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n o 6 LITERARY NONFICTION
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choreographed style of dance. Also this requires us to, you know, dance. Even at school dances no one danced, at least not in ways that anyone recognized as the act of coordinating your bodily movements with musical rhythms. What we did on the dance floor was something that resembled muscle spasms put to time signature. The day we started our square dancing unit we filed into the gym dressed in our ill-fitting shorts and sloppy tee shirts. “Welcome to square dancing 101,” Coach bellowed. A record player, probably the last of its kind within town lines, squatted on a chair next to the coach. A small PA was on the floor next to the chair with a microphone attached. Coach explained that he would teach us the basic maneuvers; there was something else he said about “the great history of this American art form,” about “coordination” and “social skills,” but really who was listening at that point? We were all thinking the same thing: please let a sink hole open up and swallow the school so I will not have to dance in front of these people. Coach designated himself as the “caller,” the person who calls out each move in time to the music. He had marked the dance area with a big, wide square outlined in blue tape on the gym floor. “Find a partner!” Seasted said affecting a terrible southern drawl. My classmates scattered like startled larks. The popular girls shrieked and tore
across the floor to grab the hands of one another or whatever cool boy they felt was their equal. The rest of us were left to choose one another and we made our picks affecting that teenage air of carefully cultivated disinterest. Paired up, everyone retreated to the perimeter of the dance space. Everyone, that is, except Anthony DeVito, who stood alone in the center, fidgeting nervously, his head jerking like one of those desk top, bobbing chickens. Nobody moved. Audible giggles erupted from the sidelines; soft bursts of “Oh my God, like, so embarrassing” broke out among several of the pockets of my classmates. Anthony was rooted to the spot, a noticeable sheen beginning to form on his forehead. The gym seemed to grow bigger in the seconds that ticked by as if it were a room clipped from the pages of Alice in Wonderland. Coach stood there, silent except for the release of a lone sigh, as if pursing air through his thin lips was enough to excuse him for being unable to foresee the disaster that results when you tell a bunch of idiot teenagers to partner up on their own. It might have only been 30 seconds that Anthony was marooned in the middle of the gym, but it felt like it could have been a century. I stood next to the girl that was to be my dance partner. I suddenly saw myself on the playground in elementary school, alone because the rest of the 89