A People’s History of the Chicago Danse Floor: House Parties, 1980-2009’ part 8 : goodbye

Michael Jackson's passing, for purely selfish reasons, is mourned by me for one of his single greatest contrubitions to this world: girls like to danse to his songs. I told you I was selfish, yes?

Of course, I was alive in the time of the J5 and so lived through their #1 hits - who doesn't love "I want you back"? And then there is the Thriller era - well, kinda got sick of that shit longtimeago. But really Michael became a pure treasure to me ---yes, as much as an accused child molester - wait, as Norm Macdonnel always put it, a homosexual child molester - can be --- when I realised how they moved and swayed to his music.

Two stories, the latter in time the lesser but presented first:

..... a party, vito in town, kinda we can control the music, xmastime, and the only dasable LP @ all in the collection is "Thriller". The girls were dansing - they only liked girls, not boys, but boy the tall one was lushious - when suddenly in walked a dude who switched the music abruptly to heavy guitars. Ack!! We quickly switched it back baffled @ the thought that girls somehow were prevented from dansing by a young man. We believe he was insane. Jus' kidden. But it was that instant I realised that my mobile collection of CD's to bring to a party for danse purposes needed to have the entire Thriller LP.

...years before there was that period where Jacob and his livein girlfriend Spanky decided to have an open relationship and I was targeted by both of them to start ... dating ... Spanky. It was, to say the least, an interesting period- for a month or so Spanky would call and send letters and discuss .... you know ... whether to ... We'd all hang out during that period, the matter weighed and I just couldn't go through with it ... until a party came along.

It was my cousin MA's and my old girlfriend Madonna's in Rogers Park, and there were heavy tonnes of frenz and peoples there. Good party - Vito in his pre Cali days was the main dj that nite, tonns of people and twirling girls - and Spanky. It takes me a long time to get over girls, and although time had passed betwixt Madonna and I, it still was a little different to be about her and in her place. But this nite, Spanky was determined to ... win me over ... So it was a strange nite= a great great party, an old girlfriend, and most importantly a beautifulthing Spanky that decided that this nite she was really show me how much she wanted me. And, of course, Jacob was there. And although I couldn't quite yet say "yes" to the whole strange enterprise - I did decide to danse with this girl the whole nite, and not really care because..... just because...

We dansed w/ the crowd, it was nice, she was all over me, all over me, and we decided to .... danse to our own music. So - although Vito was djing in the main room and had a fucking funass talked about later floor going, , Spanky and I dansed by ourselves in another room on an old portable LP player. And it was one song we kept putting the needle back to start again and again and again: "I want you back". The needle, again and again. So we could go back to dansing and holding each other close...

Funny instances for a later date: remember how I said Madonna had still presented a problem for me in my mind up to this point? this nite truely was my Junteenth from that psychosis forever - shocking how it immediately dissapeared when something bubblynew was shocking with her savage courtship of me.

And: the very idea of danse as an afrodesiac or whatever - this nite really broke did break down all resistence on my part to their ideas on their relationship and how I fit into that context. Story for another time, but the major part for me was to get over my own resistence to the experiment - you know, it was Jacob, my good friend - and no matter how much I wanted.... but by spending the entire nite together w/ the girl just dansing - w/ Jacob there the whole time and very aware of what was going on ... allowed me to chill a bit about the situation ... and ...


Past editions of a peoples history of the danse floor can be garnered follweed up bub