing this thing I dislike?! And do I really look as stupid as everyone around me does?”
However, I’m as stridently pro-singing as I am anti-dancing, so worry not: I have as many opportunities to make a fool of myself as the next girl!
That’s the most amazing argument in favor of not worrying about being a good dancer I’ve ever heard. “Everyone’s bad at dancing. Except Michael Jackson. And look what happened to him.”
I know this is an old post, but it really made me smile! I spent most of my life refusing to dance, but one day I just stopped caring and did it and had a similar realisation. We don’t get taught how, so nobody knows what they’re doing. I always dance if I can now, to a point where I opened a dance floor a week ago
I’ve also met some incredible people on the dance floor (if you are trying to talk you don’t have to dance as much… plus they can be really pretty guys sometimes)