It’s rare I’m ever quite so moved and intrigued by something that I want to abandon whatever book I’m reading to go write about it. Of course, I didn’t abandon my book, but I allowed the idea to fester in my mind until I was finished.
Saturday was Pacific’s homecoming. Our football team had lost 14-66 or something, but apparently we scored more than at any other game, so I suppose there was room to celebrate. I started reading the Hunger Games again earlier in the day, and by 8:30 I was about a quarter of the way into Catching Fire, the sequel.
My room was jarringly cold, and my hands were so shaky and without feeling that I had to get something to warm them up. The UC would be open, I knew, with its Starbucks, so I grabbed my book, my cell phone, and my keys and headed over.
The lights were dim, possibly to give the revolving strobe lights more to illuminate, so I found a small pocket of light on a couch near the staircase that led to the blissful quiet of the downstairs bathrooms and mailboxes. Although music was pounding and the lights were in full rave mode, only two people were in the vicinity, both sitting on couches with skateboards, looking disdainfully at the open expanse of floor.
It took another couple hours for the room to fill up, but when it did, it happened fast. The music got louder, the bass more persistent, and before long, it was all I could do to keep my eyes on my book instead of straying towards the mass of gyrating bodies a mere twenty feet away.
At first, I looked for differences between this dance and the dances I’d attended in middle and high school. Upon first, second, and third glances, there weren’t many. The music was the same, the way people were dancing against one another was the same, even the outfits and careless mannerisms were the same. I was about to give up on my fellow college classmates when I saw the thing that would leave me reeling for hours.
There were two boys, dressed in plaid shirts like many other people there (something I still have no explanation for), who after dancing near each other for a while had finally decided to throw custom to the wind and begin to dance. They danced no differently than the heterosexual couples around them, and even more miraculously, no one reacted at all. The people around them went on about their business, and eventually the two boys just seemed like any other couple on the dance floor.
I can’t really explain what it was that struck me so past this: beauty. Maybe, like my little pocket of light to read, this normalcy of open homosexual conduct was contained to this state, maybe even this school. But it was a pocket of hope, and I can’t imagine it doing anything but growing.
Those two boys dancing together made my heart swell like it hasn’t done since Jim and Pam’s wedding episode on The Office, when Jim chopped off half his tie. It was a moment of such pure and total openness that I may not encounter for a long time. I love that I’ve managed to pick a school that not only caters to my artistic pursuits but also to my political ones. While I’d love to go somewhere that this scene is not accepted and change some minds, I think it’s good that I’ve started here, where I can collect hope that all is not lost.
Eventually, either the boys leave or they bleed into a more central area of the crowd; I can no longer see them. But the growing intensity of the bass as it vibrates my couch and reverberates in my chest brings back other memories of dances, dances that I spent in very different roles.
I remember my first dance, trembling uncertainly in the center of the largely unfamiliar middle school gym, glancing around desperately, wishing that my red headed date would come and talk to me. I remember how small I felt, how alone.
I remember my first slow dance in 8th grade with my friend Kevin, whose crush on me I’d recently confirmed with the invention of a fake boyfriend. I remember how far apart we kept each other, how awkward our waddle in circles felt.
I remember my homecoming dance my freshman year of high school, where my high heels hurt more than anything I’d ever felt before. I remember how I hid from my unofficial date during slow songs because those same heels made me a good two or three inches taller than him and I’d already recognized that I wasn’t all that interested in him.
I remember my junior year homecoming, when I went with a sophomore who I’d met over Facebook only a week or two before the dance. I remember how, in the darkness of the dance floor, he kissed me during the slow songs and I let him because I was so desperately lonely, needing that kind of connection, no matter how insignificant it may have been.
And then I remember my senior prom, a night of both pure happiness and the jarring tearing apart of friendships I’d once taken for granted. Since that night, I’ve heard from only two of the people in my group, and only a few more people did I end the year cordially with.
Dances are such strange things. I don’t think I’ll ever adopt the ease of movement that some girls are born with, allowing me to circle my hips around in a way that doesn’t look like I’m failing to keep a hula hoop in the air. I’ve never liked the idea of grinding, and slow songs just seem like prolonged hugs. I’m not comfortable enough to let go completely, without somehow making a joke about my jerky movements. The last dance I participated in I made a point to be as obviously silly as possible, creating dance moves I called “The Typewriter†and “The Window Washerâ€.
Although I felt very much like Gabriella from the first High School Musical, sitting off to the side of a party reading a book like the insecure nerd that I am, I’ve never felt more connected -and alternatively disconnected- from a place in my life. While the initial excitement of college has long since worn off, it’s nice to know that there will always be little surprises to keep things interesting.
