Oy! Ow!
So last night at 2:00 AM (I guess that actually counts as this morning) I was standing on the dance floor at Charlie’s as the lights came up and the bar was closing. I haven’t closed a bar in many many years. Just 20 minutes earlier I had found myself dancing to a Beyonce song and feeling very, very old.
I learned to dance to Cheap Trick, Boz Scaggs and ELO way back in the late seventies and early 80’s. I danced through high school and college and in my early adult years and my body has integrated several bad white boy, northeast Philadelphia, jewish dance moves. Here I am many years later trying to apply those moves to Black Eyed Peas and some new hip-hop band and the combination does not work. I had to laugh as I saw myself in the mirror of the bar, a largely overweight, nearing 50 white man with no rhythm trying to fit in with 20 and 30 somethings raised on dance moves that actually are kind of sexy.
Later when I was having an early 3:00 AM breakfast at gay Denny’s with my new 23 year old friend Bobby and sharing how old I felt he told me he had fun dancing with me and that I looked fine on the dance floor (and no, he wasn’t trying to “get some”). I think I called him a flat out liar but he told me I was a lot more fun to hang with than the other 20 something new friend we had made that night.
I guess age is a state of mind. I’m less than three weeks away from my 47th birthday and who knows how many more times I’ll shut down Charlie’s but I am having fun. I still require a least two or three beers to hit the dance floor but as long as I can shuffle my feet from side to side, bite my lower lip and wiggle my hips, I’m going to go have fun, look stupid and act not my age.
