Dancing In The Night Streets

I grew up in a wildly liberal household.

My mother, a perfectly functional, successful career woman, rolled her fatties right in front of me when I was a toddler. When she thought that I was old enough to get wise, she started rolling them elsewhere, out of eyesight, but she faithfully puffed away on a joint every night. Silently, she knew that I knew, and I knew she knew I knew. But we just smiled high little smiles and failed to ever elaborate on the subject.

My dad, an outwardly stern man, had no rules when it came to ridiculous teenage expression. He said nothing as my v-necks grew deeper and deeper, didn’t blink when he heard me whimper as I ripped out my body hair with my mom’s Epilady, he told me I was foolish when I bleached my hair, but forbade me nothing, restricting his comments to: “Just be cool.”

My household was also one in which people weren’t afraid to dance. Whether it was my mom dancing over the stove to the sound of her kitchen radio, my sister sliding around in her socked feet while compulsively tiding her room, or my dad jokingly (but not really jokingly) rocking out to Neil Young which blared out of his strategically placed Bose speakers, we all bogeyed to our own beat, in our own corner of the house.

Perhaps the womb of liberalness and self-expression in which I spent my teenage years gestating were conducive to my compulsion to dance. To dance wildly, freely, uninhibitedly in the residential streets parallel to my neighborhood while taking my dog on his nightly walk. Or maybe it was that I was born to be a drag queen, gyrating my oddly mobile hips in front of a crowd of hooting queers. Either way, I danced. I danced every night, faithfully, almost religiously. As if my shaking and shimmying and lip-synching were my version of confessing, or splashing holy water on myself and being penetrated by the spirit of Christ. I found solace in dancing. I escaped when I danced. It was like a high. I was no longer the awkwardly pubescent teenage boy, but someone different altogether.

I saw the people’s stares from inside their cars as being my cheers, their rare little smiles, or claps out the window were my highest accolades. I imagined myself a great performer, who was to rise to considerable eminence in the world of female impersonation. Unfortunately for me, my attire was that of a pot smoking teenage boy aiming for glam and not fake boobs that filled in a tight pleather jumpsuit.

Sometimes, while I tripped hard on some new song, played at thunderous decibels right into my ears, an unsuspecting neighbor would stroll by, silently staring at me out of the corner of their eye. When I would notice them, I would sheepishly stop and wait for them to pass. Sometimes I would shoot them a little smile, just to play it off cool. But inside I was startled shitless and embarrassed. When cars passed, I would vamp it up; I would lean backwards and strut, shake my shoulders, walk like a model. I felt that somehow, the car windows and doors deflected some of my ridiculousness. That only the best made it through the windows and all the passengers saw was an apt street performer. When neighbors passed, all they saw was me: unfiltered. An a hundred and eighty eight pound six foot four man dancing to obnoxiously loud music in the suburbs. A beacon of attention grabbing attitude shining in the outskirts of conservative Washington D.C.

Sometimes, when dancing, I would close my eyes and imagine where I would like to be. I wanted a stage. A stage that was all mine. A stage I shared with no one. Where all the attention was focused, like a laser, on me. And in some ways, I did have my stage. I knew my regulars. I knew there was a straight teenage boy who would roll past me in his dad’s car. I knew there was the man with the yellow and blue windbreaker who would walk what appeared to be a bloated white miniature poodle. I also knew that there was the Geezer. The Geezer really gave me a chill. And not in the good way like getting a standing ovation, or listening to a crescendo song while blitzed silly.

The Geezer had a matchbox house on the corner of the street. He had a neatly trimmed lawn and a red mailbox with a plastic flag. Seeing as he was an ancestral man, I assumed he was highly conservative. I assumed that when he would see me twirling around smiling a RuPaul smile and then thrusting out my left hip with an attitude packed snap, he would swirl around his saliva in his mouth, wishing he could spit it out at me and tell me faggots go to hell. But instead he would open his front door, stand behind the screen and just watch me. Lock his crow’s feet framed eyes on me and stare. Eventually, his hostility spawned our enmity. We never spoke. But when I would see him looking at me, I would sing and spin and sashay and shante. It felt like every effeminate step I took was like a piercing insult towards him. That I was making it as hard as it could be for him to look at me.

One night, I decided to simply stare back at him. I stood on the opposite corner of the street and he stood at his door, staring at me. I stared into what I assumed were his eyes, but it was pretty dark so I wasn’t sure. The staring contest seemed interminable. I pulled out the heavy artillery smiling coquettishly. He took a step back. When he was clear of the reach of the door, he pushed it closed. It sealed shut with a muffled click. I said goodnight loud enough for him to hear me.

I rarely saw him after that.