Dancing to the Blues

[Reflections]

His hands are wrapped around me, my breasts up against his chest. He steps, his hips nudging my hips forward and back and suddenly to the side, the crying guitar sends his hands swinging wide, sends me spinning under his arm.

The room is dark and humid. Thin flames flicker on the windowsills, matched by golden reflections on the black windows that hide the city buildings that wall us in. Around us, couples shift and shimmy. Women float on their bare feet, their hips twisting, their hands carving the air. The men are smiling, their shoulders squared, sliding the women in the circle of their arms.

We are dancing.

This is not the ‘yidden’ of my childhood. This is not the ‘moshiach’. No neat steps with blocky feet. No girly turns to joyous psalms, dances in the living room, dances in the wedding halls, dances in circles in circles, careful woman after woman, stepping in mirrored time.

I am dancing.

I want to panic. My brain sends jerky messages of stop! And what the hell and aaaaaah to my hips and thighs.

You don’t know how to do this!

But the music is so soft.

This is so embarrassing!

But his hands are so strong.

In my world, as a child, who had a body? Who even had a self? We weren’t individuals. We were a community, intertwined in all realities.

I wrenched myself free from that mass I was a part of, but then I was alone. And who am I? A single person, with a single will, a single destiny? And what is this body? An unexplored vessel to hold all this unknown.

As a woman, there were plenty of men eager to tell me. This is what this is. This body. Their body, then. These were their curves, their limbs, their joys.

But I never danced. I stumbled. I learned new steps, new choreographies of assimilation. I followed directions.

Then I left. I left it all behind. No more. No more. I can’t always jump when my strings are jerked. I pulled myself free.

Now, I am dancing. I am terrified. I am humiliated. But I am dancing, me, my knees drifting, my thighs swaying, my hips shifting, my arms snaking, my head resting, my body dancing to the blues.