I’ve always loved dancing.  Once I got over my shyness and fear of rejection that is.  I wasn’t the most confident of guys in high school, so putting myself out there and asking a young woman to dance was harder than hitting a curveball to right field.  As I’ve gotten older and more confident, it’s not such a big deal.  I can dance like everyone is watching.

Out on the dance floor I shake and jive to the rhythm of the beat in my head.  I never really received any formal training.  I tried to copy everyone else and moved my head and waved my arms and shook my ass like I knew what I was doing.  No one ever complained but no one ever complimented me either.

I really didn’t have a girlfriend in high school which meant when a slow dance came on and I was lucky enough to have a lass say, “yes”, I punished the poor girl with a raging hard on pressed into her stomach as if I was pushing my key into her ignition. The scent of a woman’s hair was enough to get me excited and as my hormones raced  I tried to remember to listen to the music and not the devilish thoughts inside my nymphomaniacal head.

In college, it was different.  I had a girlfriend (who eventually became my wife) and I really didn’t go out dancing.  Drinking, yes, dancing not really.  Mostly I went to baseball team parties (I didn’t belong to a fraternity), where girlfriends and wannabe’s would show up and blast music from a boom box.  Mostly the women would dance among themselves to Devo, Madonna, or Michael Jackson songs.  While the guys talked baseball games past and present, I would look to the dance floor to see if I could pop into a circle of girls pretending to breakdance by doing a somersault into the middle, cracking most of the people up, and then I’d moonwalk (badly) back to the guys conversation as if nothing happened.

After college, dancing at my friends and my wedding reception became the time to try out my more mature moves.  Alcohol was a reason to let go, to shake my ass a little harder, to jump a little higher but losing my inhibition on the dance floor became more of a realization that, good or bad, no one really cared about your moves.  The whole idea about shaking your ass was about having fun.  And what is wrong with that?  Absolutely nothing.  Say it again.

On a recent business trip, I think I shocked a few people.  On a particularly taxing 4 day adventure away from home, on our last night in town, the group decided to go out after dinner and hit a Blues bar on Beale Street.  Our merry band of a dozen co-workers mixed unevenly 4 men to 8 women seemed about as unlikely a group to go out dancing as a bunch of introverts at a public speaking seminar.

I knew of no better way to get this party started than to literally dive on the dance floor.  My colleagues fell on the floor laughing.  Alas, I was only getting started.  When my tee-shirt flew off during Nelly’s, “It’s getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes,” I had them slapping their knees, wiping away tears and begging to understand why I wasn’t working in standup comedy.  Even the DJ told one of my colleagues, “Man, I need to invite that guy to my wedding.”  When the song ended, I put my shirt back on and we left soon after smiling and laughing like old friends.

Ah, the Boogie Nights.  They didn’t start as the best in town but they sure are now.   I’ve become somewhat of a legend with my co-workers who now want to join me on business trips if for nothing but a good, hearty, belly laugh.