Category Archive

It may well have happened during the Lean Cuisine habit my mom and I called dinner, but I decided not to hang up the phone on the woman who told me I had won free dance lessons. The call came at a time in my life when I was bored working temp for a nepotistic organization that really did not require a replacement for the incompetent woman who had broken her leg. My thought at the time, as it was with so many things back then, was, “Why the hell not?”

So I found myself that Friday after work at the Gateway Dance Center, meeting Mr. Jeffrey, who would be my private instructor. Mr. Jeffrey wore a coat and tie, and had been out back smoking when I was parking a few minutes earlier.

A little cheesy music, a room full of senior citizens and much younger dance instructors, and I was waltzing within minutes.

Now, you have to understand, I’ll do just about anything once. In this case, I found that I actually liked learning the steps, and wasn’t bad at doing them, so I made the appointment for my next lesson quite happily. I could imagine that it was the type of thing that could actually be fun with a little better music.

Back at the office, I routinely finished the actual “work” part of my job around 10am. The woman appointed to be my supervisor always seemed flustered when I went to her office to ask what I needed to do next. The man whose secretary I was supposed to be was even worse. “Now, we know there is plenty to do. Mail always takes Angie until after lunch…” He said this while hitting a little golf ball into a cup on the floor. You think I am kidding, and I am not. Angie hobbled in the first day I was supposed to work. I saw that saccharine smile that hid the personal phone calls and Secret Santa planning that went into her job. She kept a candy jar on her desk. Only Angie was not crafty; she was just inept. Without exposing the large organization that this inbred mix of humanity worked for, I’ll just say that it explained why it took such a long time for things to get done in a large segment of many corporate operations around the area. I was working among the people who were delaying things, and probably contributing to push the economy into the recession that took hold around then.

Some recognition of internal inefficiency had been made by the higher-up management, but no one around there was getting fired or reorganized. So what to do? The answer came in the form of an outside firm from Israel.

One day, I was sitting innocently at my desk reading Huysmanns’ A Rebours, a sufficiently snooty, yet decadent novel, when my supervisor approached me in front of a whole group of the Israeli employees coming back from a break.

“What do you think you are doing?” my supervisor demanded.

“You said you didn’t have anything for me to do. I’m reading.”

“You can’t read on company time!”

“Please, give me something to do? I feel guilty doing this, anyway. I’d rather be helping out.” [I'm not sure I really used these exact words; it sounds a little forced, but it's the general idea I tried to convey several times while I worked there.]

“I don’t have time to figure that out!!” She went in her office and slammed the door.

I was slightly shaken, but after a minute, I realized it was a comical exchange. I went back to my book, but a little more discreetly. I had heard whispers about the fact it was in French. Didn’t want to upset the gravy boat.

Turns out I wasn’t the only one who thought the whole thing was funny. In fact, it was good enough to get me a date. Within a short time, Itzik the knee-injured, soccer-playing computer whiz and I were meeting for lunch, then for evenings after my ballroom dance lessons. His fellow Israeli friends were great, and not all related to one another. They danced, too, although not ballroom, and had nice parties that I went to. This mingling made me even more a suspicious character around the office, so Itzik and I decided not to meet at work anymore.

I kept going to my lessons. I was only supposed to get ten free sessions out of the phone deal, but Mr. Jeffrey told me that I had talent, which even I kind of thought was some sort of a hook to get me to buy something. Mr. Jeffrey said he thought he could talk the studio managers into just five more free lessons. I made my next appointment. We were doing swing, Latin stuff. Rhumba was fun. Tango?… Well, I liked the tango. Fun fun fun.

Mr. Jeffrey had a way with words, despite his humble origins. He was from a town I knew only too well as a speed trap on the way up Highway 50 toward Linn, Missouri, where my dad had grown up. Someone had smoothed Mr. Jeffrey’s speech and taught him to dance, although one day, while he was sneaking a smoke in the parking lot, I started talking to him. Seems that could have gotten him fired.

His accent changed, and he was the kid I knew he was. Yes, his name was Jeff, and he figured out he had a pretty good thing going. He told me I could probably teach there, too, but that they really needed more men. He told me that even if I didn’t want to teach, I could get a great discount if I had any older neighbors or relatives from a retirement community who would pay for lessons.

Itzik had no interest in ballroom dance, even after he was off crutches. The temp job ended, and I went on to other things, interviews, grad school applications. He was a handsome guy, but after we went to the circus and he hated it, I knew he was probably not the right one for me. After High Holidays in Israel, he came back telling me that his mom had consulted a matchmaker, really, and set him up with a nice girl. Great. Well, I knew he was homesick, anyway. So much for dreamy-eyed evenings out. Just as well. A few weeks later, he called me when he had a cold. I told him he had a lot of nerve calling me just so I could make him feel better. Humphh.

And the ballroom dance lessons? Mr. Jeffrey was replaced by another guy who tried to be a little too charming. He didn’t dance well, either. When the studio manager suggested that I could pay for the “full” dance lesson package by cashing out life insurance, I quit. I danced later here and there, enjoyed knowing something when I had the chance. Then I got married to a non-dancer. I sometimes get the idea in my head now to try it again.

A couple of months after my last lesson, a detective called me. It seems that Gateway Dance Center had allegedly been talking senior citizens out of their life savings in exchange for the smooth moves of Mr. Jeffrey and his friends.

One thing, though. I knew it was kind of a scam, but I liked the dancing, and I enjoyed many of the older people who went there. They told me stories about how the dancing made them feel young again, stories of past dances that connected the most memorable moments of their lives together. One woman sat outside with me one day while she waited for her ride. She told me that no one visited her anymore, and this was something fun, even if her family didn’t approve. She said she thought it was funny that these “young people” (at the studio) didn’t realize she knew exactly what they were up to. I asked the detective if he had talked to her. He said that the family was very upset.

I still wonder about her. It was sad, sad that Gateway Dance Center wasn’t something more honest, but sadder still that the music–even that music–had to stop.