A Dance With Levina

LESSONS

It started like this: For as long as I can remember, grown-ups were always complaining how kids in my generation didn't know how to dance. As far as I could tell, my parents' generation didn't have a clue either. Have you seen the grainy footage of Woodstock? You call that dancing?

Dancing With The Local Stars was the supposed remedy. Several local "celebrities" would be invited for a dance competition. The best dancers among the students would be paired off with a celebrity. Finally, the winning student would win a fabulous secret prize. (The student's celebrity partner would receive nothing; except, of course, the glory of winning a high school dance competition.)

First we had to learn how to dance. Thankfully, one of our local celebrities was Charlotte Paliester, a woman who won several ballroom dance championships years ago. She would teach a class on Fridays and Sundays in the six weeks leading up to the dance. Because of my job at the Cineplex, I wasn't able to make the popular Friday classes, the ones that Levina and almost everyone else attended. I told myself it was better that way. Now, the first time she would see me dance, I would dazzle her with my skills, and sweep her off her feet. Instead of step on them.

I managed to drag my friend Kaycee with me to the dance lessons. I didn't bother asking her to come to the dance itself, because Kaycee doesn't do dances. Says Kaycee: "I've given this school enough opportunities for entertainment without wrapping up a punch line in satin and lace."

Kaycee's pretty funny, and fun to be around, as long as you don't make the mistake of thinking her acne and extra thirty pounds make her shy and desperate for the slightest bit of kindness you deign to show her. If you do make that mistake, she turns her sharp mind and even sharper tongue directly toward you, carving your ego to ribbons.

On the first day of lessons, Ms. Paliester commanded us to line up in two rows, boys on one side and girls on the other. I looked straight ahead at the sophomore girl standing in front of me, trying to strike a posture of confidence. It was a wasted effort, as she refused to look at me.

"The dance between man and woman is the dance between hunter and prey," began Ms. Paliester. "The only difference is that in dance, the prey can become the hunter." Ms. Paliester winked at me as she glided down the line of awkward boys.

To my extreme left stood Lyle Pettis, the only boy at Jacob Creek High school to still wear Megadeath t-shirts. He hadn't dispensed with his death metal ensemble for the lessons; nonetheless, he looked like he was going to take ballroom dance seriously. The resolute glint in his eye matched the one shining in his spiked collar.

Next to Lyle was Gus Gusterson. I'm not making his name up. Gus's parents decided that their chubby baby (the chub never wore away, alas), with a lazy eye and a very pointy head, didn't have enough character building challenges facing him in life and so added Gus to Gusterson. Fortunately, Gus inherited their sense of humor, and, as a result, most people liked him. He had invented more lazy eye jokes than you could find on the internet. One time when a football jock was pushing him around, he gently said, "No need to worry. Only one of my eyes has the hots for you. The rest of me is as straight as a razor." The jock actually broke up laughing and left him alone.

And then there was me. Judah Loren. Jude to my friends (all six of them). I came dressed for the occasion: dark slacks, red button up shirt, and black shiny shoes. A little boring, perhaps. The belt cinched a little too tight, definitely. And that was it: three boys. Yay, Sunday class.

We three boys faced eight impatient girls. Ms. Paliester wouldn't hear of girls dancing with girls. In her opinion, political correctness couldn't change the ancient forms of ballroom dance. That meant I had almost triple duty.

We started with a waltz. "One-two-three, one-two-three," began Ms. Paliester. Box step. Rises and Falls. Cross Step. One girl came, another left, and I was leading them across the floor in three quarter time. At least that's the way I saw it in my head.

"Hey Fred Astaire, watch your step," said Kaycee. I had just stepped on her foot.

And with another partner, Carline Stevens: "I think you're supposed to be leading."

"I am leading," I responded.

"Then why aren't we going anywhere?" I looked around to see the other dances advancing across the floor.

"I thought we were supposed to go around in a square," I said sheepishly.

Carline gave me a withering look of disgust. "That was ten minutes ago." I'm pretty sure that if there hadn't been such a scarcity of dancers with an X and Y chromosome, Kaycee would have been the only one willing to stomach me.

There was one person who took a liking to me. Whenever Ms. Paliester demonstrated a new step, I was her designated partner. "Let's show them how it works, Judah." I was less than thrilled when she started winking at me at the beginning of each class.

The six weeks went by quickly. Every Sunday, I wore myself out trying to force my feet into rhythmical units of time. I practiced at home every chance I got. "Cha-cha-CHA!" It wasn't pretty, but I slowly began to resemble an actual dancer. Every Friday night, as I piled popcorn into enormous tubs at the Cineplex, I imagined myself approaching Levina across the cafeteria, with a slight swagger in my step, looking up at her nonchalantly and saying, ever so smoothly and with a hint of wry self-deprecating humor, "Shall we?"

"Butter throughout! I wanted butter throughout the whole thing, not just squirted on the top! I told you, like, seven times!" And so some irate ten year old would break my reverie. But the day – Dance Day – was drawing nearer. My moment of hope; my moment of complete social destruction.