The Shallow End

On Saturday night, my husband and I boogied with the gub'ner of Kansas. And not at some hoity-toity liberal gubernatorial event either. Nope. We were at Knuckleheads (again), to see the great Marcia Ball (again!) . Now, honestly? My husband and I did not actually dance. Because that would require...well, dancing! And I don't dance (I may have attempted a few times, but for anyone out there who has seen me make such a spectacle of myself, I apologize). But there were assigned seats. Imagine walking into the seediest of all dive bars [I've linked to this definition of dive bar before, because I remember laughing when the picture used to define "dive bar" pops up...it is a bar in my old stomping grounds on the Central Coast of CA and I can attest that Knuckleheads has the Merrimaker beat, hands down]...where was I? Oh, yeah...walking into the seediest dive bar and being told that you have "assigned seats" (with your names on them even). We laughed and joked that we were probably assigned to the back of the "room" which is actually outside (tented for the concert), next to the outhouses (not joking...the outhouses are next to the single wide that is next to the caboose...do you get the picture?).

To find our assigned seats, the gal at the door pulled out her various seating charts and looked up our name on the list (we had to purchase tickets in advance...Knuckleheads is really going all uptown on us), and eventually took us to our assigned seats, on the dance floor, literally 5 feet away from where Marcia would play keyboards in about 2 hours!! Ahem. Yes, 2 hours. Because, you see, we didn't know there would be assigned seats and in order not to be the ones sitting out back by the outhouse, we arrived early for dinner and a drink and a good seat. The place was already half full, but we were the only groupie nerds sitting on the dance floor. Not on the floor directly, but in chairs lined up along the short wall that separates the dance floor from the rest of the bar. We were in front of the wall and everyone else was behind the wall.

We stayed in our assigned seats all night, mesmerized by Marcia's fleeting fingers and bluesy voice. But as the music heated up (by the second song), the small dance floor was full of people and we could barely see Marcia. And not only that, but there was a couple dancing squarely in front of me, completely blocking my view. The husband's very large and excessively jiggling derriere was directly in my face. I have never seen anyone, particularly a man, dance in such a way...it looked like an even more twitchy version of the "Elaine" dance. So much for the "good" seats. By the end of the evening, I was not quite as euphoric about our "great fortune" as I was when we learned we would sit so close to Marcia.