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2001-07-10 | 1:11 p.m.

A million years ago I went to a club in the city where go-go dancers danced in cages. I can't remember what it was called--The Box? Does anybody else remember? I think it was on Divisadero. The dancers were incredibly good, half-naked, male and female. We all had a great time and I danced until I couldn't breathe and I stopped at one point and just stared at one of the go-go boys, or rather, his undulating and sweaty abs. I felt sure we would go to that place a million more times but as it happened, I never went there again.

Once in a while I find myself wishing I could see those go-go dancers just one more time.

I was a crazy dancer in those days. Not particularly good but wild and always taking calculated risks. I danced like a drunk though I was almost always sober. My out-of-control act was difficult to perform when drunk, when I believed it was more likely that I could get hurt. Anyway, it was very theatrical and absurd, my dancing. I danced off beat, artless and dedicated to perversity and irony, so much so that for a while I forgot how to dance properly. (This also happened to my singing; after singing purposely off-key for about two years, I tried to sing correctly one day and found I couldn't remember how. Had to keep starting over again). When dancing to a particular Prince song, or toward the end of the night, at the appropriate musical moment I would include a dramatic split, to which the crowd would shout approval and applaud. I loved that. My friend Rory would let me jump up on his back and sometimes he would even spin me over his head, which I found wildly thrilling. It must have killed him to do that.

My dancing was confined mostly to big parties in my apartment, but not always. Once Lisa and I went to a party given by a friend of hers, which featured a preponderance of frat boys. We got a little crazy and ended up dancing together, lewdly, writhing on the floor to yet another Prince song. We both worked for the school paper at the time, and I had just written an expose about a particular frat's bad behavior. It just so happened that the guys at the party were from that particular frat. Well, when they learned who I was, we got into a big argument. I was pretty freaked out, getting yelled at by 5 or 6 big, loud guys, but I held my ground. After they sort of ran out of things to say, one of the guys in the group said, "You're pretty spunky. Wanna go out sometime?"

I had to laugh. This guy had been an attack dog only seconds before, and now he was being all Opie, calling me "spunky" (which I'm sure you'll agree is a funny word). But I said no, a little regretfully. It would have felt like capitulation to say yes, like an admission of something, and I doubted we could have gotten along for more than a few minutes. Besides, I wasn't finished writing about them yet. But I was deeply flattered.

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