After throwing on my finest threads, I was off to the dance. Nan dropped me off in front of the school and I mixed with the late arrivals entering the building.
As I approach the gym, the reverberation of bad acoustics grew louder, causing the butterflies to flutter and a thumping in my chest. The strange music set off alarms all up and down my cultural complex. I felt like one of those aliens that I saw up on the screen all those Saturday afternoons.
The albino kid ran up to me screaming something. I couldn’t hear him for the noise that they called music. I didn’t want to be noticed, yet I was disappointed when no one did. When my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see the crowds of teens huddled together in the center of the floor moving with a cardboard stiffness. They were dancing. I knew because their feet were moving and their heads were jerking from side to side.
The gym had been transformed into an Andy Warhol psychedelic hallucination with strobe lights dancing off the walls and distorting familiar faces. On a make-shift stage, under colored lights, Johnny Moore and his brother Tom, along with their band, serenaded the crowd. Johnny’s guitar cried out as Tom pounded on the drums.
Johnny, an upperclassman, was the closest thing to a heartthrob that the school had. Young girls were captivated by his long flowing blonde hair and big blue eyes. His wardrobe consisted of leather wrist bands, dingo boots, and bell bottom corduroys. Like moths drawn to a flame, they circle the stage casting adoring stares and whispering naughty thoughts. Johnny was the envy of every boy-including me-and the source of every girl’s fantasy.
I couldn’t even dance to that stuff, even if I could summon up the nerve to ask someone. Yet I couldn’t join the wallflowers or occupy the lofty perches of the pulled out bleachers. The school staff turned chaperons hovered around looking to separate bodies and snag smokers in the restroom. Everyone looked so uncomfortable to be having a good time, but they were. Small gaggles of girls scurried across the gym floor headed to parts unknown.
Boys, clearly not ready for intermingling with the fairer sex, pushed and prodded each other toward the dance floor only to retreat back into the safety of the shadows like timorous sparrows avoiding a hawk. But, what was I if not one of the same timid sparrows?
The dance was half over when the band returned to the stage. That was when I spotted Cathy Davis, a red head in my math class, headed toward me. There was a sense of urgency in her pace.
“Jennifer wants you to ask her to dance. So, you have to ask her.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Cathy’s eyes pointed back across the gym floor. Then she pivoted and left. I watched as she returned to her sender.
With the news, Jennifer leaped into the air, hanging there suspended for what seemed like an eternity. The sounds of her laugh, though hardly audible, drowned out the room. I don’t want to dance in front of these hicks, I thought. But I could no more resist her invitation than the planets could resist the pull of the sun. So I followed the red head back across the great divide.
“Hi, you wanna dance,” I said in my coolest voice. For the longest second, she just stood there. I thought maybe this was some kind of a joke. Without saying a word, she took my hand and led me out onto the dance floor.
After glancing around to see who was looking, I began with a nervous little two-step. Not to their music, but to the beat in my head. I was grooving to the Motown sound. Although I dug the Altman Brothers and Bonnie Rae songs that they played, I couldn’t dance to it. I figured out that everyone dance their own way, instead of offering their own rendition of fads like the Monkey, the Jerk, or the Mash Potato.
“I’m not very good at this,” she said, glancing down at her feet and then up at me. Though no cover girl, Jennifer had qualities that delighted the eye, long auburn hair, a nicely sculptured frame, and honey-brown eyes. Hers was a reticent beauty, a quiet fireworks. There was elegance in her earthiness. Everyone woman has her own special brand of magic. I soon found myself wrapped in hers; held spellbound by her beauteous smile, her reticent laugh and in the way she tossed her hair.
All my concerns for fitting in, all my fears, and all my feeling of isolation dissolved into nothingness. As her eyes roamed the room, mine never strayed. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Even her imperfections were a turn on. Her front teeth were a little big and her nerdy rims gave her the look of a rocket scientist.
“I watched you play. You’re pretty good. I like the way you dribble the ball between your legs. Though, my father thinks that they should be using you at the point guard position.”
Suddenly, I remembered her. She was the girl that came to all of the home games. I remember seeing her face in the crowd. Her father and two sisters always accompanied her. When the music stopped, we sauntered back over to the bleachers. Her friends teased her playfully. We stood looking at each other, each not sure of what to do next. If I could have suspended time, I would have been content to live in that present moment forever, never missing the past or anticipating the future.
Her girl friends decided to reclaim their friend. Fighting the urge to walk away, I stood there frozen, held in place by the most powerful force in creation, love. When it happens, you just know that you will remember that moment forever. There is no way to explain it. The moment our eyes met, I felt our souls join. What’s more, she felt it too.
And, just like that, that magical moment was gone as the lights started to flicker on. One of her older sisters called her over. “I have to go,” she said, turning back to me, her eyes revealing her desire to stay. “I’ll see you in school Monday.” Then she turned and walked away taking my heart with her.
With the lights on, I came crashing back to earth. The crowd was filing out like a river heading back to the open sea. Once outside, I spotted the Olds among the parade of cars. Off we went into the snowy night. But, what a night it was. Unlike the mystery girl that smiled at me from a car, who disappeared like an apparition, Jennifer was real.
“How was the dance,” Nan asked, while looking straight ahead at the road rushing at us in the headlights. I could see the sleep on her face and smell the gin on her breath. But, she really did seem to care if I had a good time or at least as much as any adult could.
“I had a good time,” I said. I was anxious to tell her everything, but something wouldn’t let me. I knew she would listen and maybe give me some womanly advice, but I remained mute.
When we got home, I didn’t even grab a snack, just headed downstairs to the solitude of my room. Once there I allowed my thoughts to muse over the night’s events like spring waters over smoothen stones in a stream. The image of her angelic face lingered long in my mind; her intoxicating scent stirring an eddy of emotions.
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