Step Up 2 The Streets

I'm a fall risk. My surgeon says I'm past that phase. I think he's both right and wrong. I live in fear of crashing to the ground.

I'm a large man with two recently installed (Nov 2023/July 2024) hips. They work really well and I have no complaints. I exercise with them and everything feels good. But I haven't been to any protests this year because I think if I fall in a crowd I will a) dislocate two expensive pieces of equipment for which we are still making monthly payments and b) go to the hospital and c) have a new surgery that will cost more money. I'm a firm believer in worst-case scenarios so I have special thoughts about having to run from anyone who means to harm me, and I can't quite do that yet. I know this because I tried while jaywalking a few weeks ago across what I believed to be a completely empty street. A car appeared, and I had to shift gears from tortoise to hare and failed.

Last week I went to a wedding in Atlanta. One of the Duralde nieces got married to a man everyone likes and all of it was lovely. I was determined to attend because a niece on my side of the family got married in Texas in the middle of surgeries and recovery and I couldn't go to that one. I will now make this event all about me. I tried to dance.

Alonso attempting to get me on the dance floor at the reception: "Let's do it."

"Not until they play some house."

Then the DJ put on Sophie Ellis-Bextor's "Murder on the Dance Floor," as made popular by a recent trashy film. Not house but close enough. We walk out onto the dance floor, a large square of temporary flooring installed for this purpose, as the reception was being held on the ground floor of an art museum. A ramp to the art on the second level of the building lined this area.

I make one intentional disco step and my feet come out from under me. The combination of a highly polished floor and my shoes - the good ones with leather soles that one wears with a suit - turn me into a cartoon of a person soon to fall on his ass. I prevent this by grabbing the thoughtfully placed ramp railing and inching myself off the dance area onto the more textured museum floor. It would have been a nice touch if the museum had provided a Rudolf Stingel-esque carpet installation for dancing on, but this was not to be. I like "Heartbreak (Make Me a Dancer)" better anyway.

Later, it was time for the DJ to play the Couple Elimination Game where all married people are expected to go to the dance floor and slow dance to a song – Etta James' "At Last," of course – while the man with the microphone culls the crowd based on length of time married, the goal of which is to leave grandparents on the floor alone. This works well for its intended purpose.

But how long have we been married? We just celebrated our 30th anniversary as a couple and it's been 28 years since we had a fake "wedding" in Dallas and it's been 17 years since California legalized (and then unlegalized) same-sex marriage and it's been 10 years since the Supreme Court made it legal everywhere and now they might take it afuckingway again.

I spent "At Last" doing math, badly, in my head, clinging to Alonso just off to the side of the main murderous dance floor, swaying really, concentrating on not falling down, wondering when it was our turn to leave. Alonso said, "We're staying to 30 years," and he was right about that because straight people don't get to count our time for us, and it's not like the marriage police were coming to tap us on the shoulder. Technically speaking, I successfully danced.

There's another family wedding in 2026 and I assume there won't be a special dance carpet just for me so my plan is a pair of good-traction Skechers Slip-Ins.

[Side note from the reception: I ate sliders and spilled nothing on my brand new necktie because I'm very careful and good. Alonso, however, got one food glorp on his brand new necktie because he's bad and is in trouble. Second side note from the reception: It was a youthful Millennial wedding and that generational cohort loves to gang-yell the lyrics to "Mr. Brightside," and I need one of you kids to explain this to me without using the word "banger."]