The Dance Floor Of My Dreams

The dance floor of my dreams is big enough to give you plenty of room to show off your moves, small enough so that you don’t lose your friends in the crowd, fully wheelchair accessible, and expertly lighted in such a way to bring out your cheekbones. No one’s going to steal your purse, no one’s going to grab your boobs, and no one’s going to spill their drink all down the front of your new outfit. You know what happens to anyone who texts on this dance floor? A trapdoor opens beneath their feet and they plummet into a pit and they are never allowed to text anyone ever again.

Everyone loves dancing on this dance floor, and when I say everyone, I mean everyone. Hipsters; club kids; people who haven’t been out on a Saturday night for fifteen years; people who look like they were born wearing a suit and tie and uncomfortable shoes; trapeze artists on their nights off; tribal troupes who can’t help getting into formation when they’re all together; hippies; goths; nerds of all descriptions; gays; straights; and everyone in between. It feels like it should be weird but it isn’t; you never have to do that thing where you get on to the dance floor and sort of do that middle-distance gaze thing, like you’re checking to make sure that you’re not in the wrong place or people aren’t too cool or not cool enough for you. I mean, you ran into your boss from your old job a couple of months ago, remember, poppin’ and lockin’ like he’d been told that was the only way he could save the world. You were there just the other weekend and you saw your mom out on the floor, dressed up in her old disco clothes from the seventies, including the amazing beaded and feathered headdress she let you try on once a year on your birthday when you were a kid. No posers, no posturing, no doing anything but getting out there and shake shake shake, shake shake shaking that booty until you get so sweaty and out of breath that you have to stagger off for a while and drink a big glass of water and go “Hooooo! Heeeeeee! Whoa! Wow! Hooooo!” and then that cute boy who was watching you do your thing looks in your direction and raises his eyebrows and points with his chin and asks you in the nicest way possible, considering that he hasn’t even spoken to you yet, to get back on the floor and continue owning it, please and thank you. That happens a lot on this dance floor.

You can dance alone, lost in your own little world, or you can dance with the girls you came out with. You can walk the catwalk or groove out in a big circle or freak nasty on your best friend while her husband and your gay boyfriend cheer you on. You can wrap your arms around someone irresistible and feel how your bodies move together like that’s what you were born for or you can jump on a table and compel everyone else to bow down and worship the irrefutable fact of your funktasticness. You can dance for hours and hours and hours, any way you like, because you have all night and you made sure to wear cute but comfortable shoes.

I should have mentioned this before but: the dance floor of my dreams has a special magic power to play exactly the song you were sort of thinking about when you were getting ready to go out earlier this evening, after you had hung the laundry out to dry and eaten a nice dinner and watched a little TV just as you were putting product in your hair and ironing your top and putting your new lipgloss in your bag. When the song comes on everyone brightens up and takes a deep breath and just goes for it, dancing dancing dancing, everyone all together, falling in and out of love, smiling and laughing and doing hand gestures and looking amazing with really great hair and you have time to wonder, just for a minute, Wait, what’s going on here? How did they know my favorite song? Why is everything so perfect tonight? but it doesn’t matter, does it. You don’t really need to know. What matters is you’re on the dance floor of my dreams, you and everyone else, dancing dancing dancing until the sun comes all the way up.