Nostalgia ain't what it used to be...

No club I have ever been to holds a candle to my junior high.

Tonight, trying to work off some emotional excess, I went searching for songs to dance to that would remind me of my best clubbing days- when I was 20-21 and out three nights a week, scandalous yet chaste, intoxicated by the rhythm of the night. So, I went looking for the best jams. After a while, I realized some of the selections were pretty old school. I kept pulling up songs from '95... '97... DJs are not this retro usually. Upon reflection, I realized I was trying to recall my junior high dances.

I've heard stories from my friends of dances where the girls stood on one wall, boys on the other, and never the twain did meet. I've heard of schools where a Bible was wedged between dancing couples. I did not go to school there. I was a strange, numb, weird kid at 12. I had moved from Missouri to Southern California a few years before and I did not adjust easily. I lived the ghetto, and I'm not exaggerating. I can still give you an intersection where you can buy anything you want. I can't tell you who to ask for though; gangsters and drug dealers don't get old.

I went to Dale JHS in Anaheim. The kids there were largely black and Hispanic, and my education included my first exposure to hip-hop, r&b, and dirty dancing. I couldn't tell you what compelled me to go to the first after school dance. It was the fall of my seventh grade year. I was in the G.A.T.E classes, uncool with my uncool Korean boyfriend. (His mother told him he was not allowed to dance and HAD to marry a Korean girl. She told me, too.) So I went alone. I paid my dollar and walked into the darkened gymnasium. Disco lights swirled and the bass thumped off the walls. The DJ was good, involved and boiling in his turn tables. The music was inappropriate. (Think: the Dogg Pound, 2Live Crew, Tupac, and Inner Circle.) The place was a barely-lit mass of burgeoning teenagers. The kids that lined the walls weren't uncool; they were just too stoned to dance. In the middle of the room were about 90 kids, doing the Freak.

For those of you who don't know what Freaking is, let me enlighten you: the Freak is a vertical expression of a horizontal aspiration.

There weren't couples. There weren't coy circles. There were no boundaries, no groups, no cliques, and no tribes. Their sweat ran together in a common river of hormones and good-natured,immature lust. My first view as an outsider lasted only seconds. More people flooded into the room right behind me and I was swept into the center.

There I was: an uncoordinated white girl, sandwiched between a black girl in front and a Mexican boy in back. The song was simple 4/4 time and the rhythm was as old as mankind. The same moment I thought "I cant." I was already doing it. My body knew how to follow, and I was accepted. I was one of the dancers. I lost myself in it, and it was incredible.

No one was grabby, unlike at a club. No one bought or drank alcohol. I felt perfectly safe, like one enormous group date. We were just expressing ourselves physically for all we were worth. We sweated as clean as any baseball team. We smiled and laughed and broke lines and reformed. We sang and rapped along and I learned words to songs I looked like I had no right nor reason to know.

Four hours later, the dance ended. I had never stopped. Dusk was coming, and I walked home, but I was so high I could have ran all the way. It was the most unexpectedly wonderful feeling.

It is gone now, no more likely to be captured than a dream within a dream. But I remember junior high dances. And no club can compare.

Community

I could spend days listing the things about my community that bother me. I spent the first day at Pantheacon being mildly amused at the thousands of whimsical hats on display, but not impressed by much. Friday was largely a disappointment, company exempted, of course.

Miscellany was satisfactory. Starhawk is an amazing ritual leader and I am so privileged to have stood in circle with her, heard her voice. I ran into every high priest I've ever had, always a joy. The Feri tent revival was a masterpiece of reclaiming. I took communion and sang "Amazing Grace" with 200 witches. It was oddly comforting, and the folks who put it on really know how to work our dry Christian roots.

Saturday was better. But Saturday night brought the drum circle. Ok, you can say a lot about the Pagan community, gods know I do. But the room was dark and warm. Everyone had a drum to hand. We started EARLY. No Pagan Standard Time for us. It was scheduled for 5pm and by 4:30 we were well underway. The people who had so irked me in the lobby of the hotel were sweaty and shirtless, stripped jackets off and grinning, listening and contributing all at once. Belly dancers at all levels of skill flowed to the center of the circle and undulated, sinuously. A tall woman in rainbow veils caught the eye of a four year old girl and taught her a few things. Faces glowed all around the circle, and a man masked with the sun danced the wheel, pounding a bodhran, a perfect enigma. Old women began to dance with surprising grace, and I wiped drops of sweat out of my eyes. My hands ached every time I stopped drumming, but why stop? Across the circle, I saw Irish faces, African faces. A Hispanic man in front of me pounded his own doumbek while his two young daughters held their tiny djembe, faces alight.

Our wordless, timeless ways are our best ways. I will not forget who we can be when we do not bother to pretend. I am edified in my faith, and that's priceless.