…or ‘If Bubba can dance, I can too’
by Susan Bankston
I kinda wanna give you guys the heads up about something, because I don’t want you calling me at two o’damn clock in the morning to come bail your butt out of the pokey.
I’m fixing to tell you an honest-to-gosh true story.
There appears to be an unwritten law in Texas that two men cannot dance together. However, this law applies only to country-music dancing.
You might ask how I know about this, and I will tell you that it was in the newspaper in Victoria, Texas. Victoria is so far away from big-city ways that they don’t get the Today show until tomorrow. They think asphalt is a butt disease. Darlin’, they are three blocks from Snakenavel, Texas, and are located in Bumfuzzle County.
That means you probably missed reading their local newspaper. So, through the miracle of big-time investigative journalism, I’m able to tell you about it just in case you get drunk or lost and end up in Bumfuzzle County—something that happens to me more than you’d suspect.
It seems that two young men in Victoria, Texas, named Justin and James wanted to go dancing last December. So, they sashayed over to the Cactus Canyon Club and commenced to dance with each other instead of a broom. (As your grandmother will tell you: you can dance with a broom, but a partner makes it more fun.) They didn’t even get all the way around the floor before the owner came over to inform them that they couldn’t dance with each other because of unspecified “security reasons.”
Justin reported to the local teevee station, “He told me they have a policy that states that they don’t allow males to dance with males to country songs.” Justin was a tad confused because he had danced with James at other clubs with no problems at all. He asked the manager if that “policy” applied to only country music. (In my personal opinion—and this truly is just my personal opinion—I think Justin was being a little bit of a smartass with that question, and yes, I am proud of him for it.)
The manager, who had obviously never met a smartass before in his whole life, responded, “Yes. Just country.”
Justin, continuing in the tradition of fine, professional smartassism, asked to see the policy. Uh, well, it wasn’t written down anywhere. Not even on the restroom walls. Not even on the Bar Rules list on the wall that says No Spittin’ on the Damn Floor and If You’re Gonna Have a Beer Bottle Fight, Please Make Sure the Bottle Is Empty. (Okay, I made up those two rules. So sue me.)
There was nothing in writing about men dancing with men.
However, the manager also added that “while women have long been allowed to take it to the floor together in clubs around the country, the same does not necessarily apply to men.”
So, suddenly, an event that was about as cheerful as a coroner’s inquest became kinda fun.
So same-gender dancing is a ta-ta-based privilege. (Yeah, smartass is contagious.)
The best I can figure—and this is where you come in—if it’s a policy and it’s not written down, then either it must be the law in Texas or else this manager was way outta line. And no manager of a country bar has ever been outta line.
There’s one other thing that kinda goes along with this story. I went looking for a picture that I was pretty certain I’d seen before, and sure ’nuf, I found it:
I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that these guys ain’t dancing to the Beach Boys or Madonna.
Susan Bankston lives in Richmond, Texas, where she writes about her hairdresser at The World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc., at juanitajean.com.
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