Nine Ladies Dancing

Many years ago, I went to Stringfellows 'Gentlemens Club'.  Everything - but everything - was in leopard skin print.  It was dark, damp and full of bored-looking semi-naked women.    It was like being trapped inside Peter Stringfellow's G-string.

I'm neither qualified nor bothered to discuss the merits or otherwise of lappies.  If they'd been around when I was a young man, I'd have been keen to go but also too scared and skint to actually go.  Now that I'm older, I have no need to go as I have a great pair of moobs of my own to play with - big enough to play with but small enough to hide - that's the secret!

The same cannot be said for dancing.  Although I rarely get the chance, I still love to throw some shapes on the floor.  Pretty shit shapes, mind -  I look like Peter Crouch repeatedly fucking-up the robot dance. If the music is tolerable, then I do like to frug, even if my dancing is pretty shitty, despite over 30 years of practice.

In the early 1980s, there were school discos. These were my only exposure to pop music.  We had no pop music in the house.  Top of the Pops was only watched with the sound turned down and then only so my dad could perve over Pans People.  I was too scared to go to the Youth Club as it was the haunt of  the school year above me, who were nearly all violent psychopaths.  All in all, I knew nothing about music and less about dancing.  Thank goodness for Madness, who pioneered the bloke dance.(I was too young for punk & the Pogo).  Little more than exaggerated jogging on the spot while leaning backwards and then forwards, it just worked.  I can still do it now although now I look like a middle-aged bloke having a heart attack while jogging.  Which is about right.

In the mid 1980s it was the Tetbury Leisure Centre Disco.   Ah...  The Lezsh, with its chained-up fire escapes and lax drinking-age policy.  Kestrel Lager (It bites!) and vomity experiments in alcohol tolerance.  I was getting into more alternative music and so wouldn't dance to the dreadful sub-Soul Boy stuff that was so popular in the 80s.  Us 'trendy wankers' had a short slot towards the end of the evening - after Wham! but before the smoochy numbers.  We had a few minutes to hurl ourselves round to the Redskins or the Cure.  But all too soon, the trendy music stopped and the smoochy stuff started.

God, I hated the smoochy stuff.  I was not, by any measure, much of a catch back then and so I wasn't in the running for a smooch. I still get a sinking feeling when I hear "I'm not in love." A waste of good dancing time, spent instead on letting teenagers grope and drool in time to fucking awful music.  Loves young dream loses its splendour when the soundtrack is provided by Lionel 'fucking awful' Richie.

A bigger dread than the smoochy stuff is that stable of shitty wedding DJs - "It's Raining Men!".  There is a rule amongst all DJs that as soon as men have been dragged onto the dance floor - shy, awkward and nervous - they should be scared back to where they came from by a loud blast on "It's Raining Men!".  The implicit message is that if you stay on the dance floor, you're gay.  The actual message though, is that the DJ is a ****.

From the mid-1980s onwards, I have 'perfected' a dance style that has stood me in reasonable stead.  I'll let you in on the secret.   Simply move with the rhythm. That's all.  Couldn't be easier, could it?  Sadly, it does seem to be too hard for many.  Next time you're dancing - look and see how many simply can't get their bodies to move with the rythym.  I was at an event recently where a mate was dancing simply by stiff-legged leaning.   He's raise one leg and topple a bit in that direction.  Then, when he'd leant far enough, he'd raise the other leg and lean in the other direction.  It like C3PO trying to discretely fart in front of Princess Leia before blaming the smell on R2D2.

But back in the lappies, us men aren't allowed to dance.  We're not allowed to do anything except sit on our hands and feel scared.  Scared of the huge bouncers, scared of a predatory dancers exerting their not-inconsiderable power over men and especially scared that the Stag Night groom we brought in will use up all our cash.  He took 'Nine Ladies Dancing' too literally. Until he was restrained, he went for dance after dance and was followed back each time by an angry looking girl who announced that "He said you'd pay!".   We ran out of cash and were run out of the lappie.  Haven't been back.