Dance Dunce
In one of our early moments as empty nesters, my husband and I were having an average, uneventful day when the song by Josh Turner “Why Don’t We Just Dance” comes on. Impossible to resist, I kick off my Crocs and dance.
Before Brad can get up from the kitchen table, I turn it into a mild burlesque aimed at him. I’m self-conscious, but Brad looks at me like I’m Jaime Lee Curtis in her dance scene from True Lies and he’s Arnold, so I pelvic thrust onward.
His face is rapt, while I’m forcing an out-of-body experience to get past my cellulite-awareness, hating those damn tabloids at the checkout that show horrible pics of celebrities in bathing suits, while posing the question, “Can you guess who these hot messes are?” (And I do have an enquiring mind. Who doesn’t want to see a celeb who has helped create impossible standards fall? I like knowing they’re human. I like it even more if their lumpy backsides are more human than mine.)
As usual, my mind wanders while Brad’s hopes rise.
My body continues to writhe and work its way towards Brad, who is still seated, knowing he must savor every seductive move because this doesn’t happen every day year. To his delight, my body moves in for a lap dance. I’m in full fantasy mode now and so is Brad. He glances toward our cluttered table and grabs the nearest scrap of paper to stuff down my pants like a high roller at the club.
“Yeah big Daddy, make it rain!”
He shoves the stiff paper where I rarely let the nightstand lights shine, and I lean in to tease him with a kiss, but the piece of paper bugs me, so I pull it out and start to wave it in the air, ‘like I just don’t care’, when my peripheral vision catches a glimpse of what it is.
Try as I might to stay in the moment, being ‘tipped for a strip’ with an AARP magazine ad insert is too ironic to miss. I burst into laughter.
“That is perfect! You really know how to flatter a girl.”
“It was the closest thing I could find. I didn’t want to stop the action.”
Professional as I may be, I cannot stay in character after this. The romance is gone, but it is my favorite fantasy-block ever and Brad is duly rewarded…right in his funny bone.
