Lesson 5: Dull Roar

for my fifth lesson, I arrive at the studio in a free-floating state of pissed-offedness. The anger is not about tap; it's about my day job.

And that's exactly how I think of it. Not as "my career," "my vocation," or "my stepping stone to something wonderful." It's just my crappy day job. But even with that attitude, I care about what happens there. I feel heartsick because I joined an innovative company that now, four years later, bears all too strong a resemblance to a pointless joke. The company has been mismanaged for at least two years. We've squandered our technological lead, and companies we used to laugh at are about to lap us. We've just issued a press release to Wall Street explaining that we missed our quarterly earnings projections by millions of dollars, and thus are not profitable. The Street punishes our stock severely, driving it well below five dollars a share (when I hired in, it was around $80.00.).

We have a new CEO who promised not to change anything during his first 90 days on the property, so he could get his own sense of what's right about the company, what's wrong with it, and who's contributing to each. It's Day 100 now. The Chief Technical Officer has been fired. The Technical Publications department no longer reports to Engineering; now they're part of Technical Support. Everyone senses these are mere warning shots compared to what's to come. We feel besieged.

Here in the first decade of the new century, with the dot-bomb of 1999 fresh in our memories (and our resumes), no words strike more anxiety into the hearts of high-tech workers than "re-org," "downsizing," "restructuring," or "job search." When I interview candidates for writing and editing positions, some of them have been unemployed for 11 months. I wonder if I'll soon be joining them. My whole floor is tense and snappish. The middle managers who thrive on power are fighting to get more of it, assuming that will make them indispensable. The herd workers are pushing themselves to ridiculous, unsustainable levels of productivity, so as not to be the straggling elk who gets picked off. Everyone feels his or her job is at stake. Every conversation is Important. No perceived sleight is allowed to pass.

Sick of the tension, the other senior writer in Marketing quits without giving notice. Now on top of my Too Much To Do list, I'll have some of her tasks. And then today Microsoft released an unprecedented ten security bulletins in one day, seven of them critical. The team of security analysts I work with jump to warp speed as they assess the threat to Windows computers and rush to warn our subscribers as quickly as possible.

My company throws itself an emergency at least once a week. I've reached the point where I'm saying aloud around the office, "Not everything can be an emergency!" I have realized that we're working so hard that it would take two people to replace any one person on my team. And as long as we keep doing that, management has no reason to stop us. We thought by holding up well under pressure and achieving extraordinary things, we'd earn respect, perhaps a raise, and then adequate help. Instead, we're being regarded as "not broken" and thus not needing a fix. Working 55 hours a week is the New Normal. It ain't right. I cut out "early" (after a mere nine hours, no lunch) and make it to class as an act of defiance.

With my mood still on Simmer after a full day of Rolling Boil, I don't even find the yoga teacher amusing, even when I hear her tell her class to "move into Spinning Dog" and, later, "move your arms from Airplane into Jet." (If yoga is a "timeless discipline," this lady's got to be making it up as she goes along. Airplane? Jet? What's next, "move into iPod pose"?)

Instead, as tap class begins, Annette plays "Move Your Money" from Dulfer + Dulfer, the only saxophone act I know that undergirds its jazz riffs with electronica, house music, and rap. I pound the floor with my taps, purposely making loud sharp noises, but getting them as accurate as I can. After a day of fear and uncertainty, it is my non-verbal backlash, a way of throwing aside helplessness and taking authority. I am saying "I am here!" and "The beat is there!"

And something cool happens.

I start dancing really well. I am making crisp, clean tap sounds locked tight with the beat of the CD. Annette is pushing us tonight, to get a sense of how much we've learned. She tosses out instructions that used to throw me into a panic: "Now double-time!" "Keep doing it, only backwards!" Valerie and Debbie and I are taking it all in stride and keeping up.

Until this moment, I didn't realize that for all these weeks, I've been afraid of the floor. Or perhaps not afraid of the floor, but afraid of the noise my taps make on the floor. I don't know where the fear comes from. The best explanation I can think of is, when I was growing up with my big brother, every time we got the giggles or threw a Whiffle ball in the house or started a tickle fight, my mom would make us stop. And if we didn't stop, my dad would holler from the living room, "Keep it down to a dull roar!" That same phrase, every time. Whenever the kind of fun began that makes you lose track of yourself: "Keep it down to a dull roar!" This was such a common feature of my pre-school days, I didn't realize until much later that the phrase is inherently humorous, and my dad was leavening his command with gentle irony. It just meant to my little ears, Wild fun is wrong. Stop.

That thought drove deeper into my fabric than I realized. Tonight, in my anger, I broke through it when I didn't know it was there. No, I will not keep it down to a dull roar if I do not want to. In fact, if I so deem, I might possibly bellow, howl, shriek, or ululate. It is entirely up to me. Wow, it is really up to me! The guy in the mirror is smiling again. Something more than tap dance is happening to me.

Between exercises, Valerie whispers, "Wow, you've been practicing during the week, haven't you? It really shows!" When I shake my head, no, I haven't practiced at all, she won't believe me. "Well you're right on it tonight!" she states as we spread out for the next exercise. Every rock musician, every abstract painter is way ahead of me: sometimes you get better art from being a little angry.

This time, I am braced and ready for Hop. I want to face it. I survived it last week, and I will not let Hop dull my roar this week. Between last week and this week I have read about this guy, and inspired by the amputee tap dancer, I am no longer afraid. Sure enough, toward the end of class when Annette trots out the hardest stuff, we go into lots of Hops.

I can't do them.

Early in the exercise, I land on my left foot in a way that makes it go twang. I cheat on the next few Hops, never really leaving the ground; and finally on the last few, I do nothing, simply waiting for the beat to pass and resuming the exercise after the Hop.

Regardless of whether my attitude is good or bad, I am simply too heavy. I hate being reminded of this. I hate the inescapable reality of it. To comfort myself, I stop by KFC on the way home. This is such a classic loser gesture that when I get home, I don't blog, I don't read, I don't clean house, I do nothing constructive. I think about my day job and I boot up Metroid Prime on my GameCube and I attack Flaaghra, a giant sentient toxic plant, using a gratuitous number of missiles and bombs. The missiles are homing missiles that never miss. They make Flaaghra reel in towering pain. I kill Flaaghra, who keels over in shrieking death. As in most video games, the carcass conveniently dissolves. Unsatisfied, deprived of a target, I keep shooting missiles in all directions, a paroxysm of impotence.

When I get up the next morning, my left foot is messed up. I absorb this fact. Then I put on stiff boots to support my strained foot, and I limp back to my day job.

"Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent," Calvin Coolidge famously said. "The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race." Like life itself, class is becoming a chain of alternating breakthroughs and defeats. The main thing is to keep showing up. Is it possible my day job, maybe most of life, is the same?

I understand my dad in a new way. I used to resent him for quenching my childish fun. But he didn't yell, "Shut up!" He didn't demand silence. We could have fun, we just had to do it in a way that didn't harm ourselves or others. I'm the one who decided, that meant stop entirely. No one has ever silenced me as effectively as I silence myself.

OK, life sets you back. Who said you have to take the hint and give up? If you persist, if you press through your fears, you can at least keep up a dull roar. ##

Lesson 4: What Does Not Kill Me...

When Tuesday rolls around, my attitude has changed from "What do we have to do tonight?" to "What do we get to do tonight!" This attitude reeks to high heaven of positivity and mental health, so it feels totally alien. I decide to go with it, just to see what this "can do" stuff is good for.

In my eagerness to recapture more of last week's magic, I show up twenty minutes early for class. Let's party!

But when I enter the dance studio lobby, the room feels funereal. Amber and Vicky sit on the thin indoor-outdoor carpet, whispering while Vickie hand-stitches repairs to a pink ballet slipper. Valerie and Joan huddle over Bembebe's wedding pictures, oohing and aahing over page after page of dark smiling faces, and asking him quietly, "Is this your brother? Who's this? Is this your bride's father? What's his name?"

Why is everyone so hushed? Then I see the reason. The yoga teacher has taped laser-printed signs outside her room. "QUIET!" they command, in 60-point Times Roman Bold. "Yoga class in session!" This strikes me as too funny to subdue my anticipation.

I sit in the changing area to put on my tap shoes. From here, I can see that the yoga teacher has turned out all the lights in her room again. She says something like, "Now move into Dropping Dog pose." Ambient light from the lobby illuminates only the closest yoga student in the dark, just enough for me to see a ghost on all fours straighten her legs, sticking a sizable, sweat-panted butt in the air. No wonder they like the lights off. But, it occurs to me, I am merely the lard calling the butter fat.

A few more tap students arrive, but not as many as last week. Everyone converses using careful Indoor Voices.

Promptly at 6:59, the yoga teacher emerges from the dark. She is a chubby blonde, older than I. She looks surprised at how many people are waiting in the lobby, then pleased that we had been so quiet. She thanks us quite sincerely, and I feel a twinge of guilt for laughing at her signs. The issue is obviously important to her.

Class begins with our usual warm-up, "Hard-hearted Hannah," and I still can't balance on my right foot while doing eight clean Shuffles with my left. But I'm pleased with my progress; I'm getting closer. In a rush of revelation, I discover that sometimes -- sometimes -- when I tell my body to do something, it might do it! I try different things to maintain my balance: bending my weight-bearing knee slightly. Leaning forward just a skosh -- ow, not that far. Turning my foot out a little more -- ow, not that much. I swear I will get it.

Annette wears one red tap shoe and one black one, making it easy to tell her left from her right when she demos steps for us. After our Shuffles, she looks concerned. "I want you to hear your own feet," she says. We're lined up at the barre, and she has each of us do a few Shuffles with each foot, one person at a time, without music. It's incredibly revealing. Everyone has looked like they can tap dance, but when singled out of the noisy crowd, each of us, to a person, has a retarded left foot. You might not think it possible to stab your left toe at the ground and miss, but we do just that. Repeatedly.

Annette explains more on the proper form of a Shuffle. "If you're missing on the back stroke," she says, "imagine that there is an invisible golf ball on the floor, and you're trying to kick it backwards as far as you can. To do that, you'll have to give it a good snap." She gives us a moment to experiment. I look along the barre. Each person is staring down as if the end of his or her leg just sprouted an alien pseudopod. We are pawing at the floor repeatedly and with great concentration. We resemble a herd of very smart horses learning to count.

Annette starts us on another exercise, then puts on Santana's "Smooth." Even though the song got saturation airplay when it was a hit, I've always liked it. But I never knew how to move with it. Now I do. As I work through the exercise, it carries me forward to the hated full-length mirrors. I suddenly realize, during this entire class I have forgotten to control Face. My eyes dart to the mirror. The guy looking back at me is smiling. This shocks me right out of the exercise, and I lose the count.

Annette introduces more very simple steps, Truck (where you actually walk like Mr. Natural, the Keep On Truckin' guy) and Pivot. She plays a cut from Nicola Conte, whom you think you've never heard, but you have if you've seen the commercial of an extremely happy black guy dancing in his boxers. Like him, I am having a great time. So is Bembebe. He loves Truck, and performs it in styles that make me laugh. I can practically see his top hat and cane.

Next Annette plays something that sounds like George Clinton, but it turns out to be a funky cut from Outkast's Speakerboxx disc. To this song, we Step-Ball-Change, Step-Ball-Change, and she tells us to use only our toes, no heels. Staying up on the balls of my feet does something to my posture. My stomach pulls in, my shoulders roll back, and my chest fills out. I don't know what to do with my arms yet, so they just hang. As I rapidly Step-Ball-Change on my toes with my arms straight down, my back tall and erect, pivoting in formation with everyone else, recognition clicks. I've seen this before! I am Lord of the Dance Michael Flatley doing a Riverdance step, set to down-'n'-dirty funk! Seeming like him even the least little bit exhilarates me, not because he's an awesome dancer, but because he has hair.

So naturally, once Tap Dance charms me into dropping my guard, she pulls one of her fiendish tricks.

"Please go to the barre now. Our next step is a very important one," Annette declares. "You'll use it in all sorts of combinations." She demonstrates, standing on one leg and popping briefly into the air. "It's the Hop. Let's do several of them."

Red alert! In my head, a brass horn section blares menacingly, dut - dut - dunnnn. The Hop is my nemesis. The Hop was the other reason I left Annette's tap class years ago. You don't understand what Hop means to a fat man. I can barely balance my bulk at all. And now she wants us to leave the ground. On one leg.

While all this crosses my mind, Face is quietly freaking out. omg… omfg…

Face!

trauma… stupefaction…

Face, respond! Face!

resignation… gloom…

I borrow a mental font from the yoga teacher's sign: FACE!

neutral.

That's better. Come on, let's just give this a try. I follow the class: Shuf-fle-Step-Hop!, Shuffle.Step.Shuffle.Step.

Everyone else pops up in the air on the Hop. The first time, I pop up, too, amazed one leg was able to launch my girth into the air. The problem is the landing. Douglas Adams described the Vogon space ships by saying they "hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't." I hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks do. I land like a boulder with a side of extra gravity.

Here it comes again, Shuf-fle-Step-Hop! I am no longer the happy black guy in boxers. I am no longer Michael Flatley. Straight out of Fantasia, I am the hippo in a tutu. When I land, the wooden floor bows so deeply, the classmates on my left and my right catapult into the air and change sides.

We do the combination a third time. Hop! Something in my shin hurts as I land. This time I hit the floorboards like a cartoon anvil, tearing through the wood and the foundation and the ground and plummeting all the way to the earth's core, where I land with a clang! on the head of a little red guy holding a pitch fork, who instantly grows an egg-shaped lump on his head.

I clutch the barre grimly as we turn to the other side. I turn stoic. I must think exactly like Nietzsche: What does not kill me, makes me a tap dancer. But I am tiring. Some of the hops on this side look more like I'm briefly standing on tip-toe.

Everyone seems to do fine except me. They're smiling and complimenting one another, while I stare down a darkening tunnel of betrayal. Tap Dance seduced me. She charmed me. She stole my heart. I committed to her. And now, now that I'm involved, now that I want to prove we're good for each other, that rhythmic bitch has decided to make an issue of my weight. Well, Miss Dance, why don't you go Hop this. ##

The Crush

Suddenly I find myself in that movie you've seen a hundred times, the one with the plot so predictable, so boring, that if you had to watch the whole thing, your eyes would bleed. But this time, the twist caught me totally by surprise.

In this movie, a handsome, cocky young stud can have his pick of any female in his [town, campus, office]. After the hero brags too much about his [charm, riches, coolness], the hero's [best friend, co-captain, rival] singles out the nerdiest girl of all, the one they're always cracking wise about, and bets Cocky Stud that he cannot make the little nerdling fall in love with him.

Cocky Stud, secretly making fun of the nerdling behind her back, dates her. He pretends to be a gentleman, taking her to fantastic restaurants. Along the way, they [get caught in a cloudburst, use too much soap at the Laundromat, get pulled by her big dog into a fountain]. Then it dawns on the heartless jerk that [with her hair down, under those glasses, without those pink high top sneakers], the nerdlette has a beautiful soul. He falls in love with her despite himself, despite how being seen with her savages his hipster reputation. He counts the moments until he can see her again.

And since you've seen the movie, you know what happens next: the thrilled-but-scarcely-believing-her luck nerdlette, now turned winsome, somehow finds out about the bet.

But no no, we haven't gotten to that part of the movie yet. Tap Dance doesn't know that I started dating her to lose weight and/or make fun of her. The first couple of times I dated Tap Dance, we had no chemistry. The time passed slowly. There were awkward silences, and then we both spoke at the same time, and went through the self-conscious, "Sorry, you talk first," "No, you go first" routine. And I kept up my normal pleasant façade when I showed up for our date last week. I waited briefly in her living room with her hotter sister, Belly, exchanging pleasantries with her parents, Clogging and Irish. I figured Tap would show up in her usual overalls. Instead, she came sparkling down the stairs in a little black dress and high heels. I was smitten.

Tap Dance, entirely unaware, has turned the joke back on me. Who knows where this crush might lead? I catch my co-workers grinning as I walk past. The neighbors will talk if they find out. Mothers will usher their kindergartners out of my path, whispering, "Look away, Brie, that man is a tap dancer."

I have to end it with Tap Dance somehow. But how? I can't honestly say I don't like her. Maybe… maybe I could make her hate me, so she'll want to dump me. I could off-handedly tell Tap that, sure, she's cute, but she's no passionate hotty like her cousins Flamenco and Salsa. I'd shrug casually and mention that she doesn't have the class of her nephew, Swing. Or maybe I should stand her up on Tuesday nights without phoning her, until she takes the hint.

But… how can I resist that smile? How can I harm the one who accepted me as I am? Tap Dance took me in, asking nothing for herself in return. Now when I'm with her, instead of taking notes so my friends can laugh later, I want to do her proud. When we're not together in class, I am actually considering (gasp) practicing. On my own time.

Take heed, all you balconeers, all you virtual Statlers and Waldorfs. One day you're reading this, shaking your head at my foolishness. The next, you decide to come to a tap dance performance, just to "check it out." I warn you: rhythm is addictive. Beware that fun-loving dance form, grinning at you as open-faced and square as Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. "Let's put on a show!" she'll say, and you'll find yourself volunteering to help.

Oh, Tap Dance looks sooo harmless. But once she gets inside your heart, Tap Dance takes control. Tap Dance is a bitch. ##

Lesson 3: Lost in the Shuffle

Here on this last Tuesday in September, the dance studio reaches its everybody-back-to-school autumn glory.

The first week that I attended class, we could arrive early and drift around in the dance room, stretching and warming up independently. Last week, we had to wait in the lobby for class, because a yoga teacher rented the dance room for the hour before Tap One. I don't have a good attitude toward yoga. I've heard so many shallow actresses overstating its benefits on talk shows that, unencumbered by facts, I have rendered my verdict on yoga: silly by association. What I see from the lobby isn't helping yoga's case much. Last week, the instructor lit the studio with nothing but four candles. I could barely discern outlines of bodies flopped on the floor. New Age music played, and the instructor said things like "Sl-i-i-ide into cow pose," and the outlines stretched in ways that would snap my arm off. This week, the instructor has ditched even the candles. Their room is pitch black. I can hear her voice, but for all I can see, someone might be playing a recording of her voice in the dark as a prank on the waiting tappers.

The lobby also provides a view into a second, larger studio, where belly dancers learn to isolate abdominal muscles they never knew existed. With a median age easily exceeding thirty-five, the belly dancers fascinate me. I would stare through the glass at them far more if it didn't make them self-conscious. To American men, sexy females are about two things: big breasts and long legs. If you could take two straight parallel lines and find a way to graft a pair of bazongas between them, whatever that makes, most single American males would hit on it. In contrast, the belly dancers represent a culture where sexuality is about fertility and the womb. The dancers' undulations and ripples seem earthy and grounded, celebratory of what a woman genuinely is. They provide authentic counterpoint to the artificial Victoria's Secret ideal, which seems insecure by comparison: "Are my breasts pushed up high enough? Because if not, I can buy something to shove them higher." I try to watch the dancers without anyone seeing me watch them, which means I probably look furtive, shifty, and creepier than if I just stared. I'm intrigued that the older women seem to learn and understand the movements better than the young gals. Perhaps you can't truly grok belly dancing until you give birth.

Between the confident belly dancers and the stretching spiritual seekers, the lobby fills with beginning tap students. It's my third week and I should feel like a veteran, but I don't recognize anyone. (I would if no one ever changed their hair or their clothes.) Once again, I am the only male among six or seven women. I still feel like the only unpaired sock in the drawer.

Then Valerie enters, and now that I recognize someone, I feel better. I introduced Valerie in Lesson 1 as a beautiful 50-year-old. Since then, I've found out from Annette that Valerie is a dazzling 57-year-old. She has not danced a step in her life until a few months ago. She seems fairly assured during class because she has been taking individual lessons from Annette on the side. She has practiced psychotherapy in this town for over twenty years and, like me, tends to over think things. Dance has sprung into her life like an irrational blast of good news from Planet Rhythm, and she can't get enough. She is at the studio four days a week. She is my token of hope. If she can break from her past, dance this well, and take this much joy in it, maybe I can, too.

The Giggling Girlies greet me, only now they are no longer archetypes, they are actual individual people. Ming, the tiniest of the three, sits across from me as we change into our tap shoes. Struggling for words, she asks, "What … why did … um, what inspired you to take this class?"

"I need exercise!" I tell her.

She pushes her straight black hair behind her ear and asks, "Why not--?" and gestures like a weight lifter doing curls with dumbbells.

I make a face and shake my head. "Too boring!"

She nods as if accepting the answer, but her expression looks puzzled. She walks away and it takes me a minute to realize I have just been asked in the politest way possible, What the heck are you doing here?

Before I can feel awkward about it, a short lady with a sweet expression and gorgeous thick hair introduces herself to me as Vicki. She thanks me for helping her solve a computer problem, and I realize, oh, that Vicki! Vicki teaches ballet here, when not serving as the studio receptionist. She has been struggling to upgrade the studio's archaic computer to the latest Windows operating system, and Annette has been carrying her technical questions home to me. Vicki and I have traded messages for weeks without ever meeting. I'm delighted to put a face with the name. We chuckle ruefully about the studio owner's computerphobia.

More people are arriving. There's serious Joan, who glances into the dark studio and murmurs darkly, "Yoga is not for me," and there's the bright young college girl, whose name turns out to be Debbie. She glances at the belly dancers and exclaims, "Oh, there's my doctor!" She smiles and waves through the glass at a dark-haired woman who grins, waves back, and waggles her hips at us. Though this tap session is only three weeks in, most of these people have taken other classes and have known each other for months. Each new arrival is someone's cherished acquaintance. Annette arrives like a star, to many greetings and happy calls. The lobby has turned festive.

The door from the yoga room opens. We gather our gear, assuming the class has let out. Instead, the yoga teacher pokes her head into the lobby and shushes us all. She whispers something that sounds like scolding, and then retreats into the dark, closing the door behind her.

This catches us totally off guard. Time-check: everyone glances at watches, cell phones, pagers, the wall clock. It is 6:58 pm and our class begins at 7:00. Technically, the yogsters should have dismissed at 6:55 pm. What the heck?

Most of us hush our voices, but a couple of the alpha females declare that the yoga teacher has overstepped. "She did the same thing twenty minutes ago," someone states matter-of-factly, "when it was just me and Vicki conversing."

I am disproportionately pleased that the "spiritually enlightened" yoga teacher is starting a petty turf war, since that validates my ignorant but negative concept of yoga. Then I tell myself to knock off the juvenile glee. Spiritually, I too have led others on metaphorical stretches in the dark. My current credo: The world would be better off, and we might be humbler disciples, if each of us started every day saying, "I am the main reason some fellow human being, somewhere, has decided my religion is bullshit."
More people arrive. Amber is a slender high schooler in blonde braids, and like most teens, moves energetically and slumps bonelessly. And then Bembebe happens to the room.

Bembebe joined Annette's tap classes several weeks ago. She doesn't know his specific ethnicity, but he speaks fluent English with an appealing African accent, and Annette tells me that when he dances, in between steps his limbs twitch to complex rhythms only he can hear. I've been anticipating his return for weeks, in part because I'll feel less like a wuss if another man shares this class.

Bembebe explained his three weeks of absence in a calm, matter-of-fact phone call to Annette: "I know I have not been to class for these past weeks. I got married and that took up some of my time. Would it be all right if I returned?"

He hits the lobby like the living embodiment of "tall, dark, and handsome," flashing a broad smile. Everyone knows he just got married, and the cries of congratulations and good will that greet him turn the lobby into a full-fledged party zone. Everyone talks at once. "We want to know all about it," Valerie demands with pretend authority. "You have to tell us. Don't leave out any details."

"Are there pictures?" someone calls. "Where are the pictures?"

"Was it a large ceremony?"

Past classmates mock-rebuke him for not telling them he was getting married. Bembebe looks surprised, and says, "I did not know this was something one announced!"

The response seems riotous. Just as I'm wondering how the yogis bear it, they drift out of the dark, wordlessly gather their belongings, and flit like sober wraiths into the night.

Annette enters the dark studio and it flickers into brilliance. I know just how that studio feels; she has the same effect on me. We surge into the light, happy and cacophonous.

As people hide purses and remove sweaters and stretch and tap, Annette pulls Bembebe aside and, gesturing at me, says, "I'd like you to meet my husband."

Behind his nerd chic eyeglasses, Bembebe's eyes light up with delight. "So, you da mon!" he exclaims, and gives me a big hug that ends with the Secret Cool Guy Handshake. "Tell me, what do you do?"

Assuming English is his second language, I try to describe in tiny words what "Internet security" is and what a "firewall" does. He interrupts me. "You are talking to IT, mon! I work in wireless!"

Now it is my turn to be delighted. IT is "information technology," and I write to an audience of 60,000 IT guys every day. For a full minute we geek out, filling the air with acronyms and tech jargon: IEEE, 802.11i, VoIP, SIP. What are the odds of finding a tap dancing geek buddy?

When class begins, we ten students sound as loud as a tap dancing nation. In any rhythm exercise unaccompanied by music, beginners tend to speed up. Usually when we do this, Annette points it out and anchors us to the original groove. Tonight when we speed up, she lets us. We Shuffle and Step-Heel from one end of the room to the other, and when we arrive Annette counts us back in at the new tempo. With growing momentum, we break like waves sloshing from one end of the room to the other and back again, faster and faster, and at a certain giddy speed we achieve lift-off. We are no longer a class. We are a confident, bad-ass, tap dancing gang. We are Jets. We are Jets all the way.

With Bembebe and the Indonesian Giggling Girlies, with a high schooler and a sexagenarian, and yes, even with a fat middle-aged white guy, we are a rhythmic microcosm of the world. Here, practicing between the extremes of earthy fertility and ethereal spirituality, we beginners celebrate life to the best of our growing abilities. We make mistakes but feel no shame, because we know we are all learners. We are for one another.

I feel surprisingly transported. I have gone to church services expecting this, and not gotten it. I came here expecting absurdity and self-consciousness, and got uplifted. Tonight I no longer shuffle along like I'm lost. Instead, I am lost in the Shuffle. ##

Lesson 2: Video Face

Annette calls it "video face." On the day everyone else learned how to control their facial expression so it does not display every little thing they feel or think, I was away at a church retreat and missed the lesson. Left on its own, my face displays my thoughts and emotions as vividly as if a video monitor replaced my head and flashed written updates: disbelief… contempt… boredom….

This gets me into trouble. Foolishly assuming I am capable of hiding my feelings like a grown-up, people think I rudely do not bother. In reality, trying to compose my face requires tremendous concentration. I have to keep thinking, "Face! Face! Face!" When I do this, I can keep my expression more or less acceptable, but I have no idea what you just said.

This is not the ideal quality to bring to a class taught by your spouse.

Annette is a great teacher, and musters a loyal following wherever she works. To me, a non-dancer, her experience seems vast. She began taking lessons regularly at age seven. By the time I met her, she was a Disneyland Cast Member, swing dancing at Carnation Gardens, square dancing at Bear Country, dancing as a gigantic illuminated flower in the Electrical Parade, and performing, at various times, as Tweedledum, Tweedledee, and each of the Seven Dwarves. She has studied jazz, tap, and ballet, often under nationally-recognized dance masters. She has danced in, and choreographed, loads of musical theater, and even a television commercial. She is fit, moves gracefully, and sincerely cares about each individual student. She has taught successfully for seven years. As a dance teacher, she is the Real Deal.

When Annette first began teaching, I was a freelance marketing communications writer. Though I was earning more money than I ever had as a salaried employee, some of my key clients paid very slowly. Our bills arrived as punctually as job interviewees, while the paychecks arrived as late as sullen teens resisting curfew. Our Federal taxes were overdue. I grew frightened.

When money worries your mind and every phone call comes from a creditor, the last thing you want to hear is, "Honey, I've decided my full-time job should be Dance Teacher." Deciding to dance for the money is like starting a rock band for the peace and quiet. Outwardly the supportive husband, though, I told Annette, "Follow your heart, and the money will follow you."

Three months later, driven by fear, I showed up for a beginning tap class, allegedly "for fun." When you're beginning a business as a dance instructor, the last thing you want to see is your husband in class, wearing a video face that reads, prove to me this can make money. now.

I had lots of helpful suggestions to "sharpen things up." How to get the CDs into the CD-player faster. Which particular steps were too hard for beginners. What to say. What not to say. The word "helpful" has many shades of meaning. I was helpful in the sense meaning, "over-controlling asshole." After three lessons, Annette banned me from class.

Six years later, I'm back. According to International Brotherhood of Husbands Standards, my behavior and demeanor in class falls under IBHS classification Triple Super Sensitive. I am the dog who ate the birthday cake, being let back into the house after time out. I slink around, head lowered, eager to be pals but fearing the human's stern gaze.

Before deciding to attend Annette's classes, I sent several strongly-worded memos to my face. Together, in calm, reasoned discussion, my face and I achieved an understanding on the strict boundaries of conduct we would observe during tap class. For example, we set, as a default expression, how fun! with, as an alternate, fascinating! Face's language is more vulgar than my spoken vocabulary, so I stressed that Face is to refrain entirely from what the hell? and no shit, sherlock. Face agreed. At least, I was pretty sure.

Tonight's class seems well-attended. The college-girl from last week is missing, but Joan and Valerie have returned. An actress friend of Annette's is trying the class for the first time. Three young ladies who appear Asian or possibly Indonesian arrive together. I try to learn their names, but I grew up in white-bread America, and their responses fall upon a dunce's ears. After I ask one of them to repeat her name three consecutive time, she resorts to spelling it, which helps me. The three ladies are friendly to all of us, but also stick together. Wearing their identical brand-new Mary Jane tap shoes, they congregate at one end of the room, finding much to laugh about. Annette dubs them her Giggling Girlies.

Class begins with lots of Shuffles as warm-ups. I thought I had cured the balancing problem in the previous class, but I discover I am still overbalancing whenever we switch feet. frustration… disapproval… impatience… Valerie happens to glance my way. Face! I quickly form what feels like a broad smile. A glance at the pernicious mirror reveals an angry bald guy with the corners of his mouth tightened unnaturally.

We move on to Flap and Heel. Flap makes two sounds, so Annette pronounces it, "Fuh-lap." With these simple steps, Annette introduces the concept of traveling across the floor while tap dancing. To music, we Fuh-lap Heel, Fuh-lap Heel toward the wall ahead of us. Hey, I can do this without falling over! surprise… satisfaction.

We cross the room side by side. As we get close to touching the mirror, Annette calls, "Same thing, backwards!" confusion… consternation… resentment… Wait, it turns out I can do this one, too! Face! I set my expression on pleasant just before Annette looks my way. Phew! Close one.

Toward the end of the hour the exercises grow more complex. Annette adds Ball-Change to Flap and Heel, then mixes them together. The class finishes an exercise and straggles along the wall with the barres on it. We're all a tad winded. Well, not Joan, but the rest of us are. Okay, actually, the Giggling Girls seem fine. What I mean is, except for Annette, Valerie, Joan, and the Giggling Girls, everyone else seems kinda tired. Crap, it's just me.

Up until now, the exercises have been pretty simple; not much more than mannered walking. Annette says, "Watch while I demo the next exercise." She calls out the steps as she performs them: "Shuf-fle-Step, Shuf-fle-Step, Fuh-lap Heel, Fuh-lap Heel, Step to the right, cross behind, Step to the right, Stamp. Then the same thing in the reverse direction. Got it?"

incredulity… desperation… disapproval…

Her big brown eyes find me. They narrow. "Do you have a question?"

Face! Face! Everyone looks at me. I go for contrite but only manage bug-eyed. "Me? Um, no!"

"Okay. Then let's try it." She puts the music on. Funk guitar fills the room: it's Prince's "Musicology."

Annette turns her back to us so that our right is her right, our left is her left. "Five, six, seven, AND --"

My eyes watch her feet the way a drowning man watches for his end of the rescue line. I try to lift the twin anvils on the ends of my legs. Shuf-fle-Step, Shuf-fle-Step -- what the heck came next? Fuh-lap Heel, Fuh-lap Heel, Fuh-lap Heel, Fuh-lap … wait a second, what is she doing? That's not what she demo'd!

The sound of "implacable army marching" disintegrates into the sound of "dithering ninnies scampering." Annette royally blew it. disapproval… rebuke….

"Sorry!" Annette calls. She rushes to the CD player and stops the music. For each class, she custom-tailors her exercises to the class's ability, improvising on the spot. This is a far superior approach to teachers who have an inflexible curriculum and march everyone through it regardless of results. But this time, Annette forgot what she'd just made up.

This can't feel good to her. I stare hard at the floor, not trusting Face to adhere to our pre-class agreements. I honestly do not want to put Annette in a poor light by seeming disapproving in front of the class. Some of the students know that Annette and I have been married a long time, and they shoot glances at me. I think I feel Valerie's eyes on me again. Face! neutral.

Meanwhile, Annette rehearses the steps to herself in quiet triple-time and gets them straight. "Okay, here we go again!" she laughs, and Prince obliges.

Absorbed in my petty internal drama, I'm not ready. The next few seconds go by at super-speed, like the Keystone Kops charging around in a flickering Mack Sennett movie:

Shuf-fle-Step, Shuf-fle-Step (what's next?) worry Fuh-lap-Heel, Fuh-lap-Heel, relief Step to the right, Step to the (doh! I was supposed to cross over!) self-hatred Face! Face! (oops, falling behind) ShuffleStepShuffleStep (don't crush Joan) panic Face! (dodge Joan) FuhlapHeelFuhlapHeel, Step to the left, cross behind ha! Step to the left (left foot slides on slippery spot) what the hell? Face! Face! Face! Stamp.

And they call this dancing.

I see Valerie looking at me again. I have no idea what Face is doing. Disgusted with that traitor, I have cut off diplomatic ties. Later, at home, Annette informs me that Valerie is a psychotherapist.

Somehow class was not very fun this week. no shit, sherlock. ##

Thanks and love to Lisa for coining Face! Face! Face!