Why I Don't Dance
Once upon a time, I was in Portugal with my family. We went every year because my mother was Portuguese and had family there. I was a boy oblivious to the fact that puberty was hiding around the corner, chuckling in a sinister fashion. I meet this girl - probably a cousin too many times removed for it to matter - and I'm surprised by the fact that I think she's delicious and I want to do the smoochyface thing with her. The first girl I ever got a crush on.
Fast forward, oh, about ten years. Life at home and school have deteriorated. At least coming to Portugal makes for a decent holiday from both. But. This year, the girl's not only grown up, she's getting married. To a jerk. He looks like a jerk. He's already balding, for smeg's sake! Why is she marrying that jerk, I wonder. I look at my mother, who married my father, and decide it's a woman thing. Women marry men who are no good for them.
Marriage ceremony in the girl's family chapel. Dinner. Party. Breakfast.
The party was the problem. You see, middle-upper class Portugal is like a Jane Austin novel with modern appliances... come to think of it, more than once it's felt like the appliances don't belong there. People expect things of you at occasions such as this. My mother told me I was expected to ask a girl to dance. I've never been big on dancing, and even less on social conformity, so I'm not about to ask some girl I've never even met to dance.
So my mother, the self-described social rebel, asks for me. After I said no. I guess a roman catholic, convent-educated woman has a different definition of social rebel. I am fairly furious with her, but I put on a smile and dance with the girl. I don't think she bought it. In fact I think my seething hatred at the injustice of it all manifested in my bruising her arm in my grip.
I was quite drunk, but I think it was after breakfast and on the way back to the hotel that I took an oath never to dance again.
Fast forward another ten years. Home life as I knew it is gone forever. School is over and done with. I start doing the social thing in the Real World. I meet girls. I want to get laid. I can't dance too well, but I can move without stepping on any toes...
Three times, I let a girlfriend drag me onto the dancefloor. Three times, I break my oath. And three times, the relationship ends. Catastrophically. Incompatable 'issues' aggravated by visiting violent-prone soon-to-be ex-cons. Finding out I'm 'the other man.' Bedding a girl that, despite turning out to be only thirteen years old, was the best fuck I'd ever had. (That's the one that made me decide to stop dating in the first place.)
Three times.
There will not be a fourth.
Incidentally, I was right. That guy the girl married was a jerk. And a wifebeater.
Once upon a time, I was in Portugal with my family. We went every year because my mother was Portuguese and had family there. I was a boy oblivious to the fact that puberty was hiding around the corner, chuckling in a sinister fashion. I meet this girl - probably a cousin too many times removed for it to matter - and I'm surprised by the fact that I think she's delicious and I want to do the smoochyface thing with her. The first girl I ever got a crush on.
Fast forward, oh, about ten years. Life at home and school have deteriorated. At least coming to Portugal makes for a decent holiday from both. But. This year, the girl's not only grown up, she's getting married. To a jerk. He looks like a jerk. He's already balding, for smeg's sake! Why is she marrying that jerk, I wonder. I look at my mother, who married my father, and decide it's a woman thing. Women marry men who are no good for them.
Marriage ceremony in the girl's family chapel. Dinner. Party. Breakfast.
The party was the problem. You see, middle-upper class Portugal is like a Jane Austin novel with modern appliances... come to think of it, more than once it's felt like the appliances don't belong there. People expect things of you at occasions such as this. My mother told me I was expected to ask a girl to dance. I've never been big on dancing, and even less on social conformity, so I'm not about to ask some girl I've never even met to dance.
So my mother, the self-described social rebel, asks for me. After I said no. I guess a roman catholic, convent-educated woman has a different definition of social rebel. I am fairly furious with her, but I put on a smile and dance with the girl. I don't think she bought it. In fact I think my seething hatred at the injustice of it all manifested in my bruising her arm in my grip.
I was quite drunk, but I think it was after breakfast and on the way back to the hotel that I took an oath never to dance again.
Fast forward another ten years. Home life as I knew it is gone forever. School is over and done with. I start doing the social thing in the Real World. I meet girls. I want to get laid. I can't dance too well, but I can move without stepping on any toes...
Three times, I let a girlfriend drag me onto the dancefloor. Three times, I break my oath. And three times, the relationship ends. Catastrophically. Incompatable 'issues' aggravated by visiting violent-prone soon-to-be ex-cons. Finding out I'm 'the other man.' Bedding a girl that, despite turning out to be only thirteen years old, was the best fuck I'd ever had. (That's the one that made me decide to stop dating in the first place.)
Three times.
There will not be a fourth.
Incidentally, I was right. That guy the girl married was a jerk. And a wifebeater.
VIEW 9 of 9 COMMENTS
annisa:
your blog makes me think of the Phil Collins song...I don't Dance...you know it? I can't get it out of my head now
salome:
First I've heard of dancing and pedophilia mixing. 