She was a grandma, but her body and legs bore witness to her earlier career as a solo modern dancer. And when she decided to be Keith’s life partner, she knew that her solo days were over. Except when she danced.
“Need a partner?” The young man in a sweaty tee shirt and straggly hair seemed in a hurry. That’s an understatement, she said under her breath as she stood to accept his hand.
“Sure, why not. I was just resting.”
“You can rest anytime”, he smiled
“Okay, let’s go get in line. My name is Lois.”
“Hi, Lois, I’m David.”
She was highly in demand this evening. But so were all the women, since they were outnumbered, which often happened on Thursdays. The routine of partner selection complete, they moved to one of the lines forming on the floor. She liked the name and the sounds of the cute named band, “The KGB”, Kathy, Gary, and Bob, fiddler, guitarist and keyboarder respectively.
When the wear and tear of thirty years together started eroding the gold on their wedding bands and the sparkle in their smiles, the marriage counselor suggested Lois and Keith take up something they could do together. To keep their relationship ‘fresh’, she said. Lois had suggested dancing, but Keith was a bowler and a golfer and a hunter and a biker, he said. Manly stuff that he did with the guys. At first Lois was game and tried them all. She actually looked pretty good in the form-fitting leathers Keith bought her during his motorcycle phase. There was even a picture of her and Keith in Florida next to the motorcycle he mortgaged the house to buy. They gathered with the other ‘Easy Rider’ wannabes; bored dentists and lawyers on their shiny ‘hogs’, in search of a weekend identity. She doubted it would ever fit her personality, developed over the years of wife, mother, and now grandmother. At first it was kind of sexy riding behind Keith on his big Harley, her arms around his waist. Someone had sold him a leather jacket, imprinted with the logo, “If you can read this, the old lady has fallen off.” It made her laugh, but after a few near misses on slick highways at high speeds, Lois stopped laughing. And besides, clinging for dear life in one position in all kinds of weather was not her brand of ‘togetherness’, she decided.
This partner dance was different than the high school gym dances she remembered, where just the popular girls danced, usually with the same guys while the shy boys and girls hung back in the shadows and watched. It was less about dancing than being popular.
After high school, Lois joined a modern dance troupe. When that part of her life was over, she joined the newly-revived ballroom dance craze. Lois could lose herself in dance, especially to live music. And on the floor, she was removed from the demands her family made on her. She twirled and promenaded with men half her age, masking her arthritic pain with a pleasant smile. Then the
new contra dance rage hit Seattle with its old rhythms and patterns, coupled with nonstop movement. Lois noticed that nobody seemed overtly to flirt. The young people stripped the dance of any notion of romance, as they viewed their partners as vehicles to get into the thrill of movement to up-tempo and fast-paced patterns while celebrating their accelerated heartbeats.
Seattle contra added its own style, where women danced with women, men in kilts with other men, and young parents with babes in snugglies on their chests. The other Seattle thing was the decided political correctness everywhere. Perfume or cologne didn’t pass allergy muster; no scented soap in the lavatories, for the same reasons. No outside shoes allowed inside. This was all fine with Lois. She just wanted to dance. Preferably with Keith.
So here she was at the Friday night Emerald City contra dance. All fifty-some years of her, in her colorful wide skirt, dance shoes with leather soles. Alone in the crowd, without Keith, who claimed he had no rhythm and wasn’t likely to find it at his age. The perspiring bodies floated together in the close heavy air where the windows had to stay shut because the neighbors complained about the noise.
Her young dance partner, David, was a man of few words, like most of the men here. She guessed they felt strange with someone their mother’s age in their arms. How would they make conversation? “I really am going to clean up my room.” Or, “I know my eating habits are lousy, but I’m working on it.” Many of the older men were pushy, as they forced her hands and arms to conform to their spin and twirl techniques. It hurt sometimes, as did her jaw when she plastered on a forced smile. You were supposed to look into your partner’s eyes during a long, fast twirl in order to avoid dizziness. And then there was the “Gypsy”, where dancers circled each other and stared into their partner’s faces. She often wondered if real Gypsies did that, or was that just an urban legend? Why couldn’t she do that with someone she knew, like Keith? While she was dancing she often wondered what he was doing and thinking.
When the band’s last note of the last set sounded, Lois stepped out into the fresh, rain-cleansed air and moved with the crowd to her car. This evening she decided not to take her normal route home. She turned instead onto Sixty-Fifth Street on Phinney Ridge and drove the half block to Al’s Neighborhood Place. A cold beer would be welcome to replace her lost fluids. As she squinted into the bar’s subdued lighting, Al, the owner, spied her, and dropped his eyes. And she knew then that when her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she looked to the corner table where Keith usually sat, he wouldn’t be alone. And he’d be wearing his jacket with the saying, “The old lady’s fallen off.”
