LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
The Gospel According To Marc |
by Marc Acito |
Dancing QueensWhy Gay Men Don't Dance
I blame Billy Elliott. Watching this marvelous film gave me happy feet, an irresistible urge to leap out of my seat and sing "Gotta dance!" It doesn't take much, really. The summer I was fourteen I saw the movie Fame and the musical A Chorus Line for the first of three times each and I decided that it was my destiny to wear leg warmers and hang out in New York City. In retrospect, I think my dream was less about ambition and more about fashion, really. Beginning that fall, however, I took the bus from New Jersey into Manhattan every Saturday to take classes in acting, singing, and, yes, dance. Oh, to dance! To leap, to twirl and to get to stare at myself in the mirror for a full hour! As I stood at the barre I was pleased to see that I could move my arms with all the grace of the dying swan in Swan Lake; from the waist down, however, I was a dead duck. Like Billy Elliott, I kept my dancing life a secret for a year until one day in the tenth grade when Lisa Richie, my biology partner, went rifling through my bookbag looking for a pencil and discovered my ballet slippers. Lisa Richie was enormously popular; one word from her and my precarious hold on high school coolness could be completely undone. I responded in the time-honored tradition of all high school homosexuals. "You wanna copy my homework?" I asked. Lisa Richie may have been enormously popular, but she was also enormously dumb, and we came to an immediate understanding. My dancing ability reached its zenith when I performed in a summer stock production of A Chorus Line when I was nineteen. My performance got mixed reviewsI thought I was terrific and everyone else thought I stank. I hung up my dancing shoes. But like the song says, I've got the music in me, and I need an outlet. Being as there are so many places for gay guys to dance, you'd think I'd have no problem. Wrong. I find it strange that dancing is so closely associated with being gay when, despite the fact that millions of gay men go out dancing every weekend, we don't actually dance. We stand around and pose to the music with that same pissed-off expression that runway models get after years of malnutrition. Those people bobbing around in the water at the end of Titanic looked happier. Now, I realize, of course, that it's impossible to smile when you're trying to suck in your gut. If all the gay men on the dance floor exhaled at once we'd all die of carbon dioxide poisoning. When I ask guys why the dance floor in a gay club always look like the Night of the Living Dead, they invariably reply, "Oh, when I dance I'm in another world." I see. That would be the Balance a Teacup on Your Head World, because I always look like I'm having a seizure compared to the way most of you guys dance. No, my friends, gay men do not dance; we may kick our legs up in the air, but never on the dance floor. Dancing is leaping and cavorting with Gene Kelly-like abandon. Dancing is pirouetting like Giselle. Dancing is doing the splits like a Vegas showgirl. You can't do any of that in a gay club as crowded as a Tokyo subway. I know, I've tried. I nearly knocked some poor guy's tooth out once. But what about those delightful gay couples who country-western and swing dance, you ask? Y'know, I admire these guys enormously, but personally I long for a partner who looks more like Ginger Rogers. Genetically, I mean. When I dance cheek to cheek with someone, I don't want to go home with razor burn. Sorry, fellahs. But as I sat watching Billy Elliott leap through the streets, I knew that I must find an outlet for the music in my soul. I decided that at 35 years old, I best sign up for something that required a lower center of gravity, so I went to a modern dance class, complete with live drummers in the corner. I leapt about barefoot, bucking my hips, shaking my head and in general looking like I was walking across hot coals. I was enraptured. Until the next day. The only problem, of course, with fulfilling a Gene Kelly fantasy is that they don't show the part where they pack him in ice afterwards. Maybe guys in gay bars have the right idea, after all. And that, my friends, is The Gospel According to Marc. Marc Acito believes he is Ricky Martin in a parallel universe. He can be reached at MarcAcito@home.com. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 11, No. 5, May 18, 2001 |