We often choose isolation rather than risk embarrassment. That’s just what we do. Especially young men. That’s why we rarely dance. Dancing is the single greatest example of just that. We’d rather sit alone at a table at a wedding, or stand against a wall at a junior high after-school dance. We’ll watch our girlfriend out there by herself, or with some other guy, rather than run the risk of being laughed at. Being made a fool of. We’re terrified of being embarrassed. We say things like Not now, maybe the next one, or Can we wait for a slow song? Isolation over embarrassment. Being alone always felt better than being singled out. Of course this is totally irrational. Really, it’s a fear of something else: it’s not a fear of dancing, but a fear of being vulnerable. We don’t teach kids the value of vulnerability, especially young men. Nobody ever tells you that without vulnerability there’s no intimacy. And without intimacy, what are we? What the hell are we even doing?
My old man danced. Long before Meredith and Cristina danced it out on Grey’s Anatomy, my Pops danced it out on any floor that felt good enough under his slippers. Even when there was no music playing, he was still a fantastic, fun dancer. You’d never see him smile so hard as you would when he was whipping and spinning my mom around the kitchen on a Sunday morning. I don’t know who taught him, or where he learned, but after everything he had been through, all the trauma, abuse, and war, my old man was two things: he was hard to kill, and he was a great dancer. There are levels to this—to life—and my dad reached levels of vulnerability and intimacy that I didn’t fully see, or understand, until years after he was dead.
When I was working that job, I danced. Every night. In rock bars or gay bars, it didn’t matter. I never danced to fit in, or to feel like I was a part of something. I danced to get lost. Alone, drenched, and drunk, eyes closed, head down, surrounded by a few hundred strangers. That was where I felt most comfortable.
You have to find something in your day that makes it all worthwhile. Otherwise, what the fuck did you just do? Complaining about your life to other miserable people does not count. Being angry all the time is exhausting, and I was always exhausted. I drowned the parts that hurt and burned the parts that didn’t. I felt so goddamn heavy. Always. I looked for comfort and validation in anything and anyone that cared just enough to make sure I got home okay, but not much else. I was incapable of self-improvement, was tired from keeping secrets, and most days I was obsessively focused on finding the next exit sign. A temporary escape. A way out. That’s what dancing was for me. It was the thing that made it all worth it.
So I danced. I danced my ass off.
Skin-tight black jeans, eyeliner, a wallet chain, three-buckle skull boots with a short heel, and a white undershirt. That was my uniform. Even in the winter. I never left the apartment in a coat, because I never wanted to deal with, or pay for, coat check, so I hustled or paid off the doorman when I arrived to avoid freezing in line. Once a week, I walked over to the mall up the street and spent sixteen dollars on a brand-new six-pack of Jockey ribbed white tank tops. I never wore the same one twice; I always thought of these as disposable. Most clubs had a dress code that at least required a shirt of some kind, but once through the doors, I grabbed a double vodka soda with a splash of cranberry from the bar, lit a cigarette, took off my shirt, tucked it into my back pocket, and made my way to the middle of the dance floor. I was like Jeff Spicoli walking into All American Burger in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Every now and then, while standing at the bar, a bouncer walked up to say something like, “Hey, man. I know you had a shirt on when you came in here.…” But the shirts were always long gone by that point. Lost, thrown, or used to stop the bleeding from some new cut on my arm from getting bumped too hard, hitting the floor, and landing on broken glass. I never got home looking like I had a fun night out with friends. I always looked like I’d just come from Fight Club.
I have a lot of holes in my memory. Blank spaces, missing details, and lost time. Over the years, I’ve got used to it—I’m always the guy who, unknowingly and unapologetically, reintroduces himself to a person I’ve met four times before. But every time is like the first time for me. There are certain things I keep and certain things I don’t.
I’ve spent hundreds of hours lost in the middle of a dance floor. I remember the feeling, but never the night. It was one of those nights when I met Summer, and the night I met Summer was the last night I went dancing.
I don’t remember who said what first, or how we started talking, but we connected immediately. I think maybe we did a shot and arm-wrestled? Totally normal stuff. She wasn’t wearing her regular clothes, though, I remember that much. These were club clothes, the type of late ’90s gear we cringe at today, but she looked beautiful. She had blonde hair, dark freckles, and stunning eyes that darted back and forth as she tried to figure me out. I don’t know what she thought I was, but I assumed she thought I was all dressed up too. That it was all for show. A costume.
Summer was an actor. I’d never met an actor before, and she had all the charm and confidence that only performers have. She was magnetic, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was also the first woman I ever met who ever called me smart, and from that first meeting, the two of us in the back of that dark club, we were instantly boyfriend and girlfriend. There was no first date or feeling each other out. She looked at me like nobody ever had before; I’m sure she saw some things in me that didn’t actually exist, but that didn’t matter. I made it work. I quickly became the thing she thought I was. I reinvented myself. I liked the way she made me feel, and nothing else mattered after that. Summer was my first actual grown-up girlfriend, after years of one-night stands and bar hookups.
I stopped smoking, quit dying my hair black, and didn’t wear eyeliner anymore. I started dressing differently too. All her friends, her entire crew, were actors as well. They all had incredible style that I tried to copy. I didn’t really have any good friends of my own. Summer’s welcomed me with open arms, and I felt I was finally part of something. We were officially a couple, a great couple, and we spent every day together. Birthday parties, friends’ weddings. We did all the coupley things that I hadn’t done since high school. We spent the holidays with her parents for a few days, where I headed out to the garage with her dad to drink Scotch, smoke cigars, and bond. Her parents were wonderful people who really did seem to love me. My parents adored the shit out of Summer, too.
There’s a difference between pretending to be someone else and trying to become a whole new person. That’s where things started to fall apart for me. Summer and I had this incredible relationship, but the deeper we went, the harder it was for me to not fall apart. I liked the way things were in the beginning, but the longer it went on, the harder it was to avoid certain issues. I never really opened up properly or let Summer see any of the things I had stacked away. I wasn’t ready to talk about the way I really felt about myself, not out loud. Even if I’d tried, I wouldn’t have known where to start, or how to get the words out. So I started looking for a way out. I knew things had to end. I knew, one way or another, I was going to fuck this beautiful, fun, adult relationship up. I had a choice: be vulnerable and embrace intimacy, or run, burn it all down.
I could have been honest with her, but I wasn’t. I could have told her how afraid I was, but I didn’t.
So I married one of her friends instead.