June 1, 2003
Calling to Order the Get-Down Congress


Marriage is a funny thing. You live with somebody for four years, but how well do you know them? You fall asleep with them, you wake up with them. You take long trips with them, you cry on their shoulder, you talk about life and work and love and God and the future and the past, and everything in between.

And then comes the day when you discover that you don't really know this person at all. Despite all the time you've been together, you realize that you've been sleeping with a stranger this whole time.

Friends, this weekend I realized that my husband's body has been inhabited this whole time by a little black man named James Brown.


We attended a friend's wedding last night. I have known Courtney's family for years, and when I found out she was getting married, I cleared my calendar. I even planned my wardrobe carefully, picking a vintage black cocktail dress with a swingy skirt — good for dancing. Because I love to dance, and I knew Courtney's wedding was going to be a perfect, Southern belle-sized blowout.

By the time we showed up at The Ritz for the reception last night, the band was warming up. There were seven guys who looked like they knew what they were doing. Among them was a big black man with a trumpet and a skinny black man with a cowbell. A promising sight.

The reception got off to a slow start. The reviews of the event in Martha Stewart Wedding will probably say something like, "Guests noshed on Tuscan grilled vegetables and parmesan pasta, while Courtney and her groom cut the strawberry chiffon layer wedding cake, which was adorned with their very own personal logotype [which, dear readers, was designed by me, and served as our free ticket into the event]."

But I was squirming in my chair while the wedding festivities continued. Because I care about Courtney and about marriage, but I really had come mostly to dance. I was just sipping my wine, thinking, to have and to hold, whatever. Let's get after it, people!

Finally, after the cake was cut, the band was ready to play. They started out with a couple of easy underhand pitches — some upbeat R&B stuff. But nobody was actually dancing. No one was ready to take the plunge. The beautiful polished hardwood floor was empty. I was getting agitated.

But the moment they broke out with "Respect," and another pair of couples took the plunge, I grabbed Tom's hand and dragged him out with me.

Well, actually, I didn't drag him out on the floor. He was happy to accompany me. One of the things I really love about him is that he actually enjoys dancing. It's so nice to have a partner who doesn't play the "oh,-I'm-not-a-good-dancer" game at events like this — that's the card my father always plays with my mother, even though she would love nothing more than for him to lead her out onto the floor.

(Men, I do not care what your dancing skills are like, or how self-conscious you may feel while dancing. Your wife really wants you to ask her to dance. And if you know what's good for you, you will ask her to dance at the next wedding you attend. If you do it with the same smooth confidence that Robert Redford exhibits when he asks Kim Basinger to dance with him when at the jazz club in The Natural, well, even better.)

We took to the floor, which filled up immediately. The bride had bustled her luscious, long wedding gown, and she and her new husband were kicking up their heels. Tom and I joined right in with some easy swing steps. (The black cocktail dress was working out great.)

As the night wore on, the band got funkier, and the crowd got looser. The suit coats started to come off, the flashbulbs were popping. The few bridesmaids who had thought that "standing around snapping your fingers while shifting your weight and sipping a glass of wine" qualified as dancing were edged out by couples who were actually dancing in earnest. Eventually we stopped apologizing for bumping into people and just let it fly.

It was about four or five songs into the dancing that I noticed my husband doing things with his body that I have never seen before. And he is someone that I've danced with a lot. But we've always danced smooth dances, like waltzes. We've never attended a wedding where they played a lot of funky Motown covers. How do I put this? He was not just dancing; he was calling into order a session of the Get Down Congress.

Please know I'm not just being all cute here. My husband moved in ways I had never seen him (or another white person) move before. It was stunning. He went all James Brown on me. Suddenly he was bending every which way, twisting at joints I'd never seen before. He shook all over. He knotted up and smoothed out in one easy gesture. He snapped and spun, he coiled and unkinked. He twisted his head around and kicked up his feet and snapped his arms open and shut. He did the James Brown move where your whole body looks like it's going to collapse like a sack of bones right onto the floor, and you sink to the ground only to shoot right back up, like a slice of hot bread out of the toaster.

My sweet, gentle husband had more moves than a Dr. J on a good night at Madison Square Gardens.

He was my dance partner, but he was unaccompaniable in his fervor. I kept taking a step back from him just so I could better acquaint myself with this strange new alter ego. Friends came up to me, and said, "I had no idea Tom could dance like that!" and I just said, "You know, I've been sleeping with him for the past four years, and I had no idea, either!"

I can't remember if it was during "She's A Brick House" or "You Sexy Thing," but at one point, our evening aligned with the universe and gave us one of those rare cinematic moments that will live forever in my memory. It was one of those moments straight out of the movies, where the crowd forms a tight circle around a particularly talented dancer, who obliges his admirers by pulling out a special extra helping of Get Down. Man, I wish I had video I could show you. He had the most true funk of any White Boy I've ever seen. (On the way home, Tom referred to that part of the evening as the "Footloose Moment.")

The last song they played before we left — the first slow song they played the whole night — was "At Last." And we slowed down enough to hang onto each other for a while. The back of his shirt was soaked with hard-earned sweat. And I looked up at the ceiling as we spun, and the lights of the chandelier blurred above me, and I paused for a moment as I held onto him, and thought, I think this is what it means to be truly happy.

I was in a state of disbelief about his dancing the whole time, and I still am. This is my husband, who is kind to animals and children. Who works for cheap at a non-profit organization helping the down-and-out. Who loves swimming in lakes and Saturday afternoons at the library and Sunday mornings at church.

This is my husband, the young James Brown.

And he has a great big blister on his foot to prove it.