by Andy Simmons
“All royt, boys on one side, guhls on the utha!!” That was Clive Phillips. He and his wife, Suzanne, were the owners of the studio and our teachers. Clive, a two-time national ballroom champ, is a lanky Aussie with an easy grin. Suzanne, a gorgeous redhead, was a featured dancer at Radio City Music Hall.
I lined up with the boys on one side, facing the “guhls.” It was just like high school but with one big difference—here they had to dance with me.
“Let’s fox-trot!” yelled Clive. My life as a modern-day Fred Astaire was about to begin! All that was missing was Edward Everett Horton handing me my top hat and tails. Clive demonstrated the basic steps: “Slow, slow, quick-quick.”
I was already lost.
He then added a promenade, where you make a V-shape with your partner, then take a couple of forward steps, with an abrupt head-whipping turn to the left thrown in for good measure.
“Now you try,” said Clive.
I followed suit, adding a few flourishes along the way: slow, slow, quick-quick-stumble, stumble-stumble, stop, look confused, step, watch, stop, quit.
With the possible exception of listening to an eight-year-old trying to tell a joke, there’s nothing more excruciating than watching novices learn a dance. We’re awkward, unsure of ourselves, and completely vulnerable.
“Grab a paht-nuh,” yelled Clive. Husbands and wives paired off. My partner was Gail, a gum-chewing boomer. I took her hand in mine and placed my right hand on her shoulder. She placed her left hand on my right arm and blew a bubble. It was show time!
“Slow, slow, quick-quick,” intoned Clive as we followed his moves.
“You’re doing it wrong,” said Gail. She corrected the way I held her hand, where my other hand should be on her back, my footwork. I reminded her that as the male, I was the captain of our little ship, and she should follow my lead, even if we were headed straight for an iceberg.
“Fix yer elbow,” she said. We’d barely pulled up anchor and already my crew had mutinied and taken over.
“Change paht-nuhs!” Clive and Suzanne have us changing partners frequently so that everyone experiences different styles of dancing (read that to mean “suffers equally”).
My next victim was Beth. She greeted me by admitting she had no clue what she was doing. Good! I was free to lead as I saw fit.
“Sorry,” I said as I led her into a chair.
“Sorry,” I said after I kneed her.
“Sorry,” I said as I threw her into another couple.
“Dance is supposed to be fun!” yelled Clive, possibly working off my partner’s concerned expression.
“I’m failing dance class,” I told Jennifer when I got home. She sympathized for a bit, until Quinn came out to perform. Coincidentally, Quinn had begun dance classes that day, too. She had poise and grace and knew her choreography. A girl who barely graduated to walking two years earlier was doing better than me.
“It’s salsa. It’s sexy—or it should be!” yelled Clive the following week.
Clive was on an impossible mission to get the rod out of our collective asses. Salsa means “spicy sauce,” and as a Latin dance, it’s just that. It oozes sensuality. Or at least it’s supposed to.
To that end, Clive made us bend our knees, swivel our hips, and punch out the driving beat of the music with the balls of our feet. With our bodies heaving, our necks bobbing, and our legs undulating, we looked like a room full of barfing dogs. To my mind, ours was a group that looked better stiff.
The fact is, at this stage in the dance game, sex is the last thing we beginners are worrying about. We’ve got a foot fetish going on—and with our own feet. Because that’s all we’re doing—staring at our feet and wondering why they haven’t learned the steps. And yet the sexy stuff will come, Suzanne assured us, especially if we take our eyes off our feet.
It’s a simple concept, and when Clive and Suzanne dance, I get it. During one of their biweekly parties, they stepped out on center stage and waltzed. And believe me, it wasn’t the waltz that Cinderella and the prince danced. No, no. This was graceful and beautiful and, oh, so sensual. They were more than dance partners; they were lovers.
In watching them, we novices saw the possibilities.
I don’t know why I thought I could master ballroom dancing in just a few classes. But it didn’t take long to discover it’s really hard. I needed a sympathetic ear and knew just who to call.
“I know your pain. I know your pain,” says John O’Hurley, after listening to my horror stories. If it weren’t for the likes of O’Hurley, the first champ of Dancing with the Stars, ballroom dancing would not have become the social monster it is.
“I grew up a little country-club kid in Connecticut, so I had no cultural reference for it.” He was talking about the challenge of learning the cha-cha. “My hips had never moved that way.”
“But what can I do?” I pleaded. John gave me three tips.
“Ditch the Reebok Classics” was his first. I’d been wearing my favorite sneakers to class, and he didn’t approve. “Good dance shoes,” he said, “are like a good pair of driving gloves.” The shoes are highly flexible, and the suede soles make it easier to glide across the floor.
“Move from the center of your body” was his second suggestion. John bemoaned the fact that most beginners are too busy concentrating on their legs. “Once you learn to relax your legs and move from the core of your abdomen, everything else becomes much simpler.”
“What’s the third suggestion?”
“Keep a long neck,” he said. “It’ll give you height, and your body will follow your head.” Then he added, “If nothing else, at least it’ll make you look like a dancer.”
The following class, I did as John had instructed. I bought new shoes—black-and-white jobs that looked like high-end bowling shoes. They made sliding across the floor more pleasant, as I was no longer sticking to it. By concentrating on working from the core of my body, I didn’t have quite the herky-jerky movement one gets when relying solely on the legs. And finally, I promenaded around the dance floor with my neck stretched to the limit, as if I were wearing an invisible neck brace. So at least, I hoped, I looked the part. It all helped.
“But it wasn’t enough,” I told Jennifer after she put Mini-Martha Graham to bed. All the other couples were laughing and having fun. My partners had been friendly, forgiving, supportive. But still, “I’m not enjoying it as much as everyone else. Something’s missing.”
Jennifer spotted the problem. “Want me to take the class with you?”
Jennifer jumped into dance class with gusto. And as expected, she was just as bad as me. She had trouble with her basics, her promenades were anything but, and her turns were merely big veers. Our arms got tangled and our knees knocked. And strangely enough, we were laughing as hard as I could remember. But every so often, we even got a step right. We performed a near-perfect basic and promenade. And we beamed when Suzanne smiled and said, “You got it!”
We left class on a high, to Clive’s declaration not to practice at home. “You’ll just reinforce all your bad habits,” he explained, bucking up my confidence.
At home, I put Quinn to bed, then came out to the living room.
“Let’s practice,” said Jennifer.
“Clive said we’re not supposed to.”
“Clive’s not here,” she said, assuming the dance position.
The fact is, I’ll probably never get all the steps down or stop crashing my knees into my partner’s legs. But as I danced with Jennifer, I got to laugh with and hold the one person I most wanted to laugh with and hold.
Clive’s mantra, to just have fun, finally made sense. I was no longer a slave to my feet. They could do their own damn dance steps as far as I was concerned. If the right wanted to salsa while the left did the swing, so be it. I was now free to hold my wife in my arms—arguably for the first time since our daughter was born and our lives grew so hectic. It was sexy and exhilarating, silly and hilarious. Whether it’s the fox-trot,
the tango, or the funky chicken—and whether you’re in it to raise your energy level or to play Fred and Ginger for one night a week—ultimately, dancing is about having fun.
And I was finally having fun.
Brush Up on Your Shakespeare
Not long ago, I was watching my nephew play T-ball, and I noticed two things: (a) he sucked at it, and (b) some guy kept shouting at him, “Go back to kickball where you belong!”
My brother, Michael, considered sending his wife over there to punch the loudmouth in the nose, but I talked him out of it. Instead, I insisted he take the high road and insult the man. Looking to the master himself—Billy Shakespeare—for guidance, I suggested to my brother that he paraphrase the Bard and unload on the offender thusly: “Why, you bolting-hutch of beastliness! You swollen parcel of dropsies! You huge bombard of sack! You stuffed cloak-back of guts! You roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly!!”
The great thing about Shakespearian insults is the insultee isn’t sure whether he’s been dissed or given a great recipe. By the time ol’ Bombard of Sack figured out what he’d been called, the game would be over, and my nephew safe at home playing with his dolls.
Michael declined the recommendation, however. The lout in question, I was informed, was our father.
Yankee Doodle Andy
Cannon fire woke me up—that was our alarm clock. It was the first morning of the Battle of Bordentown, New Jersey, and I was with the 5th New York Regiment, Revolutionary War reenactors, preparing to help free my countrymen from the yoke of British oppression yet again.
Dragging myself from the comfort of my Gore-Tex-covered sleeping bag, I slipped on my uniform: flax overalls, a long-sleeve “common shirt,” and a fringed hunting shirt over that. I dipped my size-nine feet into a pair of borrowed size-thirteen buckle shoes (my wife gave me pantyhose to stuff in the toes), topped my head with a cocked hat, pulled open the tent flaps, and stumbled into the eighteenth century.
Behind our neat row of white tents, men and women bearing a remarkable resemblance to Paul Revere and Dolley Madison prepared for the day ahead. In the bustling kitchen area, they brewed coffee over a fire they’d built using a flint, a piece of iron, and some charred cloth, while others cleaned muskets and a few tooted on their fifes. Other than overhearing a pair of officers on horseback discussing their colonoscopies, it was my elementary school textbooks come to life.
A few hours later, the cannons roared again—this time they were pointed at the enemy. The first battle had begun, and our objective was to hold the field, the one across the street from the Ocean Spray plant. Altogether, there were about five hundred on our side versus four hundred Brits, Loyalists, and Hessians, all under the watchful eye of a thousand spectators.
“Shoulder firelock!” came the order from our first sergeant, John Cronin, a soft-spoken police officer from Fishkill, New York. “Make ready…Take aim…Fire!”
The 5th New York’s muskets came alive. We were only using black powder, no musket balls, but since I was a newbie, I couldn’t even be trusted with that.
“You might accidentally triple-pack the barrel and blow yourself up,” I was told. Instead, I had to settle for yelling, “Bang!” But even with a ferocious “bang!” the Brits kept advancing.
“That’s the problem with the Brits,” said Sean, one of the guys in my unit. “They never want to die.”
“It’s the uniforms,” I suggested. “They don’t want to dirty them.”
“No,” said Jimmy, to my left, “it’s because they drove three hours to get here and no one wants to die too fast.”
“Close up the ranks!” ordered Cronin. “Shoulder firelock! Andy, other shoulder! Fix bayonet! Take aim! Andy, don’t point your musket at Ed’s head!”
We fired off another volley. Boom! Boom! Boom! BANG! Boom!
Joe Ryan, our larger-than-life captain, ordered, “CHARGE BAYONET!” Then, rearing back his six-foot-five body, he let loose, “HUZZAH!”
“Huzzah!” we bellowed back. “Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!”
The Brits gave us everything they had—muskets, cannons…But if they weren’t dying, neither were we. Nimbly sidestepping volley after volley, we took the day.
Nothing like a bunch of crazed reenactors charging with fixed bayonets and huzzahing their lungs out to get the Brits to fall.
“YOU WON’T BE A VIRGIN AFTER TOMORROW!” said Joe, speaking in capital letters like he always did. It was a few hours after the battle, and we were sitting around the tents enjoying some period-appropriate booze. He handed me a box of paper cartridges loaded with black powder. “YOU’RE GOING TO FIRE YOUR MUSKET,” he said.
The next day, after forcing them from their redoubts, the 5th New York and the Continental Line army found themselves facing off against King George III’s men and their allies. It was now time to load my Brown Bess musket.
I removed a paper cartridge from the box, bit off the tip, shook a little black powder into the musket’s “pan,” shut the pan, poured the rest down the barrel, and shouldered my musket.
“Make ready…” I took the musket off my shoulder and cocked the hammer all the way back. “Take aim…” I stared down the barrel at the Redcoats. “Fire!” I pulled the trigger and the flint smashed into the frizzen, causing a spark that ignited the black powder, which went boom!
Joe grinned. “PRETTY COOL, HUH?!”
Before I could respond, “You’re damn right,” an officer ran through our ranks yelling, “Take casualties!” We’d won yesterday, so today it was the Redcoats’ turn. Since there was no actual Battle of Bordentown, we could wage war however we wanted.
“THIS IS IT, BOYS,” said Joe. “WE’RE ALL GOING DOWN. FIX BAYONETS!”
The Scottish Highlanders responded by firing off a volley. Troops around us fell. In a single motion, one body hit the ground, rolled over, and produced a cell phone with which he began snapping photos.
“CHARGE!” yelled Joe.
“Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!” we yelled.
One by one we went down, until it was my turn. Reenactment, I’d been told, is part theater. So, with that in mind, I channeled Sonny Corleone getting it at the tollbooth. The result: My gyrating death throes had the graceful choreography of squirrels throwing a party in my pants. And then I died, denting my canteen in the process.
The Scots charged over us, pushing the rest of our line into the woods. It was what we did to them yesterday, only we suffered the added ignominy of having to look up their kilts.
“By the order of the ghost of King George III,” announced a British officer, “all rise from the dead.”
We stood up to a hearty round of applause. Even the Brits were impressed. “Good dying,” one said.
As militias from both sides laughed and embraced, I recalled what another reenactor, Mitch Lee, told me: “This is not a hobby. This is a lifestyle.”
Huzzah!!
Ode to My Puppy #2
Oh, little puppy, oh, little puppy,
Why do you eat so much?
You ate the turkey, the ham, the steak, and such,
The ribs, the trout, the pie without fuss.
The lettuce, the tomatoes, the potatoes, and more,
The pillows, the sneakers, and couches galore.
Oh, little puppy, oh, little puppy,
Why do you eat so much?
Oh, little puppy, oh, little puppy,
Now you have thrown-uppy.
Making Up Is Hard to Do
The fight began while I was massaging my wife’s feet.
We were curled up on the couch. I was kneading and caressing Jennifer’s insole and heel. Each little piggy was carefully attended to, as was every corn, callus, and bunion. Then, into the third hour, I got to thinking, Wouldn’t it be great if someone else were doing this? Only I didn’t think it—I said it.
There was silence from the east end of the sofa. I sped up the massage and suggested we switch on HGTV. “They’re remodeling bathrooms!” I said, a little too eager to pl
ease.
Too late. “I don’t ask you for much,” she said, moving to the easy chair. “May I please have the remote?” She was angry. I could tell because Jennifer gets polite when she’s angry. And then the fight was on. I knew because we weren’t saying anything. When we’re not fighting, Jennifer can wax eloquent on any subject. While watching Ghost Whisperer last month, she held forth on the topic “Is it me, or does Jennifer Love Hewitt’s haircut look off?”
Well, two can play this game—I buried my nose in the New York Times crossword puzzle. Since it was a Thursday, I got only three clues right. But there I sat, staring at twenty-seven down (Beverly Sills’s shoe size), pointedly ignoring Jennifer and the couples remodeling their hampers.
Jennifer was the first to cave. It was a few hours later. The local news was now on, and I had just figured out that Beverly Sills wore a size “bix” when Jennifer whispered, “I’m sorry.” She’s not a fighter, and the pressure was killing her. She sat on my lap and kissed me ever so tenderly, just as sports came on.
Frankly, I see no reason why I can’t kiss my wife and watch Mets highlights simultaneously. However, this seems to break fight-makeup protocol, in which it is spelled out in some handbook (which I apparently misplaced) that when your wife wants to bury the hatchet, you are not allowed to watch sports.
“You don’t want to kiss me?”
“I do. But I would prefer to kiss you during the weather.”
Off my lap and back to the chair she went.
“All night I watched couples agonize over the benefits of the Centerset Double Handle Lavatory Faucet from the Victorian Collection versus the Widespread High-Arc Lavatory Faucet,” I reminded her. “But when sports comes on…”