Dancing is really not my thing. Sure, I have been known to shuffle around the darkened periphery of the dance floor at a wedding or two. Lumbering. Discordant. Precarious. Like a walrus traversing a narrow ledge.
Even so, tonight I am at least a little tempted to give it a whirl. The band behind me strikes up the twanging opening notes of Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam’s "Streets of Bakersfield." My foot begins to tap in time with the beat. It would be a real shame not to make the most of this song amidst the Old West aesthetics of Buck Owens’ very own Crystal Palace. Dancers—the young and the... not-so-young—wearing cowboy boots and broad grins move into position. Parallel lines swaying and clapping and drifting around the dance floor.
Step and step and brush and stomp.
Come on. How hard could it be? Get out there.
But the longer I watch, the more foreboding outweighs my enthusiasm. “No, not tonight,” I tell myself. With a wistful smile I swivel back on my barstool to rejoin my neglected drink. Perhaps next time.
Words + Photo by Kenneth Jack