Dancing Girls

I had a small group of girlfriends who loved it like I did, and we went dancing every night of the week, except Sunday because the bars were closed. On long weekends when the bars were open on Sunday night, we went.

We rarely danced with men. We weren't there to get picked up. We were there to dance! When the end of the night came and a boy got up the courage to ask me to dance, I always spoke honestly and apologetically. "No, I'd rather dance alone." And while the other couples filled the dance floor for the final and inevitably slow song of the night, I would dance by myself. I loved dancing to ballads. At home, it was all I danced to.

During those months when I danced every single night, I swore to myself that I would go dancing every week (at least) for the rest of my life. But that promise was broken so soon. I moved out of Kelowna to the Lower Mainland just before I turned 23. Suddenly high cover charges, long lineups, and suffocatingly packed nightclubs had me avoiding them altogether. The odd time I did go out, I couldn't find my groove. It just wasn't the same. I feared that dancing was lost to me forever.

But I got so broke, I decided to try stripping. Being on stage, with the music pounding, and no one in my way, I found it again - that liberation, transcendence that I had so loved as a dancing fool in Kelowna. No matter what kind of day I was having, I could escape in dance. In fact, when the world was at its harshest, I put on my best shows.