THE RHYTHM OF THE NIGHT

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (4-24-24)

 

     If I ever meet an alien from another planet, we would have so many questions for each other that it would take a lifetime to ask. And then I would need another lifetime to hear the answers. And I only have 10 minutes till the ballgame comes on, so I narrow it down to three questions for each of us. I'll start: "What do you call that craft you landed in?" "It's identified as a flying object." "Where did you learn to speak English?" "Same place as everyone else: American soap operas." "Out of all the countless number of galaxies, how did you find us?" "Well, after I heard the word 'recalculating' about a million times, I made a right at Jupiter and a left at Uranus. That was a JOKE."

 

     His turn: "Can you take me to your leader?" "I can, but you'll have to trust me on this, our time would be better spent at Dairy Queen." "I've noticed that sometimes when music is played, humans react strangely and gyrate themselves in an attractive or quite unflattering way, depending on their sex. What is that about?" "Well, music triggers a sympathetic reaction in the brain based on the pulse in the bloodstream that causes the super-heating of ions in the body, which are then cooled by moving the limbs through the atmosphere at higher than normal rates of speed. It's called dancing. I made up the thing about the ions. Well, this sure was fun, and there's a DQ three blocks from here." "Don't I get a third question?" "Oh yeah, of course, but I guess that was it."

 

     I think that if I was abducted by aliens, dancing would be harder to explain than that. I also think that if they had seen me dancing, they would not have abducted me. I'd be the first to admit that I am not a good dancer, if so many others had not beaten me to it. The one thing I have going for me is that, as a drummer, I have a very good sense of rhythm. So I simply move whatever still moves to the tempo of the music, and wiggle the rest. If it doesn't wiggle or move, I drink it before it does. As a strategy this has worked quite well, meaning that I am rarely asked to dance.

 

     But I enjoy watching others dance, as a spectator sport. Sometimes I ask a woman if she'd like to dance. Sometimes she says yes. And I say, go right ahead, don't let me stop you. You can learn a lot about a person by how they do it; it's the most basic form of physical expression there is. Some people are very visceral and dance as if they are doing calisthenics. After the first calisthenic it's obvious that they're trying to hard. In the words of the great Bear Bryant, let the game come to you. Bear Bryant was an underrated dancer.

 

     Some say that while Fred Astaire got all the acclaim, Ginger Rogers did everything he did, only backwards and in high heels. And for that reason, in order to make myself a better dancer, I've been practicing doing things backwards and in high heels, and I burned myself on the barbecue. I tried to refine my moves in front of a mirror so that I could learn to "dance as if no one was watching." This was an appropriate idiom, since there were things that went on in that mirror that even I couldn't watch.

 

     If you want to know exactly how men and women are different, you can see it vividly demonstrated on the dance floor. A woman can look around and think, if I had the right shoes right now I would be perfect. A guy taking honest stock of himself might realize, I may have to sell myself cheap to someone that owns a bulldozer. A girl knows all the lyrics to the song, and sings them while performing hand gestures for emphasis. The guy is picturing them the morning after their first night together at an off-brand motel, arguing about which continent a continental breakfast should be from.

 

     Under the disco lights, I've got this: I belt it out with confidence, looking in her eyes, "loud blue whale, stepped on a snail, a can of corn is steamin'." And the girl I'm dancing with stops cold. "What the hell are you singing? The words are, 'Out on bail, fresh out of jail, California dreamin’.'" "Really?" I ask. "I was doing the live bootleg version." Luckily she can no longer hear me over her loud smiling as she poses for a selfie.

 

     When our song is over, my girl says, "Wow after seeing that, I'd love to see you REALLY move!" I am beaming with pride; maybe I'm not as bad as I thought. She says, "How long do you think it would take to pack up all your belongings?" I slink out of the dance club, and from the parking lot through the moonbeams I can see the alien waving at me from the spaceship, so I guess I'm stuck here for now.