Dancing in England

Let's just stand in a circle around our shoes and our pocketbooks and let's just dance. And if any guys come near us we'll tazer them. No guys.

~Dane Cook, "Just Wanna Dance"

There are two separate memories I have of England that come together in my mind as one, likely because they revolve around dancing. Though one experience was much more pleasant than the other, they still run together when I think of time spent in England.

We had many opportunities to go dancing on Friday and Saturday nights, but I missed out on most because I was too busy crying in my dorm room.

Long story short: I had traveled 4,000 miles and was excited to be so close to the Woman (my ex-boyfriend who was stationed in England). We would make plans to see each other on Friday nights, and he spent four weekends breaking them. He was never less than 12 hours late, and his excuses ranged from, “It’s too dark” to “I have laundry to do.” It was in this way, and many others, made clear to me that the Woman did not care for me. He may have at one point, but those feelings were no longer.

But this story isn’t about him.

So there I am on a Friday night, my girlfriends are already sifting through their closets for their nicest clothes, and I think to myself, “Eff it, he’s not coming. I’m going dancing.”

We took the bus as far into downtown as it would take us, and once we got off we were approached by a Scottish man whose accent we spent the next 15 minutes imitating.

Though that was good fun, the rest of my memories of the night proceed accordingly:

No matter what corner I dragged my girlfriends to, I was being followed around the club by a chubby, balding, forty-something fellow, so I left the girls to do their thing and had no other option but to walk two miles back to my dorm in a drizzle.

Along the way I was approached by two tourists from a nearby country—France? I can’t remember if they had accents, but they didn’t know Cambridge or much about England. We were headed the same direction, so they decided to accompany me on my trek, which made me feel better considering I was walking so far in a foreign country at 2AM.

As they escorted me back to my dorm, they offered me a beer—which I tentatively accepted from the incredibly inebriated and lost duo—and told me that I was nothing like how they imagined an American would be. They told me I was much more polite and, simply, I didn’t suck as much as they thought I would. America, you are welcome. I am positively affecting outsiders’ perceptions of us, one drunkard at a time.

We were maybe three quarters of a mile from my dorm when the girl asked if she could come into my room and use my bathroom, and I again became very wary of them. I felt guilty because they’d been nothing but friendly, but I didn’t understand their motives and wasn’t interested in any case. I apologized and told her no, and we parted ways a few blocks from the dorms—after the woman classily relieved herself in some bushes on a well-kept front lawn.

Within a few moments of the buzzed couple stumbling off, I was joined by a girl who, this time I’m sure, was French.

“May I walk beside you? It’s so late at night and it’s freaking me out.”

I told her she was more than welcome, but that I wasn’t going much further and I was very sorry that I couldn’t continue to walk with her. We walked in silence during a moment that would have been awkward if not for the blanket of security associated with traveling on pairs.

We said our goodbyes, and I felt guilty watching her walk alone down the street at almost 3 in the morning.

Back in my dorm room I collapsed into bed, poured the rest of the unfinished beer down the drain (I was actually worried that the couple might have put some sort of drug in it), and I finally was able to shake off my heals that I was constantly tempted to carry home. However, I decided that the pain was much better than walking on a dirty cobblestone sidewalk.

Not all sidewalks looked like this, of course, but some did.

While my adventure may make for an entertaining story, “English Clubs: Take One” was kind of a flop. My second venture to the clubs was bound to be more enjoyable by comparison.

The night started off without a hitch: no creepy stalkers, no drunken couples, no questionable drinks, and no other glaring reasons screaming at me to leave early. In fact, this new club was amazing, completely unlike anything I’d ever seen. Going dancing in England is nothing like going dancing in America because, in England, everyone dances. There’s no dragging your man out onto the dance floor. Men don’t even need to be asked, or have to lose a bet. If you go to a dance club, you go to dance.

It was also much louder than anywhere I’d ever been. The music was in all areas of the club, but there was a bar and a designated dancing area, and directly about that circular space packed with gyrating bodies was a speaker that was so loud it was almost completely distorted.

That night was the first I ever heard “Dynamite” by Taio Cruz. It was the first time in over 15 years that two boys fought for my attention (neither of which did I want to bestow this upon). It was the first time (and likely the last) that I became the victim to a drive-by kiss. A boy walked up, kissed my cheek, called me beautiful, and just walked away. If I was meant to follow him, I failed.

Twenty minutes after the drive-by, I was approached by a boy who had a very peculiar way of demanding attention. Words almost fail me when I attempt to describe how he danced, but it was a cross between miming and some weird back-bending Matrixy sort of puppet-on-a-string dancing. And he wouldn’t speak a single word. I was not the only girl he did this to, of course. Sometimes I still wonder what he gains by approaching girls, dancing like a silly, and then stalking off.

Eventually the puppet wiggled off to work his magic on some other confused victim, and after a brief bought of dancing I was pulled off the floor by a boy who spent three minutes trying to tell me his name. His accent was so thick that it took me three minutes—THREE! That’s ridiculous!—to understand, “Tony.”

While Tony was laying it on thick and giving me absolutely no room to escape and find the friend I had come to the club with, I was trying hard to explain to him that the odds were truly against us pursuing a romance. Not only was I in a relationship, but Tony lived in England and I was 5 hours from boarding a plane and going back to America with its boring clubs where boys don’t dance.

All of this aside, I think I can safely say that the highlight of the night occurred during my final bathroom visit before the long trudge back to the dorms. I entered the stall, jacked up my dress, sat down, and noticed graffiti on the bottom of the stall door:

"Watch out for limbo dancers."