Life and Laughing_ My Story - Michael McIntyre [46]
Apparently Rick Astley’s ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ was what many of the boys were waiting for. By the second verse, the middle of the gym was filled with boys and girls awkwardly dancing with each other. Jessica was dancing with Watson (the smallest kid in the class, who hid behind the blackboard) – that was quite a sight.
But, as usual, I was on my own. My confidence from the Izzy kiss was over, and here I was again, a bundle of nerves. Asking a girl to dance requires a tremendous amount of courage. The fear of rejection is too much to bear. I didn’t know if I could take it. There are two different forms of school disco dance. There’s the straightforward dancing opposite each other for the length of one eighties upbeat song, or there’s a slow dance. A slow dance is, of course, dictated by the tempo of the track playing. A normal dance is relatively trivial, but a slow dance involves bodily contact. Which at that age is quite intense. A slow dance is the Holy Grail of the Arnold House school disco. A girl may accept an invitation to dance to, say, Billy Ocean’s ‘Caribbean Queen’ but refuse a slow dance to Terence Trent D’Arby’s ‘Sign Your Name’.
Soon the boys’ side of the gym and the girls’ side were no longer distinguishable. Everyone was dancing with each other and enjoying themselves. I could barely dance. Because we were in the gym, I got confused and started squat-thrusting and doing star jumps, I think at one point I said the Lord’s Prayer. There was one girl I liked, but thought she was out of my league – and anyway my old electric-guitar-playing friend Gary Johnson was dancing with her. He was the coolest boy in school – what chance did I have?
Before you give up hope in me, I can tell you that I did pluck up the courage to ask a girl to dance. As the DJ played the Bangles, I walked like an Egyptian until I was standing directly in front of Alison with her dark frizzy hair and welcoming smile. ‘Do you want to dance?’ I asked confidently.
Just as she opened her mouth to agree, the lights darkened and the music changed to Gloria Estefan’s ‘Can’t Stay Away from You’. It was too late, she’d agreed. My timing was spot on. The dance floor cleared of girls who weren’t willing to take their ‘dancing’ relationships to the ‘slow dance’ level, leaving just a handful of us.
I’d like to just clarify what a slow dance actually entails. Alison and I were holding each other’s hips and stepping from side to side. The song finished, and Gloria Estefan was aptly replaced by ‘Don’t Stop Believin’’ by Journey. Alison wasn’t all that keen on me and quickly disappeared, but it didn’t matter. I was a hero. Everyone had witnessed our dance. My friends, and boys I barely knew, patted me on the back: ‘Nice one, McIntyre.’ I was proud that I had found the courage and succeeded, even though Alison may only have been a victim of excellent timing on my part.
There was one person that night who sent every girl in the gym into a flutter. Pulses racing, blushed faces, what a hunk. With timing even better than mine, Steve walked in to collect me as ‘The Time of My Life’ from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack played. There wasn’t a single girl at the disco (or mother collecting their child) who didn’t want to run into his arms and attempt ‘the lift’.
My Alison dance was as good as it got for me that night. It could have been worse. I just wasn’t one of those boys whom girls had crushes on. I knew I was different. I was a funny kid, in more ways than one. But even from such an early age, I was obsessed with finding my girl. I wasn’t interested in all girls. I wanted my one. I always felt incomplete, like I was missing someone, someone to love and to bring the best out of me. I knew she was out there somewhere, just not in the Arnold House School gym.
But she was.
Dancing with Gary Johnson was Kitty Ward. The love of my life, my wife and the mother of my children.
It would be nearly ten years until we met.
10
My teens had begun. I had two dads, two mums, one Date, one Slow Dance, one Snog. My boxing record was one Win and one Loss.