It’s 2002. I’m spending the night at my grandparents’ place. The house is asleep, and my brother snores softly next to me, his nose whistling like the tiniest train. I tiptoe down the plush stairs, the carpet a coconspirator in childish midnight antics. I go through the habitual rigamarole of sneaking about: skip the one creaky step, wrap my nightgown around the doorknob to muffle the click of the lock, side-step the dining table, pray that the parakeets, caged on the kitchen counter, don’t wake. If I can make it to the living room, I’m golden.
I pluck my favorite VHS tape from its hiding place — on the bookshelf, wedged between the white and yellow pages — pop it into the player, clench the remote like some sacred thing. Fast forward through the commercials (2x speed), wrap the dull, nylon blanket, old as me, around my legs. Hit play.
My heart gallops as the stars circle round the mountain on screen, the familiar Paramount logo fading into view. B-roll of some train track, b-roll of some powerlines, b-roll of some field, white with winter, and a girl of the same complexion, her forehead pressed to the window of a train on its way to somewhere else: Save the Last Dance.
Each time I watched that movie was the first time. I was Sara and you (or you, or you) couldn’t convince me otherwise.
Sara as she moved into the closet of a room at her absent father’s house. Sara as she walked, wide-eyed and green, through the metal detector at her new high school. Sara as she bandaged her toes, bruised and bloody from ballet. Sara as she was chewed out by Chenille in the waiting room of the pediatrician’s office. Sara as she battled Nikki on the dance floor, coveting Derek’s attention. Sara as she won it. Sara as she sauntered across the stage at her Juilliard audition. Sara as she stole the hearts of the judges with her riveting hip-hop routine.
A routine that I memorized, and danced in lockstep to, as the sun rose and the house stirred, my bare feet quiet like a cat’s paws on the cold, cream tiles.
I consider that year, that movie, those nighttime tap and twists, the beginning of my cultural demise. My sense of rhythm plucked away by God as punishment for my blatant treachery, the nonsensical camaraderie I’d found with this fictitious white woman.
Perhaps we’d be having a different conversation right now if I’d learned to mimic Nikki or Chenille or Snookie or Derek or literally any other character in the film (used loosely). But I didn’t. And as a result, we’re having this conversation, the one that explains why I hate dancing, and the club, and most (all?) things that call for me being outside of my house after dark.
Dancing was always something done in the dark, literally and figuratively. A source of shame. An embarrassment. To myself sure, but especially to others.
I was reminded of this periodically through my childhood. First, when I had to stay late at dance practice (alone) in elementary school, because I couldn’t get the tap routine down. Then at sockhops, summer camps, middle school dances, high school dances, even family reunions, where I was teased by cousins and uncles alike at the obvious short in the stride of my electric slide. I remained hopeful through teenhood that rhythm, like puberty, was something that would come with age.
But then I was 19, cowering in the bathroom at a Big Freedia show. I was 23 and my feet remained flat and floppy and defiant. I was 26 and and my hips filled out, but they still didn’t sway. I was 27, 28, 29. My music taste varied wildly, but the fact remained: I could not, cannot, match a beat.
The inky black of night ironically highlighted my deepest insecurity and I coped in noxious ways, losing myself in solo cup after solo cup of whisky and rum and vodka and whatever was cheap and sweet at the bar. The liquid mettle fueled my rickety truck of a body as I sputtered and swerved about the dance floor, too drunk to comprehend (or care) what a beat was.
I got very good at cancelling plans, and very comfortable with standing people up. My broken promises were backed with tall tales of broken phones and broken ankles until eventually the old “if you say no enough times, people will stop inviting you” thing kicked in. Finally, I was free: absolved of my responsibility as a young person to stay out late; my responsibility as a woman to wave and sway and rock side to side like a charmed snake; my responsibility as a Black person to lean and rock, to dougie and wobble. I settled into my role as the earliest bird, peering down upon my nocturnal counterparts from my lofty, sunny perch.
But, things changed.
My camera roll devolved into a mix of screenshots and selfies as people called my bluff and removed themselves from my life. I blinked and half of my twenties fled, presumably into the same dark that I loathed. The dark that had taken everything — my confidence, my ability to socialize, my friends — from me.
My belly was fat full of worms and yet, there I was, lonelier and bluer than the moon.
(I’m late writing this, because I (reluctantly, admittedly) went to a party on Friday night that seeped into Saturday’s sunrise. I slept most of Saturday away and am cramming this in on Sunday evening.)
As I walked into said party, I felt the usual clenching, tensing, stiffening as anxiety latched itself onto my lungs, spine, ribcage. I beelined for the sofa, a leather island in the ocean of sweaty flesh. The thumping in my chest outpaced the bass as I cycled through the mantras and affirmations and AA passages that swirled about my skull. Everything is fine. You are worthy. The wisdom to know the difference.
Perhaps it was the spirit of crowd, or the clarity of sobriety, or the DJ’s music taste, but this weekend I cashed in my fear of other folks’ what the hell (is she doing) for my own, what the hell?
I peeled myself from the sticky sofa, and allowed myself to be absorbed by the crowd in an unfamiliar osmosis. My body swayed, shimmied, spun like a ballerina in a box. The disco ball spit diamonds across my neck and chest, leaving nowhere for the fear to hide. For the first time in a long time, the rhythm did not feel like solely my burden to bear, bouncing from my shoulders to hers, theirs, his; an altruistic albatross. The energy was ours to shape, to mold, to enjoy, whatever that felt like. Freedom ripped through my limbs and my smile mirrored the lights above.
It was…fun.
I will not claim to have suddenly fallen in love with dancing or darkness or anything of the sort. That’s false, and I am in fact a little miffed to have slept away the bulk of my weekend. But as I write this, I smile at the memory of rippling across the dance floor, one happy wave in a joyous sea.
Tonight, the moon smiles back.