dance class for middle aged women

it's therapy time, bitches

As a general rule, I try not to make friends. They’re always talking to me while I’m reading or calling on the phone with no warning. But not long ago I accidentally befriended a mom at my son’s soccer game. She was, like me, a terrible Catholic and a raging feminist and – the real deal sealer – funny as hell. Unlike me, she was also the kind of person who took pottery classes and joined outdoorsy groups with names like Wild Woke Women Wander, so I had to make it clear right off the bat that there would be no shared hobbies in this relationship. I had my shows to watch.

If you have this kind of friend you won’t be surprised to hear that I soon found myself inexplicably enrolling in an adult dance class. (Sadly, not the kind of adult dance class that involves a pole or the intrepid removal of clothing – just the normal kind of dance class at a normal kind of studio, but for doughy middle aged women who need a socially acceptable outlet for the rage stored in their bodies.) Then my friend went and “busted her knee” in a sand volleyball tournament and had to have “surgery,” leaving me to face my non-erotic adult dancing endeavors alone. 

Our class is composed of about a dozen women, mostly moms and mostly midlife, though there is one 18-year-old and we’re not sure how she got in, but this is the Midwest and we’re too nice to kick people out of anything. And anyway she has great clothes and approximately 27 ear piercings and I devote a small portion of each class to wondering if she thinks I’m cool.

The majority of us didn’t know each other prior to this lapse in sanity, but there are a few that apparently did, so I also devote a certain portion of each class trying to figure out which of them must be the friend who forced the other to join. Or, I did; until I realized she might not even be among us. Their kind are always bailing out.

Our instructor’s name is McKayla. McKayla is in her twenties. McKayla has a long blonde ponytail, braces, a toned ass, and an intact pelvic floor. McKayla doesn’t understand that we can’t do jumping jacks.

On our first day of class, McKayla excitedly revealed that we would be learning the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders’ trademark dance, “Thunderstruck.” Now had this been said to me a month prior, it would have meant nothing. But it just so happened that I had spent the past few weeks parked on a couch watching the America’s Sweethearts documentary under the influence of a certain friend “recovering from knee surgery” so I was, in fact, a wealth of expertise on all things DCC. While my fellow dancers just blinked at McKayla’s declaration, I smugly announced that, oh yes, I knew “Thunderstruck.”

Well, I knew of it, which was more than these bitches could say. 

Speaking of a leg up, have you ever tried a kick line in your 40s? Don’t. At least not in front of a gigantic mirror, not if you want to sleep that night. I’m a pretty flexible person, a former gymnast. Get me in a 90 degree hot yoga room or in the sack when I’m ovulating and we’ll both be surprised by what these legs can do. But a kick line, I learned, is a different story. A kick line is where the last meager remnants of a grown woman’s self-esteem go to die. 

McKayla will never unsee what she witnessed that day. She hasn’t asked us to try it since. 

My 10-year-old son – sitting in the corner reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid sulkily because I wouldn’t let him play on my phone – couldn’t even bring himself to look up, so visceral was his vicarious humiliation. And I don’t blame him; it must have been like watching a line of turtles trying to be glamorous while flipping over from off their backs. Submerging himself in the woes of a gangly, unpopular middle schooler was easily the preferable of the two options.

We have since moved on to jazz and so far it’s going better, mostly because McKayla adjusted her approach from choreographing for the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders to choreographing for the short straw she’d somehow drawn. We move about three times every eight-count and that’s frankly about one or two more times than most of us can handle, but she did us a solid and threw in some sexy poses here and there, which differentiates us from my daughter’s kindergarten class next door.

My therapist once told me that dance is the best way to release trauma from your body and reorient your nervous system. After a few months I decided she was on to something, so I fired her to make more time for dance. The only way to endure being a woman in America right now is to surround oneself with a group of females and make ungodly attempts to throw your bodies into synchronized positions. One for all and all for one, or something.

McKayla is my therapist now, and she wants us to learn leaps. She demonstrates by doing an adorable little prance and tossing herself into the air like a fawn. The rest of us dutifully line up against the wall on one side of the room and step-step-lift! our way across the lava pit of shame to reach the other side like the wildebeest stampede that killed Mufasa. Pee squirts from my urethra (dammit McKayla we said no jumping) but doesn’t run down my leg because after the first class I started wearing absorbent panties. Fool me twice, shame on me. 

Incidentally, what I’ll also be saying when I sign up again next year. This shit is fun.