At dinner the other night for a friend’s birthday, a girl asked the question “What happened to the slowdance?” Remember when you were at the school dance at the end of the night there was always a slow dance and everyone would be pashing (snogging) their boyfriends/girlfriends and dancing that awkward teenage side shuffle with their arms around each other. Even in movies from the 80’s they would show slow dances at the end of the night in nightclubs.
Where did the slow dance go? Did drugs kill the slow dance because no one can actually slow down? Are gay men capable of the slow dance? My theory is that yes, drugs mean people can’t physically stop themselves dancing, or there’s no room for two in a K hole. The other theory is that if gay men slowed down on a dance floor and stopped waving their hands in the air like they just don’t care, then the groping would start and the slow dance would end up quite horizontal with 100 participants.
Wow, slow dancing in gay bars, that takes me back!
In 1988, when I was living in Michigan and just coming out at 18-19, the last dance was usually a slow dance at the clubs, but there would be slow songs throughout the evening prior to close. I moved to Washington, DC, in 1992 and when I started going to the local bars, I noticed that slow dancing was not happening anywhere. I mentioned missing it to one of the local guys I had started dating, he thought that the whole idea of slow dancing in a gay club was crazy and silly. He thought it was a “hick bar”/small town thing that would never happen in the “Big City” but the towns I experienced it in were not small towns. I still miss the idea of holding someone close while dancing.
I dunno Brenton. You’re a druggie - you tell us!
My concern is that you seem to be suggesting that gay men are incapable of slow dancing without suddenly turning into some kind of sex crazed fiends. I personally think that smacks of huge stereotyping, but then again maybe that’s all todays generation of gay men think about “SEX”. Of course with the rise in STI’s and new HIV infections maybe that is “All” they think there is to a relationship if they even make past a one night stand and make it to the relationship stage. I’m just sayin’
The Greyhound Hotel in St Kilda always plays Donna Summers Last Dance at the end of the night do you consider that song a slow dance? Of course it is also played as a polite way of saying “Get out!
OMG! I just thought of this the other day…I remember when I first started going out to gay bars…um…awhile ago…the last dance was always the slow dance. The guy who had been trying to get your attention all night while you were vogueing and doing your house music gyrations…would take the opportunity of the slow song and come up and ask you to dance. Sad, could be the drugs though. It’s hard because first they associated gay men with promiscuity, then AIDS and now meth and X. Sad. ;) peace