Anita Ward’s 1979 hit, Ring my Bell, filled the place. He leaned in on his way past me to half yell into my ear, “did you hear what happened?” God, he smelled good. Was it cologne or scented soap?  So subtle. “Yes,” I mouthed pulling back to nod my yes up into an intensely masculine face.  

The last song of the DJ’s set. I loved dancing to that song. My body swayed in my chair of its own will to this one. The song ended and voices filled the room again. 

Red satin pants felt cool on my skin as I let my legs dangle, swede healed feet, lightly toward the floor. 

I adjusted my position on the stool at the L-shaped standing bar that bordered the dance floor. It wasn’t very big. There were far too many tables for people to sit at to drink and not nearly enough space to practice our moves on the floor.  

That was the consensus of our little group of friends but the establishment was more interested in the habits of drinking men.  Men with too much money burning holes in their pockets after working too hard for too long.  Not the opinions of the pretty young things wanting to dance, dance, dance, who occupied the corner of the room by the DJ to pretend they were anywhere else but that little town. 

“Those jerks call themselves men but I heard that four of them ganged up on him. They were accusing him of being homosexual. Which he really is not, he’s got a girlfriend for God’s sake. I know her.” My voice shook with indignation and I barked,

“Cowards!!”

His head moved from side to side slowly and he bent forward slightly so that I couldn’t look into his eyes any more.  The fractured light from the disco ball spinning over the dance floor hit and moved over him. 

Man, he had real style. The suit vest over trousers with the perfect shoes set him apart. The shirt was a muted pea green perfection. The clothes didn’t wear him, as they say, he wore the clothes.  

And on the dance floor we all caught glimpses of what it must have been like to watch a great dancer a Gene Kelly or a John Travolta.  The fluidity in his movement was silken which seemed odd, to me, for such a tall man. 

Only he wasn’t eighteen. He was in his mid twenties. It seemed to me that you’d be settled down and starting to raise your family by then. 

He leaned closer and asked, “Would it be so terrible if he was?” I didn’t know what he meant, or what he was asking and the sort of hopeless look on his face hit me hard. My breath got shallow and I felt like I was under a spotlight as I asked, “What do you mean?”

Straightening up he quietly asked like he was speaking to someone younger than me. Like he was speaking to a child, “Would it be such a terrible thing if he was homosexual?”  

“Well yeah – yes, I mean that’s sick. Those people, there’s something wrong with them.” I shot back with more authority than I felt. Why was it so awkward saying those words him? It was like the words had turned into cardboard and they didn’t fit in my mouth anymore.

For a few moments he let his gaze wander to the other side of the room as his hands folded over one another on the bar.  It seemed that the emotion had left him.

“One of these days you might meet someone who changes your mind about that”, he said as if he was looking right into me. He let one hand rest on lightly on my shoulder. With the other hand he waved to a friend at the opposite end of the place to acknowledge that he was on his way and moved off toward her.  

Goose bumps covered me as his hand left my shoulder.  I had never experienced anything like it before.  Pure recognition.  He was one of “those people” that I’d been talking about and everything I knew about him was the opposite of sick and in that moment I knew there wasn’t anything wrong with people like him.  

My body trembled with shame at the words that I’d said to him and with the uncertainty of the question I was left with.

What else had I been taught and raised to believe wasn’t the truth?