On Falling Down and Getting Back Up Again (Blog #78)

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Okay, shit.

It’s four-thirty in the morning, and Daddy is tired. My dancer friend Matt drove down from Springfield yesterday, and we’ve been dancing and (only because this is a blog about honesty) drinking since seven-thirty last night. We met at my friend Bonnie’s house, and we started off Blues dancing, which is slow and easy and not demanding at all. Next we picked it up with a little solo jazz work, choreographing a dance routine for Matt to teach to a rock-a-billy song. Then we worked on Lindy Hop, which if you don’t know, is a swing dance that requires a lot of bouncing, running around, and acting a damn fool. And then–and then–after five hours of all of that, we thought it would be a good idea to work on lifts and aerials, things that required Daddy to jump up in the air and turn himself upside down. That part required A LOT  of energy.

In retrospect, we should have done everything in reverse.

The last time Matt and I worked together, I showed him a move called the saxophone. The idea is that the leader steps in front of the follower, basically shoves his hips into “her” pelvis, and slings her around the front of his body, landing her on his opposite leg and simultaneously inverting her. Here’s a video of what it’s supposed to look like. (The video includes two moves. The first is called the pancake. The second is the saxophone.)

When Matt and I worked before, I just demonstrated the move as a leader, since I’d never done the follower’s part. I mean, I’m thirty-six, and that’s no exactly the age to START putting your ankles above your head, at least on the dance floor. Plus, I weigh a hundred and ninety pounds. (People say, “You wear it well,” like that’s a compliment, but is more like code for, “I didn’t realize you were that fat.”) Anyway, tonight when Matt asked if I wanted to try following the saxophone, I was like–Uh, uh, uh–sure.

So for over an hour, we tried and tried and tried again. I fell down. Matt fell down. Matt dropped me on my back. Matt dropped me on my side. Bonnie recorded over thirty failed attempts. Bonnie’s friend Corban was there, and he recorded probably just as many. (No one recorded the ONE time we got it right.) I’ll spare you most of the carnage, but here’s a video I love that Corban captured in slow motion. All things considered, it’s pretty good, except of course the part at the end when I land on my back.

About one-thirty or two in the morning, we wore out and quit. I mean, sometimes you have to know when you’re licked. I guess I could get frustrated that it “didn’t happen,” but I can’t tell you how good it felt to try something new, to be slung through the air, even if it wasn’t perfect. Now, whether it will feel good in a couple of days is yet to be decided. I’m guessing it won’t.

The last time Matt and I worked on lifts and aerials, we worked on a move called the frog jump. It’s basically just a simple jump where no one turns upside down, but the trick is getting the follower to jump high enough and lift their knees. If the move is done right, the leader can hold the follower still above his shoulder before letting them down.

Even though the frog jump is considered simple, it’s not easy. Everyone has a job to do, and the timing has to be just right. Well, Matt’s been working on the frog jump since the last time I saw him, and he’s made a ton of progress. So we tried it tonight, and check it out.

After Matt and I finished working, Bonnie fed us, and we all hung out in her kitchen for a couple of hours. We talked about getting older but not feeling older, except for the fact that maybe your hips hurt more than they did a decade ago. (Corban, who just graduated high school, didn’t chime in too much on this part of the conversation for some reason.) We talked about dancing. We talked about tattoos. (Corban’s the only one who has one.)

Here’s what I loved about out time in Bonnie’s kitchen. At any point after ten in the evening, Bonnie could have easily kicked us out of her house, but she never did. We only left (about four in the morning) because I wanted to blog and also plan on getting up before noon tomorrow–er–today. (This is so confusing.) But as for Bonnie, she wasn’t in a hurry to end the conversation, to have us leave, to go to bed.

In contrast, I know that so many times as a dancer, I get in a hurry. I start working on a new move and want to “have it,” like now. Even sometimes when I’m working with a talented dancer like Matt, I want him to have it, like now. Not because I’m impatient with him, but because I’m excited. It’s fun to watch those “aha” moments happen. But really, those are pretty rare. More often, successes in dance are hard-earned. They come in pieces. You fall down, you get dropped, your body hurts for a week. But you just keep at it and keep at it, and one day, like nothing, you’re up in the air with no effort at all.

At that point, if it looks easy, it is. There really does come a time when all the effort pays off, everything clicks, and even moves like the saxophone are a breeze. Again, it’s easy–it’s just not always easy to get there.

The journey is worth all the bumps in the road.

I think this is true of many things in life, things that are really worth having. There have been so many times in therapy over the last three years that I’ve thought, I can’t–I can’t have that confrontation, I can’t be honest with that person, I can’t tell them no. But eventually, in every case, I did. Now that I’m on the other side of a lot of drama, life feels easier. Sometimes I wonder what took me so long to get here, but I realize that I was learning something new, and that always takes time.

I guess we all have things we haven’t mastered yet, whether it’s turning ourselves upside down, growing older, or having a tough conversation. And sure, those things can be difficult and scary. You’re going to fall, you’re going to hurt the next day. But I think the journey is worth all the bumps in the road. Besides, I don’t think anyone came to this planet in order to get it right the first time. What would be the point? Rather, I think we came here because this is a place we can learn, a place we can fall down and get back up again, and a place–like Bonnie’s kitchen–where there’s all the time in the world to do just that.

Daddy said.

[I promise I’m not going to start referring to myself as Daddy on a regular basis. It’s probably the American Honey talking.]

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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When you hide your hurt, you can’t help but pass it on. It ends up seeping, sometimes exploding out.

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Uncle Walt’s Wisdom (Blog #64)

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This evening Bonnie and I went to a swing dance. For the first hour, I did what I always do when I’m in a new dance environment–I judged people. Comparing myself, I can almost always objectively say that I’m no slouch on the dance floor. I can almost always think that I’m shining at least as bright as ninety percent of the room. (It’s not like tonight was my first Lindy Hop rodeo.) But on another level, I’m almost always insecure and self-critical, wondering if I’ll be good enough, if I’ll be accepted, or if I put enough gel in my hair.

As if all that weren’t enough, I’ve been really self-conscious about my body odor the last few days. I guess it all started with the antibiotics, so it’s probably a yeast problem, but it could be something else. Google says that sweat that smells like ammonia can be caused by liver disease (oh shit) or too much protein and not enough carbohydrates. Considering how tight my pants have been lately, I REALLY DOUBT IT’S A CARBOHYDRATE PROBLEM, but I ate this angelic croissant/donut thing this morning just to be on the safe side.

Whatever the problem is, I couldn’t stop thinking about it at the dance tonight because I ALMOST ALWAYS SMELL GOOD. I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but as a dancer, people are in my personal space pretty often, and they tell me I smell good on the regular. (I’m just stating facts.) So tonight I was hyper-aware of that fact that my armpits smelled like bleach. I mean, Lindy Hop is a happy thing, and I like to wave my arms around A LOT. Maybe I’m being a drama queen, but all I could smell when I raised my arms was funk, so I kept thinking, “This is disgusting, Marcus. YOU are disgusting. No one will want to dance with you.”

I heard recently that the ego HATES being humiliated more than it hates anything else. I hadn’t really thought about that term–humiliated–before, but I have thought a lot about this one–embarrassed. Maybe being embarrassed isn’t the same thing as being humiliated, but it’s close enough, and I feel embarrassed all the time– about how my much I weigh, how I look in pictures, and even how I dance. (I could keep going, so just one more thing.) Lately, I feel embarrassed about my smelly armpits.

Sometimes the best I can do is look my ego square in the eye and say, ‘Would you shut the fuck up already?’

Well, clearly my ego can give me a pretty hard time, so sometimes the best I can do is metaphorically sit my ego down, look it square in the eye, and say, “Would you shut the fuck up already?” In practice, that basically looks like not giving into the thoughts about being embarrassed that are constantly running around in my head.

For example, I kept telling Bonnie tonight that I was worried about my nasty pits, and she said, “I’ll let you know if I smell something gross, but so far your shirt still smells like Tide.” So I forced myself to believe her. Plus, in that moment, I couldn’t do anything about how I smelled, how much talent I had, or whether or not I’d be accepted. So over and over, I got out of my chair, walked across the room, and asked someone to dance.

Well guess what? Everyone said yes. What’s more, everyone smiled, so I can only assume they were having a good time and not wishing they were somewhere else (like close to an oxygen mask).

Here’s a picture of Bonnie and me right before the dance ended. Thankfully, it’s not scratch-and-sniff.

When the dance was over, we went for a snack. Well, Bonnie went for a snack, and I went for a burger and fries (just to be even more on the safe side). When we finished, Bonnie requested an Uber, and within three minutes there was a Ford F150 on the other side of the street, and a guy named Chris had his head out the window shouting, “Bonnie? I’m just going to whip this around.” And then, with his muffler roaring like my dad’s stomach after he’s had Mexican food, he did a U-Turn in the middle of the street, ran up on the curb, stopped, leaned across the cab to open the door, and said, “Don’t worry. I’m a good driver.”

Well, I’m not sure that was a true statement, but I can say that Chris was the most interesting Uber driver we’ve had all week. He had what basically amounted to an Uber Disco Ball on the hood of his truck, and he could make it change colors with a remote control. Plus, Chris was dressed in a suit and tie, and what Uber driver wears a suit and tie at one in the morning? But the thing that really caught my attention was the fact that Chris smelled like an entire can of Axe Body Spray, something that should never be the case for anyone over the age of fourteen. I kept gagging, sort of grossed out, sort of wondering if I should borrow some to spray on my armpits.

There’s a beautiful poem by Uncle Walt (Whitman) from Leaves of Grass that says,

“I believe in the flesh and the appetites;
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.
Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch’d from;
The scent of these arm-pits, aroma finer than prayer;
This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.”

Well, I’ve seen pictures of Uncle Walt. You can’t tell me the man took a bath every day. You can’t tell me the man used Axe Body Spray. But I love the fact that he was so in touch with his divinity that he considered every part of him, even his probably smelly armpits, to be a miracle. And of course, he was right. As the song says, “Everything is beautiful in its own way.”

For I am a universe–large–just like you are, and there is room here for all that we contain.

Personally, I know that I forget this fact a lot. I get focused on what my body doesn’t look like, doesn’t dance like, doesn’t smell like. I start listening to my ego and get embarrassed by all those things and more. In the process, I forget that I too am a miracle. After all, I’m alive, and I can dance–no matter how well–and I can ask another miracle to dance with me. For I am a universe–large–just like you are, and there is room here for all that we contain, more than enough room for any smell or embarrassment. An ego, of course, is small, and it is disgusted and humiliated by the smallest of things. But a universe is bigger than that, much too big to judge itself or another, much too big to ever question how bright it is shining.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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When you hide your hurt, you can’t help but pass it on. It ends up seeping, sometimes exploding out.

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happier than a pig in a shed (blog #16)

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I first started swing dancing in in 1999, and my sister was my dance partner. We were both living at home (kind of like I am now), and after class each week, we’d put music on in the living room and show Mom what we learned. I remember being really excited about it.

In 2007, I got interested in Lindy Hop, which is a more advanced form of swing dancing than the one I already knew (East Coast Swing). So my friends Greg, Rita, Krista, and I would travel each spring to a Lindy Hop convention in Houston called Lindyfest. Our little group called ourselves The Lindy Dogs, and we even had matching shoe bags—like a gang—well—a West Side Story kind of gang. I remember being so starry-eyed the first time I walked into the Melody Ballroom, into the midst of hundreds of Lindy Hoppers. There’s nothing like it. It’s magic. Even now, I can see Andy Reid doing a move in my mind’s eye that I later learned and still use and teach. (If you don’t know, Andy Reid is a big damn deal in Lindy Hop.)

I think those first two or three years at Lindyfest were the best because it was all about my love of swing dancing and time spent with my friends. I remember once when all of us Lindy Dogs were in the car together, and I said that I was “happier than a pig in shit.” Well, Greg thought I said “happier than a pig in a shed,” so that kind of became our group’s inside joke, and it still gets used ten years later.

But despite hundreds of great memories like this one, something happened over the course of the last ten years that quite frankly, sucks. Simply put, I started judging myself and comparing myself to other people on the dance floor. I imagine it all started out pretty innocently, mostly because I wanted to get better, and being a rule follower and a teacher’s pet, I wanted to do things “the right way.”

I used to watch the television show Once Upon a Time, and the character Rumpelstiltskin always said something like, “Everything comes with a price.” And whereas I’ve known for a long time that the price of judging yourself and comparing yourself to others is being less creative on the dance floor, I’ve been thinking lately the price is even higher than that—you also lose your joy—which, at least for me, was the reason I started dancing in the first place.

Tonight I taught a beginner East Coast Swing lesson to a large room full of mostly college students. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve taught the exact same material, but something was different about tonight, and I think it had to do with the fact that pretty much every single person in the room didn’t know shit about swing dancing. Basically, it was a room full of virgins. They don’t know Peter Strom from Peter Rabbit. And they were SO excited. There was a guy named Chase (wearing a shirt that said “I am the best” except “the best” was crossed out and replaced with “blessed”) who asked me to teach him the pretzel (a move where your arms get all twisted up like, well, a pretzel). I don’t think any self-respecting Lindy Hopper would be caught dead doing the pretzel, but almost all new swing dancers love the shit out of it. I remember enthusiastically asking my teacher when I could learn it. So I showed it to Chase—because it’s fun. The result?

More joy.

There was a kid named Jake there tonight, and he was happier than a pig in a shed. He had the biggest grin on his face during the entire lesson. Like, he was dripping with glee. Personally, I usually play my emotions pretty close to my vest, so later I just asked him, “Why are you so happy?” And get this shit. He said, “I’m just glad to be here.” Like, it was that simple. Nothing about self-judgment or comparing himself to others.

Since starting this blog, I’ve had a number of people tell me that they admire my courage, my honesty, and my vulnerability. I appreciate all of those comments, but it usually feels like they’re talking about someone else because I was literally shaking when this site went live, and there’s still part of me that likes to pretend that no one’s reading it.

I was telling one of my friends tonight that the primary goal for this blog was and still is for me to write on a more consistent basis. So far it’s working. But tonight I noticed an added benefit that I hadn’t anticipated. But before I can tell you what it was, I need to back up a moment.

For the longest time, I’ve only presented a certain side of myself on social media and in my dance classes. And whereas that side was honest, it wasn’t complete. As I think about it now, it felt like being a half person, a person who didn’t have a sexuality, a person who didn’t talk about feeling embarrassed or less than, and a person who didn’t say fuck. As a consequence to living that way, I am almost always nervous in social situations. Like, I’ve been comfortable as a teacher, but not as just a person who walks around and introduces himself and asks people how they’re doing or if I can help. I can only assume that was because I wasn’t really at home in myself, and I always felt like someone would discover that other half of me and judge me for it.

And it’s not that I intend to talk about every single thing in my life on this blog, but my therapist says that part of the goal of being authentic is to have as few secrets as possible. So that’s partly what’s happening here in a rather public way. It’s a place where, having been honest with myself first, I can be honest with others. I have a sexuality, sometimes I’m embarrassed and feel less than, and I say fuck (every fucking day). And I think Jesus is okay with all of that, thank you very much.

So about that added benefit. I was more relaxed and less nervous tonight than I have been in years. I felt at home in my own skin. I didn’t fiddle with my phone so I didn’t have to talk to people. I just talked to people, and I never once thought, What if they find out about that other part of me? And guess what?

More authentic joy.

I told some of my friends tonight that I envied the virgin swing dancers because their excitement and enthusiasm for swing dancing was untainted by self-judgment and imagined standards of “good enough.” But I think that if you love something, that love never goes away. It’s like you can run yourself ragged working for this standard of perfection and you can get really far away from where you started. But the good news is, that love inside that shows up as joy or enthusiasm is your authentic self, and it just sits there, patiently waiting for you to come back to it, to come back home to yourself and remember that not only are you good enough exactly as you are, but you’re also—just glad to be here.

[Special thanks to Greg, Rita, and Krista (pictured first, with me) for you authentic love of swing dancing. You’re like family. Also thanks to Sydnie Meltzer Kleinhenz, who helped me teach the virgins tonight and also provided the additional photos. You rock step like a rock star. Lastly, thanks to the NWA Swing Dance Society for a truly beautiful evening. It was magic.]

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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For I am a universe–large–like you are, and there is room here for all that we contain. An ego, of course, is small, and it is disgusted and humiliated by the smallest of things. But a universe is bigger than that, much too big to judge itself or another, much too big to ever question how bright it is shining.

"