balding angrily

People don’t grow up.  People get to about junior-high school or high school age and then stop growing up.  Maybe our vocabularies get larger and some people can solve complex quadratic equations or find a cure for small pox, but for the most part we just stop growing.  It was the end of the evening, and I looked at the dance floor and noticed that all the girls were whooping it up, dancing to Justin Timberlake bringin’ sexy back, throwing their fake pearls in their girlfriend’s faces, lifting their glasses in the air, spilling sugary alcohol on their sequined dresses, laughing with large “o” mouths filled with chicklet-sized teeth in the center while the men awkwardly stepped from foot to foot on the outside.  I’m not being snarky at the expense of straighty; I’m one of those guys that looked around me for any excuse to get off the dance floor.  I pretended like I saw my partner’s brother-in-law waving me over just so I could stop the flop-sweat dripping down my face burning with embarrassment.  It made me think of my first junior high school dance where the theme of the party was “beach day” and we were supposed to wear our bathing suits to school.  On the dance floor was the same scene I just described if you replaced the 30 to 50 year-olds with 12 to 14 year-olds and replaced the submerged flower arrangements and clusters of candle-filled hurricanes with paper streamers and cardboard cutout seashells.  All the girls danced in the center while their boyfriends swayed like metronomes looking up at the fluorescent lights wishing they could be playing Pac Man on their Atari 2600s.  I stood next to two guys that went in a different direction when they saw that my bathing suit was two sizes too small, showing my religion to everyone.

Back to the wedding and turn the camera away from the dance floor to other parts of the party, and you will see two of my best friends.  They’re a couple that from outside appearances are successful, well spoken, culturally sophisticated, and personable.  I expected them to be gregarious and the toast of the party.  Instead I saw they were sitting by themselves on a desert oasis-inspired hammock away from the crowd.  I was struck by their shyness.  They didn’t know many people outside of the wedding party, so they sat by themselves.  I’m a socially awkward wallflower, so when I saw someone else being more reclusive than me, I realized that we’re all little boys and girls sitting on the outskirts of the dance floor simultaneously hoping that someone does and doesn’t ask us to dance.

Rian Johnson in his interviews to promote Brick talked about how high school is a bubble with its own specific social hierarchy, cut off from the larger culture.  It’s my belief that we are very happy to stay there if we can every so often just change the faces and costumes.