Don't Be Afraid of the Floor

It is 2:00 AM. I am at the restaurant where I used to work. It's a Saturday night, and that means it has transformed into a dance club for the residents of my hometown who are too lazy or too drunk to drive to Buffalo to "real" bars.

I am here because earlier Josh got home from Quebec. He called and said, "I'm here. I'm home. I'm at our old place of employment. What are you doing?"

I went, met up with his friends, drank a beer from a stash one of the waitresses had hidden under a booth in the back.

Now, though, I am on the dance floor. One of Josh's friend's girlfriends—who is wearing a tight tank top that shows off her breasts (giant) and stomach (flat)—is grinding against me. She has gotten me on the dance floor because I was just sitting at a table, talking to Josh and the other boys, and she didn't think that was right. She thought I needed to be dancing.

"Don't be afraid of the floor!" she says and her knees drop out from under her. Suddenly she is writhing near my ankles. Her hands are on my legs.

I'm uncomfortable. For several reasons. First, I don't even know this girl's name. Second, I'm seeing more of her breasts than is necessary. Third, she's humping my leg. Fourth, there is a Napoleon Dynamite-looking man sneaking up behind us, trying to hump on me, too. Fifth, I don't like dancing with people I don't know. Sixth, I don't like to dance "seriously" in front of people from my hometown.

This girl is throwing down some moves. She has no problem dancing in front of these people. She wants to be queen of the dance floor. She wants all the boys to look at her.

If my friends were there, I would certainly dance with them, but in a not-serious way. We wouldn't roll up our tank tops so more of our stomach showed. We wouldn't grind up and down on each other and hope all the boys are watching. What we would do is laugh and giggle and twirl around like girls who don't so much care what people think of them because they're only dancing for themselves.

This girl wasn't dancing for herself. She was dancing for the DJ, for her boyfriend, for the men who were drinking Coors Light and standing on the edge of the dance floor. She was dancing for the short men, the men with tattoos on their necks, the men without teeth, the sixty year old farmers, the underagers who scammed their way inside.

I don't want to dance for any of them, so I'm not. This girl is disappointed in my effort.

"Don't be afraid of the floor!" she says again. Emphatically. She slaps the floor with one hand.

There is no way I am going on the floor.

She springs up again. She is like a pretty Gumby doll. "Come on," she says. She puts her hands on my hips. "Move for me. It's all in the knees."

"Uhm," I say. "No."

"Watch me!" she says, then she stomps one foot on the ground, turns herself in a half-circle, repeats. "See?" she says. "It's easy."

"I don't think I can do that," I say. That's a lie. Of course I can do that. I just don't want to do that. First of all, I think the foot-stomp/twirl thing looks a little horsey. It looks like something a girl who is trying too hard would do. I'm not a girl who is trying hard.

She stops dancing. "You need to learn to use your body for pleasure," she says.

I want to laugh. I really, really, really want to laugh. I'm pretty sure I've figured out how to use my body for pleasure. I think I've studied up on the subject, gotten some practice, enjoyed it. I think our definitions of pleasure must be different because mine does not include dancing to impress that toothless man in the corner, the one whose mouth is hanging open just enough to make you wonder if he's actually going to drool on the floor. If she was dancing for herself, for the sheer pleasure of dancing, then I would've understood. But this was a girl who was clearly out to prove she was the prettiest girl there. Look at me! her moves said. Look at me! Are you looking at me now? Don't stop!

I tell the girl thanks, thanks a lot, but I'm going to get a drink now. She frowns at me. "Alright," she says, and shrugs.

I go back to Josh. I tell him he shouldn't let that happen again. I just want to stay with him and the boys. That's fine with me. That's perfect. I don't need anything else, and when I turn around to watch the girlfriend in the yellow shirt drink suggestively from her beer bottle then run her hands up her thighs, I am ridiculously thankful that I don't need anything else, anything like that, to make me feel good and right and wanted.