The drive from my apartment in Texas to my house in Colorado takes 12.5 hours if you drive the suggested speeds, and about 11 hours if you do it my way, which is illegal, but recommended if expediency is your thing. Even with the three or four stops I have to make (I made six on my last go to....because I REALLY had to fucking pee. A lot), I make excellent time. Eleven hours is still quite the trek of time to be alone with nothing but my repetitive Spotify playlist and my thoughts. After hearing the same five Maroon 5 songs in the span of an hour....seriously, Spotify, what the FUCK is your algorithm like if thirteen hours of music means playing the same twenty five songs for thirteen hours instead of changing it up...it becomes more interesting to talk to yourself.
I thought a lot about my childhood this go around. Not out of some burst of nostalgia, but because I was curious to know where I had exceeded young me's expectations, and where I had failed young me, and where I had diverted off of the expected trajectories into bizarre and unfamiliar territory.
Young me had a lot of ambitions. First and foremost, I wanted to be Madonna. I think I succeeded at that, because I am also old, irrelevant, and pretty fucking desperate to be considered cool. Score one for me.
I wanted to be a veterinarian when I was younger, too. I feel a little bit slighted by Barbie, because Barbie's coolest profession when I was a kid was Ice Princess, and while my frosty bitchiness certainly earns me an Ice Queen title more often than not, Barbie never stood for the kinds of jobs I wanted like she does know. Barbie DID go on to leave her Ice Dancing behind to pursue the sciences, and I commend her for that. Perhaps I would be a veterinarian now if Barbie had been a bit more progressive and not so into the liberal arts when I was a kid. Then again, I was ATROCIOUS to poor Barbie when I was younger. Barbie always got the real bad shakedown from her husband, Ken. Ken was working out some deep anger issues about his Ken parts, and he beat the piss out of Barbie instead of talking to therapist Barbie (who still doesn't exist. If Mattel would read ANY of my letters of suggestion...) and working it out like a normal person. Maybe Barbie and I are even.
The first REAL desire I remember having concerning what I'd be when I was a beautiful grown up (I always assumed I'd be beautiful. Don't let little me know how hard I fucked that shit up, please. She'd be devastated) was wanting to be a Rockette. I watched them every Christmas, and I bitched and whined about dance lessons until I got them, because that's what I wanted to be. I tell people I wanted to be a ballerina, but it's not true. I wanted to do high kicks in a line in Rockefeller Center.
That wasn't just a childhood dream, either. That extended into my young adulthood, and sharing it was embarrassing. But then, in the late nineties, dancing became THE thing to do in the music scene. Fucking music. Who would have thought that music and dancing would be so radical together? Fucking everybody, but shut up. When boy bands and pop princesses made dancing fresh and awesome (sorry, Michael Jackson), I thought to myself, "holy fuck, this is it! YOU CAN BE A BACK UP DANCER!" Because I set the bar high enough to be in the spotlight, but low enough that my cripplingly low self esteem didn't have to answer to the media and the public at large. I danced all the time. It's all I wanted to do. There are HOURS of video of me dancing and singing, and I really fucking hope they've been taped over, or lost in a fire, or thrown down a garbage disposal (somehow) and torn to shreds, because...here's the thing...
I am wildly uncoordinated, and also chubby, and neither of those things is conducive to looking smooth and awesome when dancing.
I lack grace, both physically and socially, and my love of music and dancing does not transcend my inability to move like I have rhythm. Really, I look like a blob of gelatin that someone rolled around on the floor and then poked a lot to get it to wiggle. If you put that shit to music, that's what I look like on any dance floor.
There are pictures of me dancing at my wedding, and holy fuck, do I regret them. Thank god they're not moving pictures, because I would ask for my money back from my photographers.
An inability to dance is sadly inherent, and I see this in my son all the time. He and his best friend like to dance, and my son looks like a sloth choking on a hot dog when he boogies. It's this weird, jerking, depressing movement that he transfers into...I don't know...some kind of shimmy. Of course, I would never in a million years tell him this. He loves to dance, just like I did. Just like I do. I bought pointe shoes a couple of months ago, and late at night, when nobody is awake to embarrass me over it, I put them on, and I dance in them. Poorly, painfully, and with all the suave grace of a decayed pineapple, but still, I dance.
Gloria Estefan promised me that the rhythm was going to get me. Tonight. So many tonights have come and gone, and I have not been gotten by the rhythm. Gloria and Barbie have some explaining to do.
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