I have reached the age where I really no longer go to night clubs. There being a difference between a bar and a night club. A night club is not so much a club as it is a festival of hopeful bitterness. People dance there. The Eagles got it right: “Some dance to remember. Some dance to forget.” But mostly, I think people dance to be noticed. Like a desperate cry for attention. They move onto that dance floor with a feigned sense of exuberance like a man spending his last dollar on a lotto ticket. This time he’ll win and he wants everyone to know it.
It goes without saying that men and women have different motives for dancing. Women seem to have a biological need for it. As Dane Cook put it, they see a need to “Dance it out”. Men on the other hand see a pile of handbags and shoes sitting on the floor surrounded by a circle of intoxicated, gyrating women. In other words, they see an opportunity. The mating ritual resulting from the co-mingling of so much estrogen and testosterone combined with the effects of a few Alabama Slammers would make a National Geographic photographer blush with embarrassment. It’s an orgy of self indulgent posturing designed to both attract and repel members of the opposite sex.
I can deal with that.
But what I cannot deal with is the senseless, lemming-like rush to the dance floor every time “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor starts playing. The shrill shrieks echo throughout the already loud club: “Oh my God! This is MY song! We HAVE to go dance!” It’s not just that song actually. It’s really any song whose primary subject matter is overcoming the obstacles inherent in being female. “Respect” by Aretha Franklin is another one. When these songs play, every woman in the room makes a mad, desperate dash to the dance floor in order to purge years of oppression through a cathartic dance of self-empowerment and Oprah-inspired sisterhood.
Oh give me a God Damned break.
Listen ladies, I hate to burst your bubble here, but these songs were performed by black women in the 60’s and 70’s. These are women who grew up in the 40’s and 50’s in a racially divided, gender-biased America that is (thankfully) now a relic. They knew a thing or two about "survival" and "respect". I understand that when your boyfriend makes fun of you for not being able to parallel park your SUV (that your daddy bought for you) it's traumatic. But it's really not the same thing.
The only thing marginally more pathetic than watching this herd of female self delusion shuffling onto the dance floor at the opening bars of these songs, is the men who follow them there. As if to say. “I understand your pain. I too am in touch with my feminine side. Allow me to show you that I accept and respect you for the strong, unique woman you are by grinding by penis against the small of your back.”
There's the "Respect" you've been longing for.
4 comments:
Have you ever heard Cake's version of "I Will Survive"? They turn the song on its head by A) having a male lead singer sing it, and B) turning it into a grindy-slow, open-chord guitar, male rock anthem. They even use the f-word to emphasize the maleness of the song.
I don't know what this has to do with what you wrote, except to say, considering Cake's "I Will Survive," that there's really even less reason for the song to be a self-empowerment anthem for suburban white chicks.
Cake. Yes. I was actually humming that tune the entire time I wrote this.
"I would have changed my fucking locks, I would have made you leave your key if I'd have thought for just one minute you'd be back to bother me."
Yeah, they get it.
Well, when I hear "I Will Survive" I think of two things:
The alien video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duOoqDu2H70
Which still makes me laugh whenever I see it.
And a bunch of gay men in a gay dance club dancing their little gay hearts out.
Incidently, it was a gay man who forwarded me the alien video several years ago.
I've always hated going to straight dance clubs. There was always something so desperate, tacky, and downright sad about it. That and I never could stand the drunken guy "accidentally" bumping his crotch into my backside while I was dancing. And now, I'm too old. I'd rather be sleeping at night then dancing the night away.
Couple weeks ago I met my wife and her friend at The Wild Onion. (Definitely in the "night club" genus, but not the danceteria species.)
I met her by the bathrooms, and she led me by the hand back to her table. We cut across the dance floor on our way. Halfway across the dance floor, some young guy grabbed her around the waste and started doing the aforementioned grinding against her. So I gave him a swift elbow to the chest (authoritative, but not violent) to move him out of the way. Got his hackles all up. He flashed me that look of surprise and utter astonishment. You know the one. The "I'm-gonna-beat-you-up" look. But I stared back at him with my "I'm-like-twenty-years-
older-than-you-and-besides-this-is-my-wife" look. He quickly found another filly to dance rape.
The point of my story? My hackles were up BEFORE the incident. By being immersed in that mating ritual going on all around me, I very quickly fell into its primal rhythms and behaviors. I was ready to fuck or fight, depending on the gender of the next person I encountered.
Lord knows how many other guys rubbed on my wife before I got there. Bet she loved it.
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