Blame The Kabuki For My Lack Of Style...

I dance like a pogo stick. Pretty much. I keep my arms in where I can see them, I am very careful and self-conscious, and unless there is plenty of open space, I can't seem to simply "cut loose" and "cut a rug".

It's not due to a lack of rythm or coordination. There is no real physical flaw that keeps me in this sorry state of disco fever. It's just that... well, to be frank...

I've been brutally scarred.

And it is hard for me to talk about this, I mean, not being able to dance great so that girls gather for a go around on the floor has been a negative in my life.

Truly.

And sometimes I have had to say things like "I have a bad back" (when I didn't) to keep the titters toned down to where they didn't hurt me. I mean, having girls titter at you because you look like a dork on the dance floor at a party or wedding or whatever, is really hard on the old ego.

And like I said... I've been deeply and horrendous scarred in my past, and that is why I suck so badly.

Truly. I dance like a pogo stick.

And I blame one single moment in time for all of it.


When I was in my last year of high school, the year was 1980 and the musical scene had gone from rock/pop to disco and then, thankfully, out of disco into what was heralded as "New Wave". Bands like Depeche Mode, even U2, Blondie, Flock of Seagulls, The Boomtown Rats etc... were coming on the scene, and I remember very vividly going from having shoulder length hair and carrying around those giant combs in my back pocket-- the ones with the handles that stuck out four inches-- listening to Deep Purple and Zeppelin and German noise like the Scorpions and going to Day on The Greens at the Oakland Colliseum where Journey and Nugent and Nazareth and The J.Guiles Band all played... and then one day... visiting my friend's friend's sister to get a simple haircut... and I was changed.

She cut it all off. She gave me a fifties doo of somekind, with a bit of Flock Of Seagull in there and now I had to buy some gel to keep it like that and spend money on clothes. At seventeen young boys are self-conscious anyway, but to have my appearance and my aspect so radicaly changed in such a short time really made me self aware of things like my clothing style, my musical taste, my place in the scheme of things.

I mean, I had never thought about who I was before. I always had longish hair. I always flipped it out of my face. I never thought about clothes, I just wore what was common and uneventful.

Now I had this doo and this new musical scene was coming out and I had to get on the program!

That year taught me two predominat things. One-- I hate long hair. Short is easy. Long is a pain. I never grew my hair out again.

And 2- Being a fop is a pain in the ass. What with all the mirror gazing and the constant thought put behind appearances.

Oh wait! There is one more-- Dancing is dangerous and bloody.

Truly.

The root cause of my horrendous dancing is ensconced within a moment of time in that self-concious year. And it happened at a concert at a cool club called the Kabuki nightclub in San Francisco during a Boomtown Rats concert.

So let me explain.

I have bony elbows. In fact, I have messed up bony elbows, because the bones stick out pretty far into the world outside of my arm, and things like diving for tennis balls that were dinked and playing goalkeeper your whole life, tend to chip them up something fierce. There are pieces of my elbow floating around in each of them that are supposed to be part of a whole...

So... bony elbows, and six lanky feet of heighth at the time, wearing a purple too gay for words shirt without sleeves, my hair all gelled into a Flock of Seagulls and Elvis thingy, grey leather dancing boots that look like boxer's boots, pleated pants with stove tops...

Oh baby, what a fop! And I went with my friend Rolf who was also into his fop period, even ironing nice little creases in his shirts on his own... And we probably snuck a beer each in the car and went in, and then got into the whole amusement of the evening and I found myself dancing up a storm down in front, shaking that thing with pretty girls who all came out of the city landscape, and my hips were bouncing all about and my arms were doing some John Travolta crossed with Whoopie goldberg moves, and... CRACK!!!!!!!!

I hit some poor girl in the nose with my elbow and I not only felt it, I HEARD it over the giant speakers mounted not ten feet away from me...

Oh Jeeeez...

The girl had been knocked back into some guy who grabbed her and held her up. For a second I think he thought he got himself lucky... but the girl had been knocked a bit cold for a brief bit and he held her from falling. From her nose blood gushed red and in tiny visible spurts and ran down both sides of her mouth and dripped in horrific patterns down the front of her WHITE DRESS.

Oh Jeeeez...

She came to as I rushed to look into her face and apologize and see what I could do and to help her get out of the crowd and back to some first aid. Her nose was crooked on her face. I grabbed something clothy and put some pressure on her nose and of course this hurt and she screamed and oh shit, I just broke some girls nose with my elbow and we got her through the crowd and some guy who was hired by the club to provide first aid took over and she was taken to the girls room a bloody mess and I went back to find Rolf and when I did he was shoving his tongue down some girls' throat and the rest of the night and for the rest of my life, I danced like a pogo stick, keeping my arms loose and limp down where they can't cause any harm...

So don't you dare laugh at me...