Change - More Change

I needed to make the decision and I knew it. Fish or cut bait. Kick her out and divorce her - and accept just maybe losing half of everything I had now, materially. Or try to get past this pain of betrayal and at least make love to my wife again. And start living again. Show her that I still loved her as I knew I still did. But that would also make myself vulnerable to maybe more pain.

Before I had certainty. Or really just some hope of certainty. Of her love. Her fidelity. I trusted her with my heart and NOT to hurt it. Neither purposefully but also not even accidentally. But she did that anyway. Boy, did she!!

I decided to see how Saturday went, and then Sunday I would decide. This current purgatory really sucked.

It was almost like old times. Just pleasant conversation about nothing important as everyone arrived and settled in with their favorite adult beverage.

No one mentioned any...troubles...at first. Later that night Frank started the first serious discussion.

"How are you doing, Joe? You and Cindy?"

"We're still together. For now. It's pretty much day to day."

"Ah, Joe - that's just sad."

We sat drinking quietly for a bit.

"You been dancing any?" Frank finally ventured.

"Not since the accident."

"Can you dance, yet?"

"Oh yeah - just haven't felt like it...haven't even been practicing or working on new steps...".

"Yeah - we all haven't been dancing as much either. We've been missing some practices and then, you know, haven't been performing either. Director's rules about 'no practice, no perform'. That's me and Terri, Tom and Jean, even Doc and Betty last weekend. Southern Nights is just not so much fun anymore...you got any ideas?"

"What do you mean?"

"Maybe how to keep on clogging other than Southern Nights? You know any other groups looking for dancers, Joe?"

Actually, I did, as I thought about it. The very last weekend workshop I attended right here in Chattanooga, I kind of acquired a bit of a fan club. Some younger folks, even some late teens, that were kind of newer to the art, had chatted me up a bit at some of the advanced workshops. And they mostly lived in the North Georgia suburbs of Chattanooga and were looking for some more dancers to join them PLUS a director/choreographer - and wanted to know if I might be interested...

This finally got me thinking about something outside my personal troubles and I felt a little bit - hell, quite a lot - of that dismal depression lifting.

"Are you serious Frank? Is everybody?"

"Yes, we all are."

"OK, let's get everybody together now and talk about it." So we gathered everybody up on the porch.

Frank told everyone what he just told me.

"Is this true? You're all looking for another team for clogging?" I asked.

"Hell yes, Joe," Tom answered. "You got any ideas?"

Cindy and Terri had been kind of whispering and both looked pretty serious. Not smirking or anything. I was remembering what Cindy had said once about me dancing with another team or forming my own. It was possible this was a BIT of manipulation, but what the hell.

"I know some folks, most of 'em live around Rossville and Fort Oglethorpe, I think, and they told me they already have a place lined up to practice in - a community center - but they don't even have a name yet. They're more family types with even some older teens they want to include. They're all pretty much at the beginner or easy intermediate stage. I met one girl and her boyfriend trying to do some easy advanced dances at that last workshop Cindy and I went to. Terri, I think you were there too.

"Anyway, they seemed to be a tad impressed with my dancing and asked me if I knew someone "good as you are" who might be interested in directing their new team? I've got their contact info but really didn't have anyone in mind back then - but maybe now I could try that. That might work for me but it's going to quite a culture shock from the whole Southern Nights thing. You know - all us older professional types with some ready spending cash and partying interests..."

Jean spoke up. "Well, we can do that on our own and separate from the clogging, couldn't we? Wherever we go it's going to be different at first. I'd personally love to give it a try, wherever you lead, Joe."

"Well, I'll give 'em a call tomorrow afternoon just to see. They might already have another director by now, so, no promises..."

But everyone seemed pretty excited at the prospect for some reason, and the general conversation and whole atmosphere seemed to lighten up and an almost back to normal good times party ensued. I even had a little more than normal to drink that night, and was feeling pretty mellow - in a good way.

Later that night after everyone left, I was just about to climb into bed in my bedroom when Cindy stuck her head in the room.

"Uh, Joe - if this new team thing works out...can I dance with you guys there too?" she asked very wistfully. And just like that I made up my mind, no need to wait until tomorrow.

"Come to bed with me and we'll discuss it. What can you offer me for a place on the team?" I tried to leer.

Cindy smiled and slowly entered the room. Very seriously she replied "I will do anything I can to earn a dance position. Anything, anyway, anytime."

It turned out to be a VERY good night. A little bit of exercise - or a lot - right before bed, er, sleep time, often works wonders.

The next day we did have the first of our serious discussions. I guess we were doing a form of our own do-it-yourself marriage counseling.

"Last night was great, Cindy. I mean that. But...it's never going to be the same, like it was before...before Bill ...between us. Do you understand that? Before, I loved you without reservation. I still love you. I loved you still, yesterday - and before last night. But now there IS some reservation. Do you understand? Is that enough for you? Can you accept less than a wholehearted love? Now, maybe, but in the future?"

"Joe, I know what I did. I know what I gave up. I didn't want to do that with Bill or give up a thing, one little bit of your love, and I never made any kind of deal with the devil, this for that...ta da! But it happened anyway.

"I did it. I fell and let you down, let me down, let US down. I accept any and all consequences. Just please know that I still love you unreservedly and I always will, I hope and pray. I'll take just being with you. No longer expecting all your wholehearted love. And I will miss that so bad. I already do.

"Just, please, don't be mean to me. Don't treat me like I treated you. I know I hurt you, and that's come between us, and it's all my fault. I deserve to be punished, but I also know that if you hurt me as badly as I hurt you, you will feel just as awful about my pain, yourself, that you will end up hurting again, too. You're a good man, Joe. Too good for me, but I don't want to give you up. Please don't leave me."

"I won't. Not today. Let's just live one day at a time. Like we've been existing this last month, except now let's both just get back to LIVING one day at a time. Come here, beautiful..."

And I held her as she cried, as my own eyes misted up for what might have been. And still might, but no longer a certainty. But is anything in life? My own daughter gone crazy and divorced from reality? Cindy still might be a useful tool for me in that battle.

And so the next phase in my life began. Instead of perfect comfort and contentment with my new bride, a period of unease, almost danger ensued.

Our love making, Cindy's lovemaking to me, became almost frantic. It was exciting. Very exciting, but just a little something was now missing. My reservation was there - always there - and between us. Between "two become one" in perfect union. We still had LOTS of individual unions, just about every night and sometimes twice a day. But none ever reached perfection, as they all once had, or had seemed to, in my ever dimming memory.

I watched her closely - and she watched me just as closely in return, often. The past is a terrible burden for many to bear. I had my burdens and I imagine Cindy had some of her own - from before me - and now she certainly had one specific one - heavy as sin.

I hated what she had done, how it affected me, how it affected her, and that I could not change my own feelings. I thought maybe the best thing I could do was NOT dwell on it, but live life and just try and let it fade. Maybe time would heal this wound, as it has healed others, I've been told.

Making love helped. Dancing again and just socializing again also helped. I did become dance director for the other team with just a few caveats. I would choreograph and teach, I expected everyone to pitch in and work towards getting gigs and performance opportunities. I tried to run this team as democratically as possible, with good discussions and even voting on any contentious issues. I knew some directors acted like little martinets in how they "ran" their teams.

I didn't need or want that. Period.

"My" eight dancers almost doubled the size of the other group. They already had 10 people and were looking for more, but just by word of mouth. They weren't running any kind of public classes like Southern Nights did.

Some of the younger kids were actually very naturally talented - plus had all the energy of youth. Sandy was a petite 16 year old girl with jet black hair and sparkling blue eyes and she was just a natural. Her 17 year old boyfriend Gary wasn't quite as natural a dancer - but he was athletic and in great shape and highly motivated to please his girlfriend. They became our lead couple in most routines. They were both real cute and made a very attractive couple. Plus they were natural ham performers and were always grinnin' like crazy when dancing.

Sandy's parents Ben and Janet were still pretty young - not even 40 yet - and both were enthusiastic dancers as well. Plus Ben was a fiddle player of some local renown. All we needed was a string bass player and we would have a basic oldtime band - fiddle, banjo, guitar, and bass. Hmmm...having our own little band might open up even more performing opportunities.

I asked Ben if he thought he could maybe teach me to play fiddle, a little.

"No problem. When do you want to start? I've got three fiddles right now so that's not a hindrance."

And I started my own lessons, mostly sandwiched around our practices. As soon as I learned a few of the simpler tunes - like "Flop Eared Mule" and "Boil Them Cabbage Down" - everyone started bringing their instruments and jamming a little every practice. This caused a bit of a problem with the community center folks, apparently.

So, after asking everyone if they would mind driving a little bit further for practice - I solved THAT problem by building our own little "practice barn" on my own land. Not so little as it was both heated and air conditioned, and had it's own basic little apartment built-in, including kitchen and full bathroom facilities and a raised 20x30 foot wooden dance floor. Wood was a lot easier on the feet and knees than concrete or tile.

This greatly aided our flexibility in scheduling practices of all kinds. Both band and dance practices.

This is when I started on a whole other tract as far as "performances." Every clogging performance I'd ever seen before was kind of like a band performance. Just one song after another with a little MC talk between songs. You know. Standard concert format. Or club format.

Clogging was like that. We had however many routines we already knew, and the corresponding recorded music most often played on PA amp/speakers - just one dance after another, separated by short breaks and MC talk. At some point introducing the dancers. Then thanks for being such a nice audience. And occasionally with that audience participation dance thrown in.

I was working on putting together more of a clogging ballet performance. A seamless "natural" story told in dance and music. This would always work best with live music.

If you've seen "Riverdance" or that brilliant 1982 Spanish movie "Carmen" with its "story-within-a-story" plot about a Spanish professional Flamenco Dance troupe producing their own version of Bizet's Carmen, then you get the idea.

Hey, just because I'm only a blue collar good old boy from "Hicksville" TN, don't mean I don't have satellite TV and the internet. Once I got interested in performance clogging I really got interested. And I did a lot of watching of all kinds of other dance. Especially old movies with tap dancing and swing dancing. One thing I discovered is "there's no such thing as a brand new dance step" - people have been dancing for basically as long as there have BEEN people, and at best some already "discovered" steps are just rearranged or danced to different music. Watching some of those old '30's and '40's Hollywood musicals was really eye opening. Not to mention modern Australian movie tap dancing like "Bootmen." Double-doubles are now standard in Australian tapping and Southeastern US clogging. And the most basic clogging step is almost the same as the basic 8-count fast Lindy Hop step. It's easy to do a Lindy swingout (and all other Lindy moves) while just doing the clog basic step, one after another. (DT R S DT R S - in modern clog notation. Double Toe Rock Step.)

By now our little team wasn't so little - we had 24 couples of dedicated dancers, plus more than a few occasional dancers we could often call on. Our band had also grown to 8. Two (or even three) fiddlers, Terri as a claw-hammer old time style banjo player. Frank on his finger-picking bluegrass style banjo, Tom on acoustic guitar - mostly strumming rhythms and chords, but occasionally picking melody, Greg was our string bass virtuoso, Kelly on a B/C Irish Button Accordion, Ben and I were fiddlers but Frank was also learning and sometimes played that instead of banjo on some songs. Cindy often sang with us and just banged a tambourine as "percussion". Kelly McGill was actually from Ireland and was a pretty good Irish Step dancer and social Ceili dancer. She taught us all some basic "hard" Irish Step moves (with taps - as opposed to "soft" step dancing in soft soled shoes) and she also taught us some Ceili dancing - which I incorporated in my ballet. That "Dance Above the Rainbow" in "Feet of Flames" is how the Riverdance pro Irish dancers do a Ceili dance. Another form of old social dancing with both contra line and quadrille figures involved.

The biggest problem I had developing my "ballet" was that my band members were also my best dancers. I finally figured I'd need to draft some additional extra band members for our performances - if we ever did one.

We worked on the whole thing for about a year and it was really a lot of fun. It all revolved around a "love story", of course. The tried and true. Attraction-repulsion flirting. A little bit of Romeo and Juliet, but instead of Capulet vs. Montagues it was mostly girls vs. boys in dance competition. I stole heavily from that dramatic "Tobacco Factory" dance scene in the aforementioned "Carmen" - where Carmen ended up killing her female competitor at the end. Nothing THAT dramatic in my ballet, but I tried to capture that driving back-and-forth tension using a frantic "Flop Eared Mule" background. We also incorporated an audience participation number with just modern couples slow-dancing as the lead woman and man played little jealousy games with each other by slow dancing WITH others, as almost all the other cast members also asked someone from the audience to dance with them as well to a slow and mournful ballad.

We configured the ballet several different ways but mostly based on time constraints. Our shortest version was only about 20 minutes long and we could totally do that one with just "West Ridge Cloggers" the name we finally decided on for ourselves. The full ballet was almost an hour and a half and required extra musicians plus just about all our "occasional" dancers as well as every dedicated dancer on the team.

We finally got a chance to perform - with a 40 minute time slot on a large stage with a (potentially) large public audience.

Boy was everybody nervous, and no one more than me. For this performance. I was the male (boy!) lead and Cindy was the girl.

A couple of minutes before our stated start time - and after a pretty good local Country Band had just finished their 40 minute set - the crowd was still milling around, some leaving after "their" band had finished while others were coming in. It was a county fair situation with a very large outdoor - but covered - auditorium with nationally known bands and singers at night during prime time 8-10PM time. We were on before them, the 6 to 7PM slot. We actually started our "ballet" right then at 6PM with no introduction or fanfare at all.

Our band members walked out and started setting up, while just talking and laughing with one another. They started tuning their instruments and playing little song warm-up snippets. Likewise our dancers walked out in their "going to a dance" costumes, but with tapped shoes on - and they started individual warm-ups too. Little cliques of dancers either talking or laughing with one or two maybe demonstrating some "new" steps to others. Pretty soon I had most of the guys watching me doing a fairly intricate series of steps. And Cindy was doing the same across the stage to her group with her own different sequence.

Then it segued into an a capella competition between all us boys and the girls, and then the band got all together and started a tune that flowed right into the same staccato rhythms we had established. And we were all trying to do this while ignoring the audience, while wondering if anyone had noticed?

As that first number finally stopped and with haughty looks and extreme "take that, I won!" body language between me and Cindy, my guys and her gals, as we all broke back into nonchalance on stage...well, the audience ovation was almost stunning. At least 1000 people out there (in a place with over 3,000 bench seats and room for thousands more lawn seating) were paying attention and evidently loving it.

The rest of the ballet went just as well, or even better. We did do our audience participation thing, and that was real risky with this kind of crowd - county fair with beer available - but that turned out OK and involved the audience even more.

Of course there was a "bad guy" and a "bad gal" - another excellent and handsome boy dancer tried to woo Cindy away, and his counterpoint tried to seduce me - but "true love" won out in the end and everyone went home happy. Or at least were happy enough to have almost completely filled the arena and stayed in their seats as we finally ended and took our bows. The ovation was long and loud enough the producer went ahead and asked if we could do an encore? We all just free-styled to "Rocky Top" for three more minutes - generally a crowd pleaser for Tennessee fans anyway.

Lady Antebellum was the prime entertainment that night at 8. One reason we played to such a large crowd was merely the people getting there early and claiming their seats before they played. We garnered their notice, actually - at least some of the L.A. musicians who told us they thought we had done real well and warmed the crowd up great - at least for their own warm-up band.

We had just started getting our very own 15 minutes of fame. And during this past year while all these changes were going on - I was also working on saving my daughter and granddaughter from the evil witch, Gran'ma Crazy Irma.

The old fashioned way, mainly, at first - using money to buy some "love" - or at least "liking" by Tina's husband, Todd.

Cindy and I showed up at Todd's house one weekday when Tina was working and Todd was "Mr. Mom" and caring for little Krystal. We showed up bearing gifts and hoped that Todd would finally let me meet my granddaughter.