Vicki Juditz - Dancing at Joe's

 

I'm in a shop on Barham Boulevard, floor to ceiling shelves lined with black satin T-straps with two-inch heels. "Perfect for swing," the salesgirl tells me as I slip on a pair. I stand up, I do a triple step. I think I'm already a better dancer in these shoes. I go to the mall, a store called Sidecca, where teenage girls with purple hair and tattoos shop for retro and rockabilly. [audience chuckles] I put on a halter swing dress, lime green, decorated with drawings of little black dogs, polka dot straps tie around the neck. "You want a petticoat?" asks the sales girl. She has a nose ring and safety pins in her ears. And I say, "Yes, I want one." 

 

But I'm 56 and even this dress takes courage. [audience laughter] And I say to myself, "Tonight, I'm going to put on those new shoes and I'm going to put on the new dress and I'm going to drive over to Joe's Café in Burbank, where there's a dance floor and a live band. I'm going to meet up with everybody in my swing dance class that I take in the room with the mirrored walls on the basement level of the Burbank Mall on Thursday nights." I have been to Joe's once before, six months after I lost my husband. I used to think it was strange to say that you had lost someone. But in my husband's case, he was truly lost in the darkness of severe depression, and he saw only one way out. 

 

After his death, I accepted every invitation. Breakfast, lunch, coffee, dinner, mani-pedi, hike in the canyon, 10k walk to raise money for homeless beagles. [audience laughter] I would repeat the details of what had occurred over and over to friends, and acquaintances, and friends of friends until the event became a story that almost seemed to have happened to someone else. On Wednesday mornings, I would go to Zumba Fitness at a martial arts studio in Sherman Oaks. And for an hour, I would lunge and shimmy and yell, "Hey, hey, hey" to the throbbing beat of samba and hip hop and salsa, free to think of nothing. 

 

And one morning this gal named Sal told us that she was a lead singer in a band called the Crown City Bombers. And didn't we want to all come and see her perform at Joe's. A few of us went, and that was the first time I went to Joe's. And at Joe's, Sal got up on that stage and she belted out I Ain't Shook Up, and everybody rushed to the dance floor. The guys were in their 60s and 70s, and the women were of all ages. And the men were wearing pinstripe suits and caps, and the women had on flared full skirts and pin curls and pillbox hats like it was 1952. I noticed partners constantly changing couples lasting only the length of one song, and I thought, I have to learn to dance. 

 

I went online and I found that class at the Burbank Mall. And our teacher, Bruce, he told us that he had answered an ad for a Fred Astaire dance instructor when he was 19, growing up in Nebraska, it was either that or the Navy. [audience laughter] I met Mark and Jim, recently divorced, and Herbie, who had just lost his job, and Jeanette, who had just lost her husband to cancer, and Marie, who had just moved here from Ohio. After a few sessions, Bruce said, "Hey, it's time to strut our stuff at Joe's." I said, "I have been to Joe's." I put on my new shoes, and I put on my new dress, I drive to Joe's. 

 

I feel really self-conscious, I don't dress like that. I get out of the car, I open the door to the bar, and there's everybody from my class. They've already pushed tables together, and they've ordered drinks, and they tell me I look terrific in my shoes and my dress. [audience cheers and applause] 

 

One of the regulars, a guy in his 70s with hair dyed orangish blonde, [audience laughter] and he's got on plaid pants and a stiff white shirt and suspenders, he comes over to our table, he puts his hand out to me. I say, "Oh my God, I'm really nervous. I'm just starting. I'm so bad." He says, "I'm Tony. Step, step, rock, step, turn, wrap, out, step." Tony is surprisingly strong. [audience laughter] in his grip, I never falter. I could be mistaken for one of those regulars, I think, dancing at this moment, spinning. It was Nietzsche, of all people, who said,- [audience cheers and applause] -"We should consider every day lost, on which we have not danced at least once."