The Dance

This week, writer John M. Blodgett shares a poignant scene from his memoir-in-progress.

One of my mother’s rules was that my brother, sister, and I could not date until the age of 16. When she issued this edict there had been, as usual, no explanation, no option to discuss or ask why. But I didn’t care to know why because it didn’t matter. I knew no girl would want to date someone who weighed as much as I did.

In practice my mother extended this rule to include going to school dances. But on May 13, 1982, she made an exception just for me. Not because it was my birthday — lucky number 13 — or because it was the last dance before eighth grade ended and I would leave my classmates for the private high school she’d long ago chosen for me. She allowed me to attend the dance only because the school paper was sponsoring it, and I was the school paper’s editor.

That night my mother dropped me off early at the gym entrance. I hadn’t dressed up for the occasion. Instead, I wore one of my three chamois shirts, the navy blue one with the chest pocket covered in patches and pins proclaiming Rush and The Who. These shirts draped unbuttoned over a T-shirt, I had willed myself to believe, disappeared my fat body from shaming eyes. It was a delusion, but one I needed in order to leave the house and be in the world around me.  

I walked inside the gym and saw the deejay setting up his equipment on the stage. I stepped up to him, said I was there to represent the dance sponsor, and sat in a chair next to milk crates filled with LPs. 

“Can I look through these?”

“Sure.”

I started flipping through his vinyl records and finding familiar titles. Surrounded by music I identified with, and as birthday boy and de facto dance sponsor, I started to believe tonight would be my time in the spotlight up there on the stage. When I came upon the album “Moving Pictures” by Rush, my favorite band, I paused. The opening track, “Tom Sawyer,” wasn’t my favorite, but I knew it would be the Rush song best known to my classmates. I set the album aside, hunched back over the milk crates, and kept flipping.

Every few minutes I stopped, sat up, looked toward the entrance, and scanned arriving students for friendly faces. But even when I found one, I didn’t move from my chair. I felt as safe on the stage as I did in my chamois shirt, so much so that even as classmates walked by, some saying hi, I stayed up there, and watched everyone else gather in groups on the gym floor below me. Anyway, I hadn’t gone to the dance expecting to dance, much less be asked to. I would have been too embarrassed, too ashamed to be seen moving my body in that way. The chamois shirt could delude me of only so much.   

“I felt as safe on the stage as I did in my chamois shirt, so much so that even as classmates walked by, some saying hi, I stayed up there, and watched everyone else gather in groups on the gym floor below me.”

When the dance was about to begin, our assistant principal, Mr. P, as he did before every student assembly, asked for everyone’s silence and attention and counted to five, more than once if necessary. Perhaps he also set ground rules for us to follow. Then the lights went multicolored, and the deejay took over the PA.

As I watched the dance unfold before me, I tried to experience it vicariously — both through the deejay, to whom I felt connected for sharing the stage and rock and roll, and through my classmates, many of whom had shared classrooms with me for years yet tonight were leaving me behind, going to a place I didn’t fit in.

The distance between them and me seemed greatest in the slow dances. During one of these I focused my gaze on Shannon while she danced closely with a boy I don’t remember knowing. She was one of my unrequited crushes. By now I juggled a few of these at a time, but it hadn’t always been like this. Dawn was my first, an exclusive crush that lasted from first grade through sixth and briefly into seventh, when I dumped her for Leslie. At first, I felt guilty for being disloyal, but I soon got over it, and while Leslie remained my No. 1, I’d added Shannon and a few others to my fantasy lineup.

Halfway through one unhurried revolution, Shannon caught me looking at her. From over her dance partner’s shoulder, she smiled somewhat, briefly raising one hand to wave without removing her arms from around his neck. Was I making her feel uncomfortable? Could she tell I longed for her arms to circle my neck, for my arms to circle her waist? 

Suddenly feeling awkward myself, I looked away, and waited for an up-tempo song to obliterate from my view what was beyond my reach.      

What I expected to be the highlight of my night came when the deejay announced my birthday and played my request of “Tom Sawyer.” But what I hadn’t known to consider — and what my classmates soon made clear — was “Tom Sawyer” is a song only the red LED lights of an amplifier can dance to. I knew this because I watched them intently and with a curious pride as they punched along with the power chords and double bass drums. Meanwhile below me most all movement on the gym floor slowed to a halt.

As an adult I would often revisit this scene and think of how my moment in the spotlight went mostly unnoticed. Some had cheered the news of my birthday, but even before “Tom Sawyer” stopped them from dancing my classmates’ attention had already turned back to one another. Almost 42 years would pass before I finally realized the gym floor was in fact the stage that night, and I sat on the sidelines.

After the dance ended, I walked outside to find my mother waiting to give me a ride home. As I reached our station wagon, my friend Noah passed by and wished me “Happy birthday!” 

Intending to be ironically funny, reverting to my persona as class clown, I treated Noah’s exclamation as a question.

“Not really,” I responded.

“That wasn’t nice,” my mother said as I settled into the front seat and shut the door.

John M. Blodgett is a freelance editor, writer and photographer based in Southern Maine. His memoir-in-progress, In My Skin, seeks to explore why he still feels fat and can't let go of the 88.5 pounds he lost over 37 years ago, despite keeping the weight off and appearing thin ever since. Learn more at johnmblodgett.com.