Cue the music

My mistake was playing Just Dance several times a week. It makes my muscles twitch when I hear a song to which they are conditioned to move, as does eventually happen at this Veterans of Foreign Wars hall. I show Kristina my routine for Usher's "DJ Got Us Fallin' in Love Again," though I miss some interstitial moves between the ones I like. I then put on the dance video, which takes me out of remembering. Otherwise, I would need to keep my eyes closed, which is not conducive to elegance.

A man comes in from the bar area to tell me I have awesome moves and should be dancing out there where no one is dancing.

I demur. I am not built to be the center of attention.

Amber, Kristina, and I settled at a black plastic cloth-covered table between the bar and dark hall where I thought the dancing portion of this 1920s New Year's Eve event would occur. Instead, one-twentieth of that space had been taken up by a few aluminum food dishes (prime rib, shrimp, ham, salad, mac and cheese, and such; not cheap, necessarily, and I eat my due out of a sense of social awkwardness). A few of the wives were poking about the desserts--prepackaged cookies and brownies--and were shooed away.

The food was gone when I got the urge to dance in this space next to filing cabinets, clearly meant for clerical work otherwise.

We did not dress to the theme, but we dressed our versions nicely: Amber in a black button-down shirt and slacks, me in a fitting black and white striped shirt, and Kristina in a dress.

I show Kristina a dance in the privacy of the empty hall, one where I barely need to look at the phone so attuned I am to its jumping about ("So Glamorous," originally by Clav and Harlin James). Kristina is agog. I know this dance well, but it is mainly because I am unaware of how goofy this might look, so I pass as unself-conscious. No one criticizes me when I dance to the game.

Amber points out to Kristina that, years ago, they scored higher than I did just by shaking the other remote.

Amber wanted to have an empty house party, but we still aren't closed on the house, in part because the seller's lawyer needs our lawyer to send them a letter attesting there are fire alarms, something visible in the inspection photos and something we could also buy for $40 and install in twenty minutes. This is enough to hold the process up for weeks. This is how they justify however much we are paying them.

One of the heads of this VFW gently interrogated us, inquiring, in essence, why the hell we were here. It was an open invitation on social media, and we paid. We needed something to do for New Year's Eve other than sit at home until the ball dropped.

We are the only three who are not veterans of foreign wars, their spouses, or the bartenders. This man could not parse why we bothered. Still, we are polite and regale him with our home-buying travails, so he marks us as mostly harmless and, by dint of our paying admission, welcome curiosities.

Another man offers to buy the three of us something more potent than the well drinks that are our due.

"I'm an officer here. I can do that."

I decline. I only drink soda and seltzer; Amber, vodka cranberries; and Kristina, rum and Cokes. We do not need his generosity, and I reject it with chagrin. Oh, to be the sort of guy who could request something that could put hair on your chest.

We relent when the third person asks us to join them in the bar. Kristina swears she does not know how to dance and proves this by only moving stiffly. I take the initiative of standing behind her and puppeteering her limbs until she loosens up. I cannot do much with her feet, but it helps.

Amber and I dance lip-synching lyrics at Kristina, flirting until she forgets she can't dance.

The bar patrons enjoy our antics and take to the floor (a few square feet of carpet in front of the dartboard) around us. An older woman with curly blonde hair and glasses high-fives us after every song. I do not pay much attention to the other dancers, except that they sometimes take the excuse of our presence to throng. We have become the catalyst for their fun.

As often, I am impressed and delighted how Amber dances, liberated wiggling and shaking that betrays their stated reluctance to get up and get down. It trips a form of love (and arousal) that otherwise lays dormant. We are a dancing species.

Kristina leaves an hour early so that she might kiss her cat Chubby at midnight.

Half an hour before midnight, after we had warmed up the dance floor (patch of carpet), they switched from danceable modern music to White (People) Wedding Fare--the Electric Slide, Staying Alive, and the Cha Cha Slide. Unless glyphs pop up in my peripheral vision, directing me in the motions, I am not thrilled with dances having set steps, so I lose some interest. I do not stop dancing, but I feel ungainly now to be in the presence of people for whom these dances are overly familiar.

The building shakes for a solid half minute, with what I would be unsurprised was an earthquake, having lived through one I took for construction in the hallway. Looking outside, it is pouring rain. I did not expect something so intense, and I wish I had the foresight to bring another umbrella. The night did not seem so imposing when we left, so Amber had suggested we walk the mile, meaning we would return after midnight through unrelenting rain, which my umbrella mostly keeps at bay.

Near our apartment, we are beset by a flash of lightning that feels just ahead but is likely in the next county, followed by another thunderclap that shakes our cores. We cannot die now, not here. It would make our obituaries cloying and would prove right my mother, who thought it was only sensible to drive the mile.

"We won't be able to walk here once we have our new house," Amber notes, though we wouldn't anyway. We will throw the party if we have a proper house--absent a better offer. Also, though fun, being interlopers among veterans was a trifle odd.

Despite another cataclysmic flash on our long driveway, we make it home, whole and hardy, for another calendar year.

last watched: Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man
reading: Once and Future Me