{"id":12329,"date":"2016-12-29T17:58:30","date_gmt":"2016-12-29T22:58:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=12329"},"modified":"2016-12-30T09:55:52","modified_gmt":"2016-12-30T14:55:52","slug":"why-i-hate-the-promenade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/why-i-hate-the-promenade\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I Hate the Promenade"},"content":{"rendered":"

Winterguide 2017 | view this story as a .pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

By Doug Bost<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\"fiction-wg17\"I was 22 when my girlfriend started noticing my hearing problem. <\/span><\/p>\n

She and I had been dating since I was 17, in high school in Orono. She was in college. We broke up over Christmas break, but then we got back together. And then, right before I started school at NYU, she broke up with me for another guy, and that was the end. Until\u2013two years later, she moved to New York. And we started dating again. And when that happened, it was kind of wonderful. It was just like we imagined it back at Orono High\u2013two kids from Maine, making it together in the big city. <\/span><\/p>\n

Then she started noticing that this problem with my hearing was getting more and more pronounced. So I didn\u2019t tell anybody, but I went to a specialist. I was ready for bad news. The doctor did a number of tests, and then he sat me down and asked me how I knew I had a hearing problem. And I said my girlfriend told me I\u2019m not hearing her very well. Sometimes she has to repeat what she says three or four times before I hear it. Even then sometimes I\u2019m just pretending to understand. And he asked me if I had this experience with other people, and I didn\u2019t answer. And then he told me my hearing was fine.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It was diagnostic confirmation of something I already knew, really. <\/span><\/p>\n

So one night I met her after work, and I told her I still thought she was a wonderful person and I cared for her, and maybe I was making a terrible mistake but\u2026this was it. And she asked me if I hated her, and I said of course I didn\u2019t. And she asked me if I never wanted to see her again, and I said that wasn\u2019t it at all. <\/span><\/p>\n

And then she said, \u201cWhat about the dance lessons?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And I said, \u201cWhat dance lessons?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI told you all about it,\u201d she said, which was probably true.<\/span><\/p>\n

It turns out just a few days before I made my decision, she\u2019d done something we\u2019d always talked about. She signed us up for a couples ballroom dancing class. It was a gift to me. To us. But now everything was different and she wiped her eyes and she nodded seriously and said she understood and she didn\u2019t know what was she going to do about these damn dance lessons, but it would be okay, and I said, hang on. They\u2019re just dance lessons. I\u2019ve always wanted to learn. We both have. Let\u2019s do it. <\/span><\/p>\n

But y\u2019know who takes couples ballroom dance lessons? People who are about to get married. We were the opposite of that. <\/span><\/p>\n

Lesson one was like dental surgery. But everybody was awkward that first week. Everybody except that couple who dressed like Spanish dancers. Elaborate outfits, billowing sleeves. <\/span><\/p>\n

The instructor had a tiny little mustache and kept correcting my posture. He walked us individually through the basics of the foxtrot, and then we paired off. <\/span><\/p>\n

Her favorite part of the foxtrot was the promenade. Slow, slow, quick, quick, together. But I couldn\u2019t keep it in my head. I kept nipping the front of her shoe with my foot during the first back-and-forth steps, and then I\u2019d look down and I\u2019d realize I should never look down and by then I\u2019d stepped on her other foot, probably, and before I could re-focus she\u2019d started the promenade without me so my slow-slow steps were like tripping up an escalator and she would nod at me reassuringly while whispering the steps, and I\u2019d tilt my head at her at that, I\u2019d give her a smirk because come on, I didn\u2019t need the steps whispered at me after all this time, but then boom, I clipped her left toe again, goddamn it, and I missed the transition to the promenade and I\u2019d have to wait for the music to come around again. My hands were pushing and prodding her waist like I was feeling for a benign lump. It was bad.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the fourth class, we broke into different pairs. We had to dance with other partners. In the movie version of this story, this is where we\u2019d briefly fall in love with other people before realizing our true feelings. In reality, I was paired with a really graceful crazy-cat-lady and later the front of my sweater was covered with hair. My ex had been paired with one of the Spanish dancers and seemed to love it, but I saw his partner later that night making fun of her by pretending to lumber around clumsily. So I accidentally knocked that woman\u2019s coat off its hook and stepped on it. <\/span><\/p>\n

After one of the later classes, my ex and I walked to the subway together. Something had been funny, I forget what, and we were laughing, and I asked her if she wanted to get a piece of pie in the diner and she just looked at me, so disappointed, and said, \u201cYou broke up with me.\u201d And I apologized, and she told me I wasn\u2019t taking her seriously, and I went home and wrote this whole long thing in my journal about what an ass I was. And what a good dancer it turns out she was. <\/span><\/p>\n

And eventually, the last class came around. My friends were saying I must be relieved, but the truth is I was looking forward to these Sunday classes. More and more, it was just reassuring to know when I was going to see her again. Tonight we had to show how much we\u2019d learned, one couple at a time, everybody else watching. <\/span><\/p>\n

So class began, and in the center of a circle of the soon-to-be-married or at least soon-to-be-in-a-wedding-party, somebody made a joke and she laughed and I put my hands exactly where they needed to go but not like a textbook, more like an instinct, and we did that previously impossible foxtrot, turned the same way when we had to, and reversed the same way when we had to, and when we got past the spot that was always the rough spot, we kept going. Step, step, together. I definitely clipped her foot, at least once. But as it went on I got kind of flushed with the parts of it that were working, and she was flushed, too. And our music ended, and people clapped. And then the Spanish couple did some semi-professional routine that was actually very charming and the guy kissed her at the end of it and you could tell they were really crazy about each other. <\/span><\/p>\n

And then it was over. She and I got our things and said goodbye to a few of the other people we\u2019d gotten to recognize, and lingered as we headed for the door, as I thought about how close she lived to the dance studio, and I thought she looked very pretty in this dress, and then we had our moment with the instructor and his tiny little mustache at the door. He shook our hands and smiled, and we told him how much we\u2019d gotten out of the lessons and how much we thought we\u2019d improved, but he wasn\u2019t saying much. He just kind of nodded. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll definitely keep working on our steps,\u201d I said. Which I meant, when I said it. <\/span><\/p>\n

But it got absolutely no reaction from either of them. I realized my smile was kind of pasted on, I\u2019d been smiling for a while, but now that I actually looked at her, she seemed more serious than I thought she\u2019d been earlier.<\/span><\/p>\n

And the dance instructor raised his eyebrows, kind of like there was nothing more he could do for us now. And he thought about saying one thing but he didn\u2019t say it, and then he said, \u201cYou just weren\u2019t listening to each other.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Doug Bost is a writer and a terrible dancer who grew up in Maine and now lives in Brooklyn, NY.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Winterguide 2017
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