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Last Dance
By Michael Fowler
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When I was 13 my parents enrolled me in a dancing class. On the dance floor a
large circle of boys rotated within a large circle of girls to determine
partners. Most of the girls were my classmates or girls the same age from other
schools. But one was a 40-year-old woman who was almost short enough to be a
midget. She gave me a circus feeling.
I could never figure out what a middle-aged four-foot female in a girl’s dress
was doing there. It didn’t occur to me that she joined us kids to make the
dance partners come out even, and that she was right height for a boy my age. I
was too stupid to think of all that. She never said anything, not even her name,
but somehow I found out she was called Laverne. Aside from that, I only knew
that a lady with wrinkles and grown-up boobs was no sixth grader like the rest
of us, and since she never did anything to correct our dancing, it didn’t look
like she was an instructor either. I finally decided she was lonely and had to
make do with boys, and that I could score with her. Even though her rouge and
her cleavage terrified me, she would be my first.
When I made my decision to ask her out, I figured she would drive, since I was
underage. I thought she’d be so excited by my offer, she wouldn’t hesitate
to steal me away from my parents, even though my mother was watching the class
from the raised seating area beside the dance floor. But first I had to wait
about an hour for Laverne to come around the circle and be my partner. When she
finally did, I hoped for a slow dance. I lucked out bigtime. Mr. Gallous, the
instructor, called for a box step. Laverne and I pressed our bodies together. I
gazed adoringly at her small white glove in my hand, the thick black hair on her
forearm, the powder on her bosom, the rouge on her wrinkled forehead and chin.
The light pressure of her hand on my back and the aroma of her perfume went
straight to my head.
‘That’s a cute bow you’ve got in your hair,’ I said.
She just smiled. As luck had it, Laverne was still my partner when it came time
for the gentlemen to escort their ladies to a seat and then fetch them punch and
cookies, so I ran to the refreshment table to satisfy her thirst and hunger. She
didn’t want the cookies, just the punch and a cigarette. We had to sneak out
on the balcony for her to have her smoke. Once we were out there, two stories up
from the night street, I watched her take a little silver flask out of her tiny
sequined purse and pour something into her punch. I gazed up at the summer moon
and said, ‘Laverne, I like you, do you like me?’
She knocked back some punch and replied in a deep, almost manly voice, ‘Save
it, honey. There’ll be other women in your life.’
I was let down, but not yet ready to call it quits.
‘What do you think of my dancing?’ I asked.
‘You’ve got the fire,’ she said with a wink. ‘One day you’ll drive
women wild with your feet.’
‘Gosh,’ I said, not quite sure how my feet could do that. But I was gaining
confidence. ‘Why are you here?’
‘I’m terribly lonely,’ she said. She lit a cigarette and dragged so hard
it burned all the way down in five seconds, leaving a long, curved ash still
attached to the filter end. Then she exhaled smoke thick as rope. ‘A boy
wouldn’t understand.’
‘A boy?’ I mocked. ‘I can fox trot. I can cha cha. I can remove a lady’s
wrap and help her to a folding chair. What’s in that flask?’
‘Nothing now,’ she said. ‘I drained it. Have you ever seen ta-ta’s?’
She put the flask in her handbag and now reached with her gloved hands to her
bodice. My mind began to swirl as I thought I might see a woman’s true nature.
‘I guess I saw my mother’s, when I was an infant,’ I replied. It sounded
like the stupidest thing I had ever said.
Laverne lowered her hands from her bodice without showing me anything and lit up
another cigarette.
‘I’m really a helper here,’ she said. ‘Boys can grow up fast when they
dance with me, if they play their cards right.’
‘Jeez, I can’t believe my parents are paying for this,’ I said.
‘Ready to find out if you’re built for action?’ she asked.
‘Sure, Laverne,’ I said. ‘What do I do?’ I made a gesture like a matador
waving his cape as a bull passed.
‘Not here, boy. We’ll go to your place.’
‘Impossible, Laverne. I didn’t clean my room over the weekend and now I
can’t have guests.’
‘How stupid. All right, I’ll take you to my place, if you think you can
handle that scene.’
‘But if I go to your place, Laverne, it’ll mean I can never go home again.
Will you raise me and send me to school and all?’
‘No, I can’t do that.’
‘What’s your place like?’
‘Nothing for boys. All frilly, sweet-smelling things for girls. Come here,
boy, let me see your teeth. You have braces, don’t you?’
I opened my mouth for her to see my orthodontic hardware. I thought maybe she
worked as a dental hygienist when she wasn’t dancing. She rubbed against me,
and I sighed.
‘Did you squirt?’ she said, backing off.
I nodded my head. ‘I think so. I never have before except when I’m
asleep.’
‘Now you know your way around the ladies. But I have a confession to make.
When the dance class is over, I’m going to commit suicide.’
At that I fainted. When I came to, Mr. Gallous was bent over me, cradling my
head in his strange-smelling hands—I knew he had a sideline in chemical
toilets. Shamefaced, I got up and told my mother I was sick and needed to go
home. I tried not to look around for Laverne. Mom led me away, and I never went
back to dance class again.
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Fowler is interested in most areas of the
philosophy of mind (except theories of trance) and in jazz drumming. His
research for the last decade has been largely concerned with the nature of the
concepts of shuffling and petty theft. This last holiday season he played the
part of Melchior in an outdoor Nativity scene, and was well received.
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