Line Dancing?

I am very close to my 39th birthday. It is November 19th, which is tomorrow. I am not one of those, "Oh, I'd rather just skip my birthday this year," or "I don't like the attention". I love the attention, and I would hate it if people skipped my birthday. The annoyance of getting older (fatter, wrinklier, worse taste in music) is offset by having a day or three entirely about me.

Last night we went out with long-time friends, two couples, to dinner and drinks. The couples we went out with have been friends for many many years. One couple lives out on the coast, the other lives here in the same town I do. One of the women, on of my closest friends, has a birthday four days earlier than mine, and the six of us celebrate together every year. I look forward to it every year. We always have fun.

We live in a small, not very cosmopolitan town, so our restaurant choices are a little limited. We went to a local steak house that Roser and I have been to, but none of our friends have. Seeing it through my friend's eyes, this steakhouse that I had thought was just fine before looked small and a little cheesy. Their dinners were fine, I picked a not great bottle of wine, and I had horrible lamb. Roser picked Halibut. In a steakhouse. Halibut. Guess how that was. Right. Horrible. The six of us usually go to a wine bar that I used to work at, but we wanted to try something different. Someone mentioned a cowboy bar, down the street from where we were eating dinner. Dancing sounded great to me. I could tell Roser wasn't that excited about it, but he went along with what everyone wanted.

I had never been in a cowboy bar before last night. I knew that there was a mechanical bull, and whenever I drove home past it, on my way from the wine bar, there were always about a million marines waiting in line to enter. I figured the crowd would be a little young, but that wouldn't be a problem, there would be dancing, and to country music. I couldn't wait to get out there and shake it, feel the freedom that only came from being out in the middle of a pulsating dance floor, dancing with, but not really with, hundreds of other people. I love being in a crowd of people moving and swaying, just getting lost in my own world.

We paid the eight dollar cover charge, and walked in. The first sign of trouble was, I couldn't see the dance floor. There was a huge mechanical bull, right at the entrance, and a long bar, but no dance floor. I asked Roser to get me a Diet Coke, (I would need energy for all that dancing) and went to find the dance floor. It was allllll the way in the back. That was not the surprising though. What was surprising was the way people were dancing. There was a group of people doing some sort of choreographed dance in the middle of the dance floor. The outer edge of the dance floor was separated from the middle by a metal rail, placed about hip or waist high with breaks so you could get to the middle. Around the outer edge, couples were going around, in a sort of rhythmic, gliding, with twirls and turns, but never breaking the rhythm of the circle as a whole. I was mesmerized. I had not seen anything like it since the days of the roller-rink. I was suddenly dying to make out with a seventh-grade boy. I watched until the end of the song, figuring it was like the Macerena, and the real dancing would begin with the next song. Nope, more choreographed dancing. I went back to Roser.

"Why didn't you warn me?" I hissed at him.

"You wouldn't have believed me, and you would have said it was your birthday, and you want to dance."

He was right.

I did not care about the eight dollars we paid to get in, I wanted to get out. I tried to find out how the other two girls felt about where we were. They not only didn't mind very much, they didn't understand my surprise at what was found there.

"It's a Cowboy Bar," they said with exaggerated patience, "You know, a Country Bar. This is what people do in a Country Bar." How in the hell! was I supposed to know that? I've never seen Urban Cowboy.

"You've seen line dancing, haven't you?"

"I saw Coyote Ugly, they danced in a line on the bar."

When I couldn't get any one else to budge, I finally conceded to having a Jolly Rancher Watermelon Shooter. That was really what it was called. And really what it tasted like. And it really did not help make the cowboy bar experience more fun. What it did was make me laugh louder at the sight of these very straight looking men sashaying around the dance floor. There were all types, of men them straight looking, all of them performing these strangely graceful synchronized dances. I am used to seeing women give it their all when dancing, but my own sweet Roser exemplifies what I expect to see when men dance. The white man's overbite, feet cemented to their spot on the dance floor, not moving for any reason, and shoulders, arms and hips moving with no sense that they are all moving to the same song, or for that matter, even belonging to the same person. This is the type of male dancing I have become comfortable with. I suppose if I had not been so peevish about wanting to dance myself, I may have admired what I was seeing.

I heard the beat change, and a hip-hop song came on. I immediately stood up and started heading for the dance floor. By the time I got there, I realized it was another choreographed dance song, "The Cupid Shuffle"I was so disappointed I almost cried.

I kept thinking about people who are stuck out in a life boat in the middle of the ocean. They are parched, and surrounded by water that they cannot drink. I was surrounded by dancing that I could not, and would not, participate in.

In the midst of all this, I was texting my brother who was going to meet us at the wine bar we usually go to. I was letting him know where we were and he was not responding. I couldn't figure out why. I was being a big whiny baby, but we were also celebrating another birthday, so I couldn't stamp my feet and play the"It's my birthday, get me the fuck out of here" card. I just pouted long enough to make everyone else miserable enough to finally want to leave. By this time my brother was calling me. It turns out he doesn't have text-messaging!?! and they had no idea where we were. They had been waiting for us at the wine bar for over an hour.

We lost the couple who had to drive back to the coast. The remaining couple went with us to the wine bar. By the time we got there, it was closing. My old boss allowed us to buy a bottle, which the four of us drank in record time, as my old boss and her helper were obviously eager to close up and go home. I gulped down the last couple of swallows in my glass, and suddenly the wine got into a fight with the watermelon shooter, and I was green. My brother and sister-in -law seemed irritated, the other couple seemed irritated, and I was seasick. And so the celebration was ending.

Roser and I headed home. As we turned around the corner toward our house, through our glass front door I could see the outline of our larger dog waiting to greet us. We walked in to our house, where both of my boys were awake. Thank goodness there was a pizza box on the stove. Roser and I each grabbed a piece. We flopped down on the couch and turned on MadTV. Thanks to the damn writer's strike, the already re-run plagued SNL is permanent re-runs. XY10 grabbed a blanket out of the closet for the two of us to share, and I slipped of my heels. I ate my pizza with XY10's head on my shoulder, and we roared with laughter at the comic that was performing. It was a pretty good way to end the evening.