Two-Stepping Under A Neon Moon

How a country music dance hall changed my life

I met my life partner while dancing.

How many people can say that nowadays?

In a world of “oh we met on the app, oh we met online,” meeting someone while dancing sounds quaint, like something grandma used to rhapsodize about — the dance marathons on the Steel Pier, the full dance card or jumpin’ and jivin’ in front of a 40-piece brass big band.

But it did happen to me, at age 33, at a long-standing famous Saturday-night disco place called Oil Can Harry’s that also had four evenings of country dancing — two-stepping, waltzing, shadowing and lots of line dancing.

It was the period I now refer to as My Renaissance, when after a rough breakup I chose to challenge myself and go out of my way to socialize, to instigate get-togethers with new people.

Other than a roommate playing the new Garth Brooks CD endlessly while in college in the early ’90s, I had very little experience or opinion when it came to country music. Sure, I loved Dolly — who doesn’t? — but I didn’t follow the artists and I certainly had never done any line dancing.

So when I challenged myself to walk into Oil Can Harry’s for the first time, I was taken aback by the feeling of pure joy emanating off of the dance floor. Every other gay-leaning bar I’d ever visited was modern disco-beat type music, with everyone kinda bumping and grinding individually under pulsating lights.

But here before me at Oil Cans I saw un-self-conscious, smiling, cowboy-hat-wearing men waltzing together, holding one another in their arms… and I melted.

I saw men and women learning the two-step together, best girlfriends trying to learn to shadow, gals coaxing their visiting boyfriends to try a dance, but most of all I witnessed joy and laughter and an old-fashioned kind of fun.

It really was like back in grandma’s day — it wasn’t a pick-up joint full of attitude and flirtation. Here, your dance card was literally full. You’d finish a nice two-step to a Shania Twain song, thank your partner for the dance, and suddenly a new person was asking you to waltz to that great new ballad. Intermingling was fully encouraged — you could dance the night away with 15 different people for hours, and there was zero expectation you were going home with anyone specific, if at all. You were there for you, for the fun.

And then there was the line dancing.

I’m ashamed to say I probably looked down on line dancing before arriving at Oil Cans. But it was joyously infectious. The first hour was spent teaching a specific dance to newbies or for anyone needing a refresh. Later, the dance was featured prominently a few times so tentative newcomers could feel unintimidated as they mixed with the regulars, throwing the work week’s troubles away with abandon.

Again, it reminded me of the old square dance or polka halls, where the sense of community is palpable and where it’s not about the romance, the gossip, the hookups but completely about the love of the dance, the dance, the dance.

While I’d always enjoyed dance from afar, it was my time at Oil Cans that taught me so much —

• the importance of dance
• the chance to get amazing exercise while feeling completely alive
• to stop taking myself so seriously
• to fight perfectionism; simply try and do without being perfect
• to enjoy the mix of gay and straight friends and neighbors seeking fun

But the icing on the cake?

I met my now-16-year life partner Eddie on that dance floor.

As a former professional dancer himself, Eddie is always in demand to lead, and the first time he took me in his arms for a waltz I was like, “Ohhhh, that’s what it’s like to be led.”

“Were you always such a good dancer?” I asked.

“My family was constantly dancing in the front yard. My mom taught me to swing dance, so I’ve always had it in me,” was his reply.

What a glorious, glorious gift is dance.

At one point I asked, “Where did your parents meet, Eddie?”

“Right after the war, on the dance floor at the Palladium in Los Angeles,” he replies. “Mom said she fell for him because he was such a wonderful dancer.”

I can picture the crowded dance floor, the returned G.I.’s, the Glen Miller knock-off band or even Glen Miller himself up on the stage, and the hundreds of couples taking a sentimental journey or dancing like the boogie-woogie bugle boy.

Of course they did, I thought. It had to be a dance floor.

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