by Sue Watson
Then the music started and he was stepping towards me as I naturally stepped back. ‘Step side close, step side close,’ he was saying and I was just dancing. The music and Tony and the ghost of a dancing memory seemed to be taking me effortlessly across the floor. Where had I stored these steps? I’d never been taught to dance, but the memory of my parents dancing had lay dormant in my brain along with the ballroom dresses in Mum’s attic and all it had taken was a little memory jog. The steps and the music and the muscle memory seemed to spill from me and through me, the past and the present colliding. I lost all sense of time as I moved around that floor with Tony, it was like we’d been dancing together for years. Something inside had been stirred, a passion awoken, a need that I just knew would never go back to sleep again. And when the lesson came to an end, Tony and the rest of the group clapped me loudly and patted me on the back, telling me how great I was. It felt good. I’d never shone at anything, never been particularly good at school, avoided sports and had just settled into a quiet life. But it seemed I actually had a talent, here was something I could do well, and people were congratulating me.
‘I know we joke around, but you really are good, Lola,’ Tony said as we packed up after the lesson. I thanked him and tried not to giggle with delight as I walked home on air. It was hard not to dance up Primrose Gardens, not sure what the neighbours would make of it – but I was unable to resist a dramatic curtsy as I landed in the porch.
The following week dragged until the next dance class and I thought I’d die waiting. I ached in places I didn’t know I had muscles, but it was a good ache, a reminder that I was moving, flexing, coming to life. Opening the doors of the Dance Centre the following week, I felt like I was coming home. A blast of warm air and damp bodies hit my face and Tony waved and beckoned me over urgently.
‘Come on Lola,’ he said, ‘hurry up I need you here.’
I threw off my boots, quickly put my trainers on, and as I reached him, he grabbed me, firmly taking me by the shoulders, positioning me to face him. ‘Stand there,’ he said.
‘What do you want me to do now?’ I asked, thinking it was a dance move.
‘I want you to stay there and shield me, Lola, do not move from that position. I need you in front of me so I can be spared the horror – the Zumba class are taking off their 80s spandex – I’ve already seen seven things I can’t unsee.’
How did I ever think this man was straight?
I turned to gaze at all the tiny young things stripping off their tight tops and leggings and slipping into even tighter jeans. ‘They look fine, better than I do in my big knickers,’ I offered.
‘Enough... that’s all we need, Lola talking about her big knickers,’ he rolled his eyes and addressed the little group now forming to take his class.
‘Now you know I’m always saying you have to dance your own dance?’ he shouted to the rest of the class. ‘Well tonight, me and Lola are gonna show you our own dance.’
He took my hand and we started a tango which segued into a waltz and being Tony he did a surprise lift, which I didn’t feel I was ready for – but apparently I was. It all came so naturally to me which gave me confidence to carry on. So as the music played we just went with it. We swivelled and strutted and spun around the room and when we landed together, me clinging to him, one leg wrapped around him, my whole body alive with movement.
‘Now you can all do that,’ he started, but they were shaking their heads and saying how they’d never be able to dance like that; ‘I’m a great grandmother,’ said one of the ladies, I can’t make my legs do that!’ At this the others laughed.
‘Yes you can – everyone’s at a different... level, but what I want to do is give you the basics and you can then dance your own dances.’
There were now five couples in the class including me and Tony. One of the couples was two older ladies who Tony called the Golden Girls. ‘Come on Blanche,’ he shouted, ‘get those legs up... you didn’t have any problem getting them up for that silver fox you were with last night did you, love?’
Blanche and her friend (Tony christened Bea after the tallest Golden Girl) would scream with laughter at his cheeky comments.
‘You should be on telly, Tony,’ Bea shouted back between giggles.
‘I am love – I’m on top of that telly when Poldark gets his shirt off!’
The other students were two married couples in their sixties and a slightly younger couple who wanted to learn to dance for their wedding. And like Tony said, they were all at different levels, but the best thing about the class was that we all loved dancing and it didn’t matter how good we were.
Tony went back to basics with the steps again, but adding more moves as we went along and turning a few simple twists and turns into a dance. He was such a brilliant dancer he made me a good dancer – and whizzing along that floor I felt light and beautiful and young again. He was funny too, and when he wasn’t addressing the rest of the class directly and making hilarious comments, he was whispering in my ear as we went. ‘Lola – I reckon the Golden Girls are lipstick lesbians, what do you think?’ he hissed.
Tony had a theory about everyone – insisting the two married couples were swingers with each other and the younger couple weren’t even in love.
‘A lavender marriage, Lola, mark my words,’ he hissed while sweeping me across the floor.
‘Really?’
‘Yes. He’s so gay he can’t drive straight!’ he sighed, twirling me around. ‘He’s only here because he wants me.’
‘Wishful thinking,’ I laughed.
Over the next few weeks dancing began to seep back into my life like chocolate fudge sauce on ice cream. It melted into each day, bringing excitement and happiness I’d never known before – and I couldn’t take the smile off my face.
Dancing helped me to lift the dullness of my life, like wiping it clean and sprinkling on some glitter. I could also see how dancing helped my parents forget their problems – it was pure escapism. Dressed in their dancing finery under a glitterball, they could forget about the unpaid bills and the bailiffs at the door. If Mum ever showed concern about money, Dad just told her she was beautiful and bought her another dress. We often had no electricity – but I had beautiful toys and we dined in the finest restaurants. I learned how to say chateaubriand before I’d learned to say ‘cat’ and an ‘amuse bouche’ was something I came to expect before the beans on toast when having tea at friends’ homes after school. I remember one particular occasion that sums my Dad up - we had no food in the house and Dad had just £5 in his pocket until pay day; ‘I’ll pop out and get a loaf or something,’ he’d said. In those days £5 could have bought a couple of basic but nutritious meals for a family of three, but Dad came home with three of the finest French patisserie I’ve ever tasted and six ounces of loose Earl Grey Tea. We enjoyed this on fine china with linen napkins. ‘This is what it’s all about,’ he’d said, handing me a pastry fork as we dined by candlelight.
It was only eight weeks since that October evening when Carole and I first arrived at the zumba class, yet so much had changed for me. I suddenly felt like there were possibilities for me and after all this time I might actually have a chance of a different, bigger life. And as the frosty mornings of winter arrived stripping the trees of their leaves and plunging late afternoons into darkness I was coming alive. To me it felt like summer standing at my checkout, music in my head and steps tingling my toes. I had something more than my job now and I didn’t care about loyalty cards, or someone sneaking in the ‘ten items only’ aisle with fourteen bottles of Coke. And in the middle of winter life was sunnier, more intense. There was always something to look forward to, a new dance, a particular step, a lovely piece of music. Tony had asked if I’d be his dance partner permanently and I was delighted, and we now practiced together several times a week. I loved his dancing and enjoyed his company too – we were becoming good friends.
He gave me a playlist with music for all the different dances we were doin
g and each night I’d put them on at home and practice. There must have been about thirty tunes on the playlist – I samba’d to Barry Manilow’s ‘Could it be Magic?’ Tangoed to Eminem and Rihanna singing ‘Love the way You Lie’ and giggled to myself dancing the Cha Cha to Tony’s favourite song, ‘It’s Raining Men’.
I even practised at work, behind the till, with the music going through my head, my toes tapping under the checkout. I was beginning to feel my hip bones and delighted in a secret hip swivel as I passed the items through the scanner. When I was offered an extra late shift stacking shelves, I leapt at it... literally. All that shiny floor space! As soon as it was quiet, I flew down the Pet Food aisle doing the Cha Cha, with Carole being lookout and singing ‘It’s Raining Men’ at the top of her voice. The following week I called Tony and told him to come to Bilton’s so we could work on a particularly difficult lift. We still used the room at the Dance Centre, but we had to pay for that, so in between sessions this was free space – a gift for hard-training dancers. I volunteered regularly for late night stacking duties, and Tony would turn up and we’d rehearse for a couple of hours uninterrupted. The cereal aisle was perfect, it was long and wide and as Tony pointed out, ‘we can really get a run up into our lifts’. He was an amazing dancer, a wonderful teacher and had the body of an athlete and the strength to lift me up over gondolas of half price biscuits and special 2 for 1 offers on Dog Food. I even began to see Bilton’s supermarket in a better light – everything was so much livelier and lovelier when dancing was involved.
7
HER NAME WAS LOLA, SHE WAS A SHOWGIRL...
In those first few months I cleared Mum’s house, put it up for sale and while Sophie travelled the world, Mum enjoyed life at Wisteria lodge and I had started my own journey. Tony and I worked on all our dances and I mastered most of the basic steps relatively easily. It sounds dramatic, but it felt like I was born to do this. Much of my spare time was now devoted to training and I attended classes for practice, helping Tony demonstrate steps and helping the other students if they were struggling.
However, there was one dance I just couldn’t seem to master. Tony was teaching the Argentine Tango and we’d blocked through the basics and demonstrated it to the class, but for some reason I didn’t enjoy it. I loved watching it on ‘Strictly Come Dancing,’ my favourite Argentine Tango performance had to be the wonderful Vincent Simone and Flavia Cacae. They were magical, the chemistry, the passion in the movement and the way they flowed together was just magical, mesmerising. I would watch it again and again online to try and understand the steps, the emotions, but so far the magic had eluded me. The Argentine Tango is a sensual dance, telling the passionate story of a prostitute and her lover (or customer, depending on your interpretation) and involves intimate, hip to hip contact and for the woman to open herself up to her partner physically and emotionally. I found this difficult. I didn’t know why, but I felt stiff and awkward and just couldn’t relax into it like I could the other dances.
‘Jesus Lola, you’re dancing like a bloody truck driver tonight,’ Tony said after everyone had gone home.
‘I know, I just find it really hard to let go,’ I said. So he took my arm and pushed his hips against me and I squirmed. ‘I’m really uncomfortable,’ I said, pulling away.
‘Come on Lola, you’re about to have mind-blowing sex with your punter... he’s probably paying you a fortune, if the sex isn’t working, think of the money.’
‘I’m sorry, I feel self-conscious. I find this dance so... intimate, so personal. Dancing in front of people is hard enough as it is and I can only do it in front of our class because I know them all now.
‘You won’t know your audience when you’re dancing in that ballroom girl... under that glitterball.’
‘Mmmm I don’t know about that. Doing the Argentine Tango is like foreplay – which is something I won’t be doing in a big ballroom with an audience - or glitterballs!’
He laughed; ‘Oh Miss Prissy, just let go of Laura and bring on Lola the showgirl.’
‘I don’t really see myself as a Lola... a sexy woman. It’s not in my nature to flaunt my sexuality in front of others...’ I explained, wondering if I still had such a thing as a ‘sexuality.’
I’d had a difficult and painful love life which started at sixteen when I met the love of my life Cameron Jackson. He was tall, blonde, and just a little wild without being dangerous. I’d loved the way he wore his school tie around his head like a bandanna (it was the eighties). Life was difficult for me at home and Cameron saw me through sixth form, hugging me when I felt low and providing me with a wonderful sex education. He was insatiable, but I suppose at sixteen everyone is – and there was nowhere we didn’t have sex. The back row of the cinema, his parents’ bedroom, up by the wall at the back of our house, and everywhere and anywhere in between. It was more than just lust though and even when he left to go away to university and dumped me after the first term I still thought about him. He’d been my first love and I’d been devastated at the time, which had led directly to my next traumatic encounter with love, which is why I was still single.
It was hard to explain, and I didn’t want to share it just yet with Tony, but I hadn’t had sexual contact with anyone for years. In fact, I hadn’t had much human contact, the only time I’d hugged anyone was Sophie or my mum and sometimes I even found the waltz a little overwhelming. That’s why I was able to dance easily with Tony, it wasn’t about sex, or intimacy, it was about friendship, and our mutual love of dance.
We tried the Argentine Tango many times over the next few nights, but I just found it impossible. Perhaps it was just all too much too soon, and given my history with men I wasn’t ready to flaunt myself, to see myself as a sexual being again. Perhaps I never would?
‘Okay, we don’t have to start so close, let’s try and do the leg hooks again, if we can do that the rest will fall into place,’ he said. ‘I’m going to hook my leg around yours like this,’ he slowly moved one leg under my leg and lifted it, ‘now go with it,’ he said, moving his legs around mine. And I tried, so hard – I concentrated while attempting to let myself go which was just impossible and resulted in a tangled mess of my legs... and my emotions.
‘Lola, I don’t get it. We do lifts and pivots all the time and you waltz like a dream! You can swivel your hips and your knees and your ankles for the Charleston... what is it about this tango you just can’t get?’
‘I don’t know,’ I sighed, exasperated. ‘It seems the harder I try the more impossible it becomes for me.’
‘It’s like there’s a blockage, it’s not about here,’ he said, pointing to my legs, ‘it’s what’s going on in your head. Or perhaps you just need a hot night with a passionate man... mind you don’t we all?’
I rolled my eyes and tried not to blush.
‘I know you’ve got that passion in you, it just needs to come out,’ he smiled. But I could see he was frustrated, and so was I.
After class, Tony asked if I fancied going for a drink and as I had no one to go home to and I wanted to talk dancing, I said yes.
In the pub we ordered two white wines and found a comfy seat. I was exhausted after all the dancing –it was a good feeling, but I’d ache in the morning. After Tony’s class I always felt tired, but exhilarated and energised. I wanted to talk about what we were going to do next week and I had one or two ideas to add a few turns and steps.
‘We really need to crack the Argentine Tango, Lola – and we will, you just need to open up and become the firecracker I know you are.’
‘Not tonight,’ I smiled.
‘Okay you can have a few hours off. But I want you practising tomorrow. Wrap your legs round the customers at Bilton’s, they’ll think it’s their birthdays,’ he laughed.
I giggled; ‘I find it hard enough to wrap my legs round you, god help me trying to do it with a stranger. But sometimes I wish a straight guy could make me feel like you do on the dance floor,’ I said.
‘I wish a ga
y guy could make me feel like you do on the dance floor,’ he sighed.
‘I’m now waiting for you to say something funny and bitchy and outrageous,’ I said, smiling.
‘Hey, Lola I can be genuine you know, and I meant that. I take the piss out of everyone, but that’s me. Some people can’t take what I have to give out, I’m honest and if I don’t like something I say it, but I’ll also say if I like something too. And I think you have a real talent – I saw it among the sweat and spandex in that twisted Zumba class. Jeesus – there’s you staggering around like an old drunk and Martha screaming about pelvic floors and women’s parts with her headband and her barrel chest. She looked the spit of Cher’s grandmother!’
I was a bit surprised again at his brutal honesty, but laughed at the thought of Martha, who took herself, her vagina and her Zumba so seriously.
‘I can see you and me dancing at Blackpool one day,’ he smiled.
‘What?’ I had no intention of doing any competitions and certainly not at Blackpool. The bad memories of that place would surely be too much for me. ‘No. I enjoy dancing but I have no ambition to compete.’
‘Mmmm. No ambition. You just said it. Love...’ he leaned forward and held my arm, ‘there’s no point dancing if you don’t want the glitterball.’ He kissed me gently on the cheek.
‘What about just dancing for the joy of it?’ I asked.
‘Well you could... I suppose, but what’s the point in that? The fun is in competing, in taking down all the other bitches,’ he laughed.
‘I don’t want to turn a lovely hobby into a pressure, something I worry about and...’
‘Too late.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘You’ve already gone over the line – I could see it tonight. It’s more than a hobby... isn’t it?’
