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In the Texas dancing means the two-step. Trust me -- there are more conscientious objectors in honky tonks than ever fled to Canada in the 1970s. And I realize just how lucky I am to have survived the great country music scare of the 1980s, although by the time the Urban Cowboy movement had faded, I was left with a half-dozen brocaded shirts with appliqued sundowns and pearl snaps, a belt buckle that looked like it belonged to the World Wrestling Federation's intercontinental champion, a hat too tall to wear inside any building in North America save perhaps the atrium of the Hyatt in Chicago, and a pair of exotic boots fashioned from the skin of some endangered arboreal civet. But in Texas if a man wants to captivate a woman, he needs more than a belt and a brim; he has to be able to two-step. And he has to act like he enjoys it.
Women openly accuse non-dancers of laziness and indifference. Those are downright un-American allegations. One of the basic principles of this country is that dimwits and laggards must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious people. Though our society is held together by fear and greed, its institutions are framed so that nearly everyone is supposed to feel good about what he does. While we secretly wish everyone else's discrediting and ruin, we are taught to behave with good manners and feigned respect. But nonsense in the intellect reinforces corruption in the will. Rita's encouraging remarks about dancing are, I know, a thin crust that will one day be punctured by the fork of scalding invective should I be domesticated.
I have taken a personal inventory of sorts to determine what may be necessary to raise me to the level of female acceptability. Like any respectable man, I subscribe to cable TV, so I began by studying the pleasant couples on TNN dance shows as they lilted about the sets of both genuine and fake saloons. (For the uninitiated, TNN is a kind of American Bandstand for people with cows.) I practiced alone in my den for hours, intent upon mastering the most rudimentary cowboy shuffle.
But since I am not bowlegged and do have a decent sense of rhythm, I could never teach myself the troubling intricacies of the C&W dancing. Deflated and tired, I concluded that I was going to have to do the very thing I fear most -- take lessons.
I am abashed to admit that in order to please a woman I submitted to dancing lessons. It's hard to believe that anyone can make a living teaching others how to shame themselves to music, but the yellow pages show that a surprising number of people in my very own town are gainfully employed toward that end. And the best thing about professional dance studios is that one can take his first step toward self-denigration at almost any time of day. They are uniformly unbusy places, run I suspect by those members of the witness protection program who own patent leather rather than cement shoes.
I called Mr. Geoffrey's House of Terpsichore. Mr. Geoffrey offered to teach me himself whenever I could make it to his studio with forty-five American dollars. He was full of that down-home charm that those employed in the slaughter of animals often find endearing. So I left work early one afternoon, mumbling to my secretary some pretense about a colorectal exam lest she uncover my real intent. Rita agreed to meet me there. Like most women, Rita believes that dancing holds the key to popularity, but dancing is a fragile skill. Mr. Geoffrey could do it; I couldn't. He guided Rita around his hardwood floor without once damaging one of her precious metatarsals. It was erotic. It was sumptuous. It was the tango gone rural. He held Rita by the back of the neck under the dense tangle of curls that cascaded from her hat and moved her about as though she might try to bite him. But when it came my turn and I put my arm around her, I felt as though I were trying to win a three-legged race strapped to a goat.
Mr. Geoffrey's instruction in the two-step sounded deceptively simple, but it proved troublesome. Unlike its benign and binotonous-sounding name, the dance actually involves more than two steps. The first two he showed me were long strides forward, whereupon I was then required to deploy a quick sidestep to the left followed by an abbreviated slide to the west, except in the southern hemisphere where I am convinced the procedure is reversed. While I clearly counted three steps and a slide, Mr. Geoffrey kept calling out ONE-TWO, ONE-TWO as my binturong boots collided awkwardly against one another.
Not even considering the pain and humiliation for both genders, country-and-western dancing is undoubtedly the last frontier for feminism since the woman is repeatedly forced backward by her male partner. For this very reason it is also practically impossible to turn your partner unless your physique resembles that of an emu (which mine fortunately does) and you are vigilant enough (which I was not) to lurch ungainly to the side whenever a wall or post-pillar loomed ahead. The safety of this maneuver was ensured in my case only because Rita's hat proved a wonderful fender skirt ready to alert us to the dangers of oncoming barricades. Sixty minutes later I emerged trained, but no dancer. My boots were scabbed, my left knee throbbed, and there was the small matter of getting Rita's hat reblocked. I was not a certified country-fried bojangles.
Personal vanity and awkwardness aside, what's wrong with dancing? I'll tell you. Deconstructionists warn that every ideal of style dictates how we say things as well as what sort of things we may say. In short, dancing prevents a man from extolling his personal virtue. One of the most agreeable on-screen personas of all time was Gene Kelly. I liked him. Everybody liked him. He was handsome, affable, and congenial, the kind of guy even other guys admittedly liked. He had style, explainable in part because in the movies he was always single. (He was generous too. He gave one of his Oscars to the library at Boston University.) And he danced. He danced well. No, he danced great. But sometimes a lesser man can avoid the error made by a great one. I grew up wanting to be like Gene Kelly, but I didn't want to be him -- precisely because I didn't want to suffer the mortifications of dance.
I know if I ever expect to marry I may well have to learn to dance. I know, I know. Alas, we live in such a temporal age that not even the permanence of marriage can cure that. I know I have a lot of thinking to do. I like Rita. She can be sweet and funny and endearing, but I also know that the only thing that lasts forever is a song when you're dancing.
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