“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
The music is on, a fifteen-musician ensemble, professional and loud. The beat pulses through the air in steady waves and hits you rhythmically, your eardrums, your chest, your feet through the floor. Something happens to you with music. Your heart accelerates; your body starts to move almost involuntarily, following the thrumming of the drums, the thrills of trumpets, the deep strums of the base, the unique sounds of human voices. You feel a bit helpless and keyed up, waves of chemicals flowing through your veins building up a sense of euphoria. You have to dance. You look around your table. One, two, three, four, no, five beautiful women sit around you, their bodies swaying slightly, moving on their seats, smiling, listening, feeling, absorbing the music. More women stand in the semi darkness of the ballroom. You stand; walk around the table, your eyes fixed on one of the women; you extend your hand to her. She looks up, her smile broadens. She gets up and, still holding your hand, follows you to the dance floor, by now crowded with dancers. You fall into step as you walk, the dance already started, although it is just a walk, a march to the inexorable spot, the thrill building up, the anticipation. She’s nervous. She thinks “I can dance, but have not done it for some time and definitely not with him.” Will she remember the steps? Can he lead? A strange calm takes possession of you. You know what you are doing; you can dance, and lead, and charm. Your heart still beats fast, but with purpose. Your hands are dry, as they should be. Your muscles relaxed, strong in the non-confining tux; your feet secure in well-fitting boots.
You reach an open spot on the dance floor and turn around, with somewhat of a small flourish, and face her. She stops, looking straight into your eyes. Your left hand goes up, gently cradling her soft and warm hand. Your right hand wraps around her waist, firmly, and she feels it. Her scent envelopes you, an aura of warmth radiates from her. You start with the basic steps, left forward, left back, right backwards, right forward back to the place you started. No words are exchanged. She gets it right away, looks down at her feet for a few beats, and then, feeling the pressure of your hand in the small of her back, looks up again, into your eyes, locked in a fluid embrace, held by hands, eyes and rhythm. You begin to turn to the left, small steps at first, letting your hands, arms and legs lead the flow. The long dress swishes against your legs, her feet touch yours, a small murmured “sorry” that you ignore. Won’t happen again, no need to apologize. You get bolder, the steps get longer, the turns wider. Her dress sways with the turns, fanning around her legs. Her smile is broad, white perfect teeth sparkling in the changing colors of the lights. Her eyes also sparkle, still fixed to yours, their corners smiling more truly than lips could smile, the real smiles of the eyes that people can’t fake.
You pause slightly, reducing the width of the steps. She senses the change, anticipates something else is coming. You show her your right hand, point at her left, and imagine the turn. Left hands separate, her body led sideways by a soft but firm pull, slight pressure on her waist; repeated to the left, she gets it. Once more, and then the turn. Your body makes a full circle in front of her, her right hand sliding along your whole waist, and then, just as she’s about to give up and succumb to the laws of gravity and centrifugal force and pull away from you, your right hand shoots forward and holds firmly her left hand, stretching with the turn, her arm extended and then springing back towards you. She steps purposely towards you, only to be guided to her right under your arm and hers, in a smooth full and unexpected, but beautifully executed, turn. She comes back, slightly wide-eyed to face you, and you receive her back, right hand landing on her waist, left hand holding, cradling, rewarding her right hand. Her body presses against yours, still responding to the winning physical forces, and then you step forward with your left, backward, back again, and forward, into the now familiar, safe steps, in sync with the rhythm, secure. She speaks. “Oh, wow. Never done that before.” You’ll never forget it now, you tell her. “Oh, I don’t know,” she says. You show her, all over again, smooth, familiar now, predictable and still exciting. And she believes and smiles.
Dancing, such a strange thing to do, once you objectively look at it. It can be slightly disturbing, as in watching people dance that just don’t quite know or care about what they’re doing, jumping around, moving the body in strange contortions, faces mimicking pain (in expressions incongruously but significantly similar to those produced during intense pleasure), arms all over the place. Blessed people, in my opinion, that don’t care to look ridiculous, that enjoy dancing as if no one is watching. Others, like me, are less free-form, more structured, even stylized. We learned to dance as babies, in the arms of our mothers and fathers, who transmitted a sense of rhythm through their bodies, their skins, their movements. We learned to associate music with movement before we learned to talk or to walk. Rhythm is its own language, music the words, the body providing the meaning, the heart feeding from it. And so, we danced, as we learned to walk, on the shoes of our fathers, or holding on tight to the legs and hands of our mothers. We danced with other kids, hugging awkwardly, concerned about the ooohs and aaahs of the grownups watching, not understanding the fuss. We danced in elementary school, shyly, pretending disgust but nervous as all out at the chance to impress the pretty little girls lined up on the bench of the school’s gymnasium. Then, as teenagers, pimply faces reddened almost permanently by embarrassment, deathly afraid to ask the target girl to come to the dance floor with you, under the scrutiny of all the other girls and boys and a grownup or two. By now, dancing, the steps themselves, are second nature to you. You don’t even have to think about them, your muscle memory firmly imprinted in every fiber and every nerve. It is the darn hormones you can’t seem to be able to control, and the rapid heartbeat they cause, and the other physiological changes that will make you die a hundred times over from humiliation. So you fumble, mortified, your hands sweaty, your grip mushy, ashamed of your awkwardness and your lack of control, and the girls giggle, or get disgusted, or worse, slap you hard and leave you standing by yourself after you had stepped on her toes for the fiftieth time.
You grow up, your skills at the dance floor honed, your personality stabilized. You go out steady, learning to synchronize steps with a person that knows you and your body well. You look good together on the dance floor, all remnants of awkwardness gone. People look at you dance, even pause to watch, to learn a move, or just to wonder what it would feel to be able to move like that. You dance ALL the time at parties, while groups of men drink and sit and talk politics, and the women wait, vie for a chance at the dance floor with someone that can lead, that can dance, that can help them move in ways they didn’t know they could move. It has nothing to do with dominance, this leading thing. It is expected, it is the tradition, a ritual, the way it started and the way it works. The man leads by choosing the next step; the woman follows, immersed and secure in her own responses, not as subjugate, but as equal partner. She makes him look good, she flows in seamless harmony, looking at the crowd, above their heads, seemingly immersed in her own lofty world, while the man “works” with her, switches, changes, turns, slides, her skill underappreciated, for it is a skill greater than his.
To dance with a beautiful woman is to love her through the gentle touch of fingers, of slight moments of collision and long periods of distancing. It is absorbing her scent, drink her smiles, look unabashedly into her eyes and communicate without words, each of you filling in the elements of your own private conversation, inspired by eyes that can drown you with their depth while the music fills the senses. Blue, gray, green, brown, hazel, black. There are few acceptable moments in which you can stare at a women’s eyes like this.
In the crowded dance floor, the band nears the end of the song. The muscles of the legs strain, the breathing somewhat labored. Both bodies radiate heat, sweat, scent, pheromones and more that we can’t really understand. You are both still smiling, looking into each other’s eyes, sensing the end is near. The last chords play and you stop, still holding on to each other, one last look, one last breadth, one last rush. A sense of gratitude invades each of you. She thanks you for the dance and simultaneously you thank her for giving herself to you for those interminable but oh so short minutes. You learned so much in those moments and so preciously little at the same time. Your mind can not comprehend nor can assimilate the large amount of information received, as if your system, like a computer, overflowed with data and dumped everything into the ether. Your hand releases hers, and you start walking back to the table, smiles fixed on your faces, thoughts lost to all but yourself. What a rush. As you approach the table, a new song starts. Your eyes scan the table. Your sore legs suddenly don’t feel leaded or strained anymore, as if the short walk back provided all the rest they needed. Your breathing is no longer labored, your body radiates heat at an accelerated rate, sweating profusely but also evaporating and cooling quickly, readying for the next dance. Your eyes connect with hers, your arm extends by its own volition. A soft hand lands in yours, the memories of the previous dance all but forgotten overwhelmed by the new beginning, the new sensations, the new upcoming challenge and thrill.
Every woman is different. Every woman is perfect in her own way. The ridiculous standards we create through our attempts to socialize and standardize are truly worthless; they are models and ideals created through injudicious use of electronic image manipulation techniques with simply money as the ultimate reward. The result is a vast majority of women dissatisfied with the way they look, wholesale or piecemeal, about huge pieces of their bodies or about tiny minor or insignificant blemishes. Show me a woman that is trying to change or manipulate something of herself through makeup, diets, creams, fixers or other physical, chemical or physiological means, and I’ll show you a woman that has either forgotten how perfect she really is (like she knew she was when she was four) or hasn’t had enough men tell her so. Moreover, I’d be willing to bet that she has not been taken out onto the dance floor and adored and celebrated through dancing.
Last night I danced with six women, six very different, perfect women. Each thrilled me individually; collectively, they drove me to insomnia, as my brain tried to imperfectly recreate the volume of sensory information, feelings and delights brought to me by them. Fifteen through sixty five (or so, I don’t really know or want to know), each of them vastly different, but each of them so perfect in their own special way. Led by the love of my life, three cherished friends, a blooming young flower and an ageless oriental beauty, all so special, so generous, so unique, made for an unforgettable evening. Teaching some of them a few simple steps and been rewarded with their smiles, hugs and thank-yous is more than a man like me really deserves. For dancing with beautiful, wonderful women is an undeserving gift, a reward for a lucky break in my upbringing, which brought me into early contact with the subliminal power of swaying to the melody and rhythms of well played music.
Last night I danced with six beautiful women, and my heart is full of appreciation, admiration and thanks for their perfection and their kindness.
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