Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

Jan. 4, 2003: New Year's - Lady of the Dance

Prelude: Last night I went to see Adaptation with some friends, which is a movie about a writer having trouble writing. I'm sitting there the entire time thinking, "I should be home writing."

So I went home, watched some MSNBC, ate some mint chocolate chip ice cream, and went to bed.

Why do I always end up in gay bars when a relationship breaks up? I guess it feels like a safe space; plus, the guys there can really dance.

Two nights before New Year's, I went out with my sister to a gay night at a local dance club. Even though State College, home of Penn State, was otherwise dead, the joint was jumping. We had no sooner sat down with our Long Island Iced Teas than a bouncy, bubbly guy who introduced himself as Kevin urged us to come out . . . onto the dance floor. We promised we would as soon as we finished our drinks.

Kevin turned his attentions to a couple other girls, repeating this process until he got a little dance party going. When my sister asked me why I thought Kevin was only grabbing women, I told her, "It's easy, honey. He's looking for a new fag hag." Everyone knows there's nothing more attractive than a gay man surrounded by an admiring clutch of fag hags.

We were true to our promise and danced as soon as we'd finished our drinks. It was mainly weak, happy techno, but we didn't let that stop us. We rocked out! The lesbians, dressed conservatively in their jeans and flannel shirts, their mullets carefully gelled and moussed, made way. I felt like John Travolta in Saturday Night Live, or at least like Pee Wee Herman in that biker bar.

Of course, our dancing did have an unintended effect. As we were grabbing our next round of drinks, a guy in a R.O.T.C. shirt came up to us and asked us bluntly, "Which side are you on?"

"Excuse me?" my sister asked.

"I'm straight," he announced.

"That's nice. I'm here with her," my sister said, linking arms with me. Technically, it wasn't a lie.

Even this wasn't enough to dissuade him. He hung around, making lame jokes, until we'd finished our drinks. "Well," he said, in a last attempt, "I'll be over here by the wall if you change your mind."

We were fairly certain he'd been trying to get a three-way going. The way he was acting, he'd be lucky to end up with a two-way.

If I were a super hero, my magic power would be the Dance. I've received compliments more than once from bands who insisted my dancing gave them the energy they needed to carry on playing for an otherwise dead audience. I don't dance for them, though, or for any of the admiring males or females who happen to dig my groove. It's all about the music, and letting the music take over. Doing what the music says to do.

For New Year's, we decided to catch a live band. After looking through the State College newspaper, my sister, her boyfriend, some friends and I decided to go to a 1920's club, The Big Easy, to celebrate New Year's in style.

The Big Easy was a swanky place, with wrought iron terraces, artistic murals and hanging plants. As soon as we sat down, the waiter removed our table cloth.

We amused ourselves by ordering naughty-sounding drinks and playing with our noisemakers, echoed by the next table, a group of artsy looking grad students who seemed to think they were rebelling.

The blues band was mild mannered and palatable to every taste. Unless, of course, you were in the mood to get down.

At my sister's urging, we left the Big Easy and made our way across town to Zeno's, which is a basement bar that is usually overcrowded but has good prices and a reputation for decent music.

As we walked across town, at about 15 minutes to midnight, we shouted "Happy New Year" loudly at anyone who didn't seem happy enough. Downtown, they were having the family approved First Night celebration, which involves ice sculptures, family friendly events and the subtly subversive, such as a vibrating wonder called The Relaxinator, which we would befriend later in the evening.

We paid a $5 cover to enter the crowded, smoky, dingy, dark bar. My stomach immediately sank. But things would soon pick up.

As we crossed the room, a gorgeous, well-dressed guy came up to me and kissed me gently on the lips. I knew immediately that he was gay.

"I'm kissing everyone," he said tipsily.

"Cool. Kiss him," I said, pointing to a guy in a zippered sweatshirt, dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. "He looks like Keanu Reeves."

"No, he doesn't."

"Wait, wait. Drink some more." We both took a sip of our drinks.

"You're right, he does," the well-dressed guy agreed. He promptly gave him a kiss.

The Keanu lookalike wobbled on his feet. "Whoah," he said.

Keanu was very, very drunk. If you had to pick a Keanu Reeves movie role that he most represented, it would be Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure: The College Years.

"Did anyone ever tell you that you look like Keanu Reeves?" I asked him.

"That's strike number two," he said blearily.

"What was strike number one?"

"The Keanu Reeves remark." He chuckled, drank some more and wobbled.

The well-dressed man continued his quest to kiss everyone in the room. I was left alone with Keanu.

"What are you drinking?" I asked.

"My friends gave it to me," he said. It was a potent-looking drink in a large glass, of a sickly yellow color.

"Are you sure they're your friends?" I asked.

He snickered, drank and wobbled. I caught him before he lurched into a stranger. I gave the stranger an apologetic smile. He smiled back. Somehow, I had become Keanu's chaperone.

At about the point when he started asking me if I wanted to go off somewhere and smoke some pot, my sister rescued me and we hit the dance floor. The band was smoking! They were a rockabilly band with the glorious name The Four Horsemen. Their first album? Opossum Lips Now.

They truly rocked. They even played a cover of that song from the twisting contest in Pulp Fiction, where Uma Thurman and John Travolta give a new meaning to hip dancing.

The music was truly inspiring, and my sister, her roommate and I got into it. We felt the music, we got wild, we got silly, we were performance art. Her roommate, who was wearing the same suit he'd worn on Halloween, when he'd gone as Tubbs from "Miami Vice," was impressing all the ladies. My sister and I fed off each other's dance moves, pushing each other to wilder and crazier stuff.

At midnight, the band took a break and we screamed, drank, hugged, screamed some more and then got back to dancing.

I totally lost track of time, immersed in the wild sounds. My sister's roommate did a super slo-mo dance to a slow number; and I tried to follow him but kept breaking up laughing.

But I wasn't so lost in the music, or so drunk, that I didn't notice an arm slipping around my waist. Some guy I didn't know had come up and started rubbing up against me. I suppose he was trying to get his freak on.

In my tight, silver shirt and matching long-sleeved silk blouse, I must have seemed like a fanciful extension of the music to his blurrily drunk mind. He grabbed me again; as it turns out, hard enough to leave four fingertip sized bruises on my upper arm. But I spun away from him, kept spinning away until even his drunken consciousness got the hint.

I suppressed a laugh, thinking about how, if he'd continued grabbing at me, I would have gladly stepped up the self-defense, blocking and punching and kicking to the rockabilly beat. Wouldn't that have been far-out? Just like a Quentin Tarantino movie. I could have a cool name, too, like Rhonda Juno or Coline Vine.

When he sat down, I saw the guy had a UPS symbol tattooed on the back of his neck, like a refugee from an Orwellian future when George Bush XXII demands all citizens be tagged for easy identification. He could have been straight out of a Judy Tenuta bit.

Near the end of the evening, I checked back with Keanu, who was still working on the mysterious drink. "I hope you're walking home," I said.

"I have a motorcycle," he said, wobbling back against a stranger.

"Dear God, tell me you're not riding it."

He snickered. "The motorcycle's at my place, where I'm going to go. I'm not driving," he assured me. "But wouldn't it be cool to wear skis when you're on your motorcycle?"

"You mean, put skis on the motorcycle?"

"No, wear them on your feet!" He laughed, out of control, sloshed his drink and again expressed his desire to go smoke pot with me.

"Um . . . I think my friends are leaving," I said. "Good luck with that ski thing."

We emerged from the smoky, dark enclave into the remarkably mild winter night. The ice sculptures had begun to soften, melting into the streets.

My sister's roommate was talking us into going to a party he'd heard about when we were distracted by The Relaxinator. And would we be glad.

The Relaxinator sat in a small, Plexiglas booth in the middle of the street. What with its plastic hinged door, it looked more like an abstract port-a-potty than what it truly was: a gateway to hours of fun and amusement. The Relaxinator, you see, was a huge vibrator. And I am not kidding.

Here's what you do: You put a dime into The Relaxinator and stand on top, in the positions marked for your feet. Heck, put two dimes in. Stay awhile.

When you've said your appropriate prayers to the Powers of Divine Pleasure, the old machine starts up a massive vibration that rushes through your whole body and makes your scalp shake. If you stand on it for anywhere upwards of 30 seconds, you continue to vibrate after you step off.

I don't know how much time a dime was supposed to buy, but The Relaxinator was either broken or it really, really liked us. We must have spent nearly half an hour, taking turns on The Relaxinator and also playing "How many people can fit on The Relaxinator," all on two dimes.

It was still vibrating happily when we turned our gift over to some football-type guys who were wandering along the street, looking way too uptight. "Try this," we told them. "It's our treat."

They were taking turns and laughing loudly as we left. "You people rock!" they called.

I prefer to leave my memories of the evening there, and not to mention that the party we went to afterwards was extremely lame and that, within two minutes of my arriving, I witnessed a guy vomit into a cup and then another guy drink it.

No, no. We'll leave you with The Relaxinator and with the lovely ice dragons, melting softly into the streets of a new year.

Moral:
If you build a Relaxinator, they will come.

Copyright 2002 by Alyce Wilson

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