POEM | Flailing Chaos (For My Mom)

Flailing Chaos (For My Mom)
by Mighty Mike McGee

(Inspired by the Spice Girls’ 1996 album, Spice)

“Mrs. McGee, if it is Spina Bifida, then the best as we can tell is your son is gonna be… special. His spine is fragile, so he probably won’t be able to walk. He’ll be slow to learn and he may never talk.”

Jokes on them. My mom spent the next fifteen years letting me prove them wrong. It’s really something that one incorrect snap diagnosis from a doctor making things up as he went could lay a foundation of You Will Never for the next 26 years of my life.

The one time my parents danced together was at their wedding. They almost lasted three years after that. My dad just doesn’t dance.

My mom loves to dance. With the right people, that is. “Michael, pick a tape for us to listen to while we clean okay?”

My little hands were steel to the magnet that was Michael Jackson’s “Off The Wall.”

I hope I never forget the memory of my mother sweeping the kitchen floor while singing and swaying to “Rock With You.”

“Come on boys, dance with me!”

It’s okay if I dance, mom?

“Sure, just be careful!”

And we dusted and danced and danced and cleaned.

I remember standing in the bathroom while my mom put make-up on our roommate Nick.

I giggled. Mom! Boys don’t wear make-up!

“Yes, they do, Michael. Anyone can, especially if they’re going dancing.”

“Isn’t your mom making me look pretty, Michael?”

Yeah, Nick! She is!

Then I lived with my father for a brief period of time. He meant well.

“Michael, what’s all the ruckus up here?”

I’m dancing.

“By yourself?”

Yeah.

“Well, it’s probably best if you didn’t because it could injure your spine.”

I like dancing, dad.

“I know, son, I’m sorry.”

Comedy world, here I come!

Several years and four more kids later, I remember sitting in the bathroom watching my mom get ready to go out dancing. Watching her eyes. Seeing how happy she was to be getting out of the house.

I want to go dancing with you, Mom.

“No, Michael. This time it’s for me.”

I sort of understood. But my step-father didn’t. Her nights out dancing ended shortly thereafter, followed by her marriage.

I remember my stunning date to my high school senior ball. “Why did you bring me if you didn’t want to dance?” she said.

It’s not that I don’t want to, I just don’t. I can’t. Fat guys look stupid when they dance. I could injure myself.

But she was gone, already dancing alone in a sea of hormones.

This was the tenth time I rejected a person who wanted to move with me. Inside me, I could feel the sitcom audience of a thousand ancestors frustratedly sighing. You idiot! She wanted to share something unspoken with you. Something no teenager can explain! 

I wish I knew it would have been okay to look weird. I was already weird. This just would have been intentional weirdness to a beat. You got flailing chaos in my weird! You got weird in my flailing chaos!

Why was I the only one not dancing?

Every teenager but me understands that they need to move. But that may be all they understand. “Hi! I am new to this world! Nice to meet you! I just do what my genitalia tells me to do. Right now it wants me to flail around you for at least two songs.”

At the very least, Social Dancing should be taught throughout primary school with the distinct purpose of making people feel comfortable moving their bodies however they want in the same room with others.

I am the result of the paired and shared movement between thousands of people from hundreds of cultures that needed to dance to understand that which could not be spoken. “Who are you? What the fuck is this energy? This music is controlling us. It wants us to make babies. We have no choice. But I like this song! And I like the names Stuart and Maggie.”

At school they said, “Mrs. McGee. Your son is… special. He’s very imaginative and intelligent, but he lacks motivation and he talks… a lot.”

Sadness and stress stopped my family from dancing, replaced it with The American Way: carbs and sugar and television. But we could laugh. That was gospel and forgiveness. Laughter is the one dance everyone knows. 

Holy shit. Let me be THAT DJ!

Let me make people dance in place with their whole bodies. Let them come to me with tears in their eyes pointing to the part of their body that is now sore from laughter.

Let my weird be a music.

My mother has never asked me to make her laugh. I just know she needs it. She’s always an innocent bystander to my sense of humor. Her laugh is big. It’s beautiful. It’s one of my favorite sounds. It dances into my ears and says, “Welcome home, my bright boy. I love you with every heartbeat. How did you become you? How are you so special?”

Her laugh dances into my heart, which responds:

Mom, I thought I couldn’t dance. I thought  there were rules I was breaking. There are things I am not allowed in this life, right? I thought I was too disabled, fat and ugly to show my face on the dance floor. But it is all I want to do, Mom. Because of you, whenever I think of dancing, I think of love. Thank you for dancing with me and telling me it would be okay.

Dance is love. A language I want to be fluent in.

We all show love in different ways.

I talked a lot because my body wants to dance.

My body has something to say.

I am a great dancer.

Which makes me a great lover—especially when I dance alone.

So if you can’t dance, it’s okay!

Do you mind if I dance near you?

I’d be honored to dance around you.

Let me make you laugh.

Let me dance and laugh with you at your table.

In your living room. In the backyard.

We can bob our heads on the bus.

We can tiny dance from the waist up while sitting at a cafe.

We can slow dance in the kitchen and on the porch.

We can dance if we want to, and we won’t leave your friends behind

Because your friends don’t dance and if they don’t dance well then

let’s get close and say I love you with our floppy flailing chaos.

If I am dancing, what I am saying to everyone in the room is some combination of

1. I love you
2. awwwwww yeeeeaaaahhh!
3. We are so alive.
4. I love… myself.

Huh. That’s what you meant mom! It was for you. Not the men in your life. Not even us kids.

And because you danced with me, I learned to love myself too.

I want to dance with all of you.

Show me how you want to be loved.