Saturday, November 04, 2006
The Midwestern Safety Dance
(Written Tuesday, August 22, 2006)
I can specifically remember only a couple of the many times that I've heard "The Safety Dance" during my life. The song mostly reminds me of being drunk with my friends in gay bars while looking for single, gay-friendly girls who might like us. I'm certain that I've caught the video on VH-1 fairly recently and probably even as a kid. Tonight I listened to the song at a table full of fellow swimming pool builders as we ate dinner after a long day of work.
Alex had dragged Andy and me to Saint Louis in some sort of fucked up, king of the pool-building castle horseshit, and there Andy and I sat - tired from six hours of driving and four hours of working and desperate for some time away from pool talk. We sat with Doug, a late-20's co-owner who inherited his position from his father and Craig, a mid-20's tanned worker guy who wore a sleeveless Corona t-shirt and drank a plastic cup of budweiser.
While we waited, Doug randomly mentioned that Joseph Lieberman recently stated that the U.S. should completely pull out of Iraq. If that happened, Doug said, "they" would think that we gave up and just attack us over here.
"I'd rather fight them over there than fight them over here," he said. Andy, Alex and I ignored the statement. (Andy later declared the statement to be the stupidest fucking thing he's ever heard.)
During dinner, one of the newly annointed Saint Louisans said that Andy and I looked like we went to UC. Fair enough, I thought, as Andy explained that we had both graduated from that fine institution. Our order of 100 chicked wings (garlic parmesean, cajun, teriyake and hickory barbecue) was served, and the five of us turned our table into a chicken bone burial ground. As the consumation of beers and fried food slowed, Imentioned how many baby chickens we had consumed.
"Does anyone want the last cajun?" I asked, reaching for the last wing in the basket - an undersized leg. "This poor little guy didn't last as long as the others... One hundred baby chickens we just ate." (My math skills took a temporary hiatus from respectability.)
We eventually figured out that it took 50 baby chickens to produce 100 chicken wings (although counting two wings and two legs per bird, I guess the number should be 25). We relaxed and took a few moments to finish our drinks. During the down time, Craig mentioned that our talk of baby chickens was making him feel bad about it. His conscientiousness was sweet and made the Middle East-fearing man to his left seem all the more disconnected.
We laughed and reassured Craig that it was OK to eat the baby birds and that we were just joking about the guilt (Andy and I had definitely eaten our fair share). We thanked Doug for paying for dinner and headed back to the apartment crammed in the back of a four-door pickup truck.
I went straight for the refrigerator and snagged bottles of beer for Andy and myself. We wandered around the drably decorated suburban apartment, fidgiting with things and looking for ways to make each other laugh. Andy picked up a small wooden bat decorated in Hispanic colors and style. He patted it against his open hand.
"What's this?" he said to me, a sly grin slowly appearing on his face.
"That's Craig's nigger beater," Doug said from the back of the room. Silence swept through the space like a blast of hot air on a scorching hot day.
Andy and I looked at each other with an immediate sense of offense and mutual understanding, but we said nothing and the moment wasn't disturbed by our uncomfortable-ness. Andy put the bat down, I walked out of the room and pool-building discussion continued as if nothing had ever happened.
Andy and I checked the score of the Reds' game on the Internet and found that the team had won 4-3 even though it was losing 3-0 when we left. We were excited about the win despite having two days left of our paid indenture in the dreary Saint Louis suburbanland that could only remind us of the saddest aspects of Cincinnati life.
Andy went to bed wishing he had brought his book with him inside the apartment. I went back to the family room hoping to catch an episode of The Simpsons or an equally mocking form of entertainment.
Then I thought about how much fun my memories are of "The Safety Dance." Even though I was drunk off my ass and absolutely embarrassing at 21 in the gay club (Andy was there too - a raucus 18-year-old at the time), at least I wasn't hanging out in the suburbs, morphing into an ignorant, defensive, manipulated weirdo. And even though I was tired from working manual labor two years after earning a college degree, I sat in the Saint Louis apartment with my somewhat unrelatable pool-building colleagues and enjoyed the ridiculousness of a racist eating chicken wings to such an gay-friendly tune.
I can specifically remember only a couple of the many times that I've heard "The Safety Dance" during my life. The song mostly reminds me of being drunk with my friends in gay bars while looking for single, gay-friendly girls who might like us. I'm certain that I've caught the video on VH-1 fairly recently and probably even as a kid. Tonight I listened to the song at a table full of fellow swimming pool builders as we ate dinner after a long day of work.
Alex had dragged Andy and me to Saint Louis in some sort of fucked up, king of the pool-building castle horseshit, and there Andy and I sat - tired from six hours of driving and four hours of working and desperate for some time away from pool talk. We sat with Doug, a late-20's co-owner who inherited his position from his father and Craig, a mid-20's tanned worker guy who wore a sleeveless Corona t-shirt and drank a plastic cup of budweiser.
While we waited, Doug randomly mentioned that Joseph Lieberman recently stated that the U.S. should completely pull out of Iraq. If that happened, Doug said, "they" would think that we gave up and just attack us over here.
"I'd rather fight them over there than fight them over here," he said. Andy, Alex and I ignored the statement. (Andy later declared the statement to be the stupidest fucking thing he's ever heard.)
During dinner, one of the newly annointed Saint Louisans said that Andy and I looked like we went to UC. Fair enough, I thought, as Andy explained that we had both graduated from that fine institution. Our order of 100 chicked wings (garlic parmesean, cajun, teriyake and hickory barbecue) was served, and the five of us turned our table into a chicken bone burial ground. As the consumation of beers and fried food slowed, Imentioned how many baby chickens we had consumed.
"Does anyone want the last cajun?" I asked, reaching for the last wing in the basket - an undersized leg. "This poor little guy didn't last as long as the others... One hundred baby chickens we just ate." (My math skills took a temporary hiatus from respectability.)
We eventually figured out that it took 50 baby chickens to produce 100 chicken wings (although counting two wings and two legs per bird, I guess the number should be 25). We relaxed and took a few moments to finish our drinks. During the down time, Craig mentioned that our talk of baby chickens was making him feel bad about it. His conscientiousness was sweet and made the Middle East-fearing man to his left seem all the more disconnected.
We laughed and reassured Craig that it was OK to eat the baby birds and that we were just joking about the guilt (Andy and I had definitely eaten our fair share). We thanked Doug for paying for dinner and headed back to the apartment crammed in the back of a four-door pickup truck.
I went straight for the refrigerator and snagged bottles of beer for Andy and myself. We wandered around the drably decorated suburban apartment, fidgiting with things and looking for ways to make each other laugh. Andy picked up a small wooden bat decorated in Hispanic colors and style. He patted it against his open hand.
"What's this?" he said to me, a sly grin slowly appearing on his face.
"That's Craig's nigger beater," Doug said from the back of the room. Silence swept through the space like a blast of hot air on a scorching hot day.
Andy and I looked at each other with an immediate sense of offense and mutual understanding, but we said nothing and the moment wasn't disturbed by our uncomfortable-ness. Andy put the bat down, I walked out of the room and pool-building discussion continued as if nothing had ever happened.
Andy and I checked the score of the Reds' game on the Internet and found that the team had won 4-3 even though it was losing 3-0 when we left. We were excited about the win despite having two days left of our paid indenture in the dreary Saint Louis suburbanland that could only remind us of the saddest aspects of Cincinnati life.
Andy went to bed wishing he had brought his book with him inside the apartment. I went back to the family room hoping to catch an episode of The Simpsons or an equally mocking form of entertainment.
Then I thought about how much fun my memories are of "The Safety Dance." Even though I was drunk off my ass and absolutely embarrassing at 21 in the gay club (Andy was there too - a raucus 18-year-old at the time), at least I wasn't hanging out in the suburbs, morphing into an ignorant, defensive, manipulated weirdo. And even though I was tired from working manual labor two years after earning a college degree, I sat in the Saint Louis apartment with my somewhat unrelatable pool-building colleagues and enjoyed the ridiculousness of a racist eating chicken wings to such an gay-friendly tune.
# posted by PASStheTEA_B @ 4:11 PM 
