In our small town in north central Wisconsin, our Presbyterian Church frowned on dancing. Apparently, thought it was the devil's work. But things were happening in the mid-50s and girls in our church group thought nothing of holding sock hops in their houses with their 45 RPM record players giving out that scratchy/screechy sound from the likes of Elvis, little Richard, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and many others who were inventing Rock 'n' Roll. A term originated in the black community meaning what we called in farm country, "Rolling in the hay."

But most of the dances, many connected to a song played live on Dick Clark's American Bandstand to show everyone how they worked, we picked up quickly. Except, I never recall dancing in socks. ;-) 

In junior and senior high school we had our required proms where it really helped to be going steady or have a car to drive your date in style. On my junior prom with my brother in the backseat with his date, dad gave us each $20 cash and a full tank of gas and we were set to go. Unfortunately, our progress was slowed down a bit by 8 inches of new snow on May 8. But that's another story I've already told. Don't remember the dance or even dancing with my neighbor classmate, not my first choice for a date. She wrote me recently reminded me of it. A good laugh.

By our senior year, after wolfing down our lunch in the cafeteria in less than 15 minutes, we boys spent the remaining time in the gym on Mondays and Wednesdays doing our own thing when it came to using the gym equipment or a pick up basketball game. Likewise, on Tuesdays and Thursdays it was the girls time to use the gym. 

On Fridays, it was coed. Usually some educational program or volleyball, something that everyone could participate in that wanted to. Attendance was not required and was minimal, with many kids going off, to smoke or fool around off-campus in their cars.

But in the last few weeks of the year, a miracle happened. On Fridays we were treated to the local, very popular, radio announcer/deejay from our local radio station. He came equipped with the wise experience of something like 30 prior occupations, one of which was Arthur Murray dance instructor. I believe he volunteered for the task of teaching us the proper way to dance.

Mostly seniors attended and all the best looking girls, cheerleaders, prom and homecoming queens. Our instructor expertly taught us the footsteps, arm and hip movements of all the classic dances and some popular ones, like the Lindy, the foxtrot, the waltz, the Charleston, the mambo, samba and even the tango. He taught us the right way to do the jitterbug. All great moves.

But most of all, he taught us how to do slow dancing. He told us boys not to be shy, but to take strong control and lead our partner like a man. That involved taking a firm grip on the hand that you would be leading with, holding her close to you with your arm firmly around her back and placing your hip firmly between her legs so then when you made a move, good or bad, she would feel your power and have to move with you, having no other choice. 

Sometimes that resulted in feet stumbling and laughter. But for most, like me, it worked like a charm. I never had a thought of, "I can't slow dance," ever again. Pitied the poor guys who sat out slow dances with that excuse to drink some more and watch, missing all the fun.

When I first got to college, part of the opening of school was a street dance. Unfortunately, dancing in the street was hard on shoes and ballrooms were much preferred. As soon as school opened, every Friday night there was a mixer dance at the student union on a well waxed parquet floor very conducive to dancing.

So, I went and mixed. Had the privilege of dancing with several freshman women every Friday night and walking some of them, some nights, back to the woman's dormitory. But I made no girlfriends there because all of those girls were looking for upperclassmen for a potential life partner. So it went, every year, until my senior year.

Suddenly, I was popular, even though my hands were paralyzed. I recall three Fridays in a row when I walked young women back to the dormitory. After the fourth night, I decided to call one of the girls for a date. Apparently, all of the girls that I had danced with and took back to the dormitory were living on the same floor and may have even been roommates. They had talked about me after hours to the point where I became persona non-grata.

But not to worry, I soon found the love of my life at a church retreat. Sitting close next to me, allowing my hand on her bare breast under her sweater and bra, she declared that she wasn't going to get married until she was 30 like her mother did, meeting so romantically on an Alaskan ski slope. A total romantic who declared, "All of my boyfriends are conscientious objectors." That hurt, because my 1Y draft status prevented me from enlisting after college. But we never danced and that may have been our downfall. After a few months, she left me for an art instructor who cast her breasts in bronze.

Dirty Dance One

When I started my rather lonely master's degree studies in the fall of 1966 at Stanford, I could have tried one of the first computerized dating services on campus, but it was mostly for underclassmen/women. Instead, I started dating a homesick nurse working in the stressful heart center developing the heart transplant at Stanford Hospital from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. With a girlfriend, she left for a working trip around the world six months after I got my first engineering job in the spring of 1967, the Summer of Love, and never returned.

I joined a singles club whose name I have forgotten. The club took me to dances around the San Francisco Bay Area, to a memorable fake gambling night at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco and a weekend trip to Tahoe skiing where everyone paired off on the bus going there except a Dutch fellow and me.

We shared a motel room and he took me up on the same intermediate slope where Sonny Bono died at the very top of Heavenly Valley. He was an expert skier and put my skis back on many times as I accelerated straight down steep slopes without ski poles for control that I couldn't hang onto jumping 5 foot drop offs until I crashed in new snow. Another dangerous but fun experience I'll never forget.

But there was a Friday night when the dance was held at the Jack Tarr Hotel in San Francisco. It was another chilly night like most there, and so was the dance hall in the beginning. I danced with a couple of girls who left me after the first dance. And then, I spotted a rather attractive brunette standing there and asked her to dance.

The latest rock 'n' roll at the time was being played so there were a series of fast dances. She matched my every move and stayed with me during the breaks between every song played. Before long, all that exertion by all those bodies made the room much warmer. We chatted. She told me that she had a boyfriend who was working at a Marine research station at Monterey and that she, "Loved him very much."

I didn't ask her why she was at a singles club, but I think I recall her telling me that she had come with a friend who didn't want to come alone. Apparently was dancing with me so she wouldn't get bored waiting. And wanted me to know that she was taken. I always looked at girls' faces, figure and eyes, not their ring finger. Sometimes getting in trouble as a result.

Anyway, suddenly, they were playing Hey Jude, our first slow dance together. We were both sweating from the fast dances, but neither of us minded as she melted into me like butter and we both sang along with the song so close we were one. I could feel her body wanting me as I moved my hip up and down her vulva as we danced and she responded as I kissed her neck by her ear. That dance didn't last long enough.

After that dance was over, she looked at me like she was in love with me as we slowly backed away from each other. And then, she turned, and left. I expected to the ladies room. But I waited for her to come back on the floor and never saw her again. I guess her story about her boyfriend was true and she thought she was cheating on him, so left before it got any hotter for her.

At another singles dance in Palo Alto, I found a wonderful twin like me from Sweden whose dominant sister was stealing away her boyfriends. She worked at Stanford as a secretary. We had two wonderful dates but she drank too much, making me wonder why? 

When I left for a week for my cousin's wedding in Manhattan, I came back and found she and her sister had left their apartment with their phone number dead. I should have gone to Stanford looking for her, but didn't.

Dirty Dance Two

My cousin was two years older than me. He left the family farm to Chicago and a technical school where his wealthy roommate from Ohio had a plane and they spent weekends flying back to Ohio so that the guy could see his girlfriend. Along the way, my cousin met a very attractive brown haired beauty and they double dated on several occasions.

For some reason I don't know, he failed in school. Perhaps it was because he was away so much with his roommate going to Ohio. Afraid to go back home a failure, he ended up penniless and virtually on the street in Chicago. 

Fortunately, the girl that he had dated back in Ohio came and rescued him, taking him back to Toledo where he got a job at a granary the family owned, and then, another at a radio station. He married her and they settled down in a rural ranch-style house south of Toledo on the Maumee River with a large lot.

On my whirlwind two-week tour of the country the summer of 1967, a technician and I took his 1960 worn out Austin Healey Sprite during our annual two- week plant shutdown to Expo 67 in Montréal and back. 

Returning, we stopped in the middle of the night, about 10 pm at my cousin's house and surprised him seeing me like a hippie from San Francisco with no top on the car making our wind whipped hair and dirt streaked faces look worse than they were. We had a little coffee and some sweets and continued on.

In the spring of 1969, I decided to drive from where I was teaching in Menomonie, Wisconsin during spring break to see my brother and his wife in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania. I planned to stop at my cousin's place along the way. Unfortunately, I had a wreck that damaged the front end of my Olds Toronado. As a result, I arrived at their house a bit late that morning.

My cousin, from a farm and very inventive, got busy right away and remounted my left headlight that no longer retracted and had to be stabilized for the road. Within a couple of hours had me ready to drive again at night. 

He spent the afternoon and evening showing me his model airplanes that were very large and beautiful. He told me that in the morning he would be gone to another city to pick up a refrigerator or something like that and I told him that I would leave early because it was a long way to my brother's on Easter Sunday when I knew traffic would be heavy.

When I woke up that morning, I came outside and waited in a small dining room off the kitchen. I had heard that his wife was quite wild and thought about, for a moment, going in the room and see if she would talk to me from bed. Maybe more. But then, I thought better, not knowing when my cousin would come through the door from his trip.

As I waited, their adopted daughter came out all dressed for church. Apparently they couldn't have children and had adopted a boy and a girl, they may have been brother and sister, I don't know. But what I do remember was what she said when she came up to me. She pointed to a picture of the family on a small table, and then, looked me right in the eye, pointed two hers and said, "See, big brown eyes!" She was cute as a button at about five and knew that she was hot stuff with older guys like me.

Shortly after that, my cousin's wife came out of the bedroom and made me breakfast. I don't recall if we talked. I left before my cousin came back.

Some time later, another aunt and uncle were celebrating their 25th anniversary in the same small north-central Wisconsin town they were married. I remember going to the Catholic ceremony as a boy, bored to death listening to the Latin going on and on. This time we were at a large dance hall with a lot of relatives present.

I remember one cousin was about 23 and I hadn't seen her for some time becoming really a striking blonde. When her father took her to a local bar everyone there thought that she was his date. I may have danced with her, but I don't know. 

Among the women dancing was my cousin's wife. Maybe, the only time he brought her back home to show off to his parents. Apparently, he didn't dance, so when I saw her standing there and looking at me,44 I asked her to dance.

It was a slow dance, so she moved in close with her wonderful young body fitting every groove of mine perfectly. She seemed to love dancing with me rubbing her breasts on my chest and her vulva against my hip as if masturbating on the dance floor. I was enjoying her immensely with my cheek against her neck when I looked over her shoulder and saw my cousin glaring at me with a look that would kill. That beautiful dance ended with her returning to where her husband was and I ducked out of dancing with her again and talking to him all night.

I heard later that the same thing had happened when my father danced with her. Dad always made my mother jealous dancing with other women, so I can imagine how that went, but it made me wonder what would've happened had I gone into the bedroom like I had thought about that morning in their home with him gone.

He caught her one night in a car with someone and they divorced. He came home to his parents’ farm and worked building pole barns. He rescued a 17-year-old who was the alternate mother of her 11 siblings and they had a daughter. I never found out what happened to his beautiful wife and two beautiful adopted children. Will never know.

Dirty Dance Three

When I taught in the MBA program at Atlanta University I befriended a number of students. Since I was single, I was often invited to parties. One time at a fancy "cotillion," in a downtown ballroom, I danced with every female MBA candidate there. The girls were lining up to dance with Dr. Hull. After all the faculty left, I stood out one dance and discovered that everyone in the room was crowded on the small parquet dance floor except me. A sight I would never see again.

A married Indian couple I befriended invited me to go along on a rather exclusive party at the house of our only Saudi Arabian student. Actually, it was the house of two of his aunts who were in Atlanta getting treatment for cancer. When we arrived at the rather new North Side home on a cul-de-sac we found our host in a large great room with a stereo system, a large globe with four bottles of booze in it and a large hookah.

He was partying because his beautiful bride, one of the many daughters of the oil minister Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani and his aunts were gone. He was able to marry her because his father was a prayer leader at Mecca. 

Soon after their lavish marriage, she had come to Atlanta where she gave birth to their first son, so that he had US citizenship. That very same day, she flew back to Saudi Arabia with the boy so that he would have a good Muslim foundation and dual citizenship. His aunts had gone with her or were in the hospital, because he had the house to himself.

It was a small group of six or seven international MBA students and me. One was a university teacher from Yemen who could drink everyone under the table. So we were very exclusive, listening to Arabic music, pulling on the hookah, drinking from the expensive booze and generally, just chatting and chilling. We were invited to go upstairs to one of the many bedrooms and sleep rather than drive the streets drunk.

I went to two of those parties. At one, I left with my Indian couple and the guy from Yemen in the back. A short while after we left about 3 am on a narrow road with a high bank on the right, I saw a car coming straight for me in my lane! I feared going right so I quickly hit the left lane, something that every safety official will tell you not to do, and the car whizzed by me. Assuming we both were doing 55 mph, if a head-on collision would've occurred probably, at 110 mph for more. I never wore a seatbelt or my passengers. I asked my sleeping passengers, "Did you see that!"

The guy from Yemen was my witness. He said, "Yeah, I did!" A thrill I never wanted to experience our experience again.

At another, similar party, I slept upstairs in a room with nothing but a very clean and brand-new bed and bedsheets. In the morning when I came down, no one was awake until I saw my host on the deck overlooking the wooded ravine behind the house. I joined him and we chatted. He told me that he would like me to come with him sometime to the Saudi Arabian desert where they would set up tents and party between going hunting. I would suppose they also had plenty of dancing girls but no slow dancing. Other girls as well for another kind of entertainment. Unfortunately, I soon left for Houston and we never contacted each other again.

The next party was more formal. It involved the Dean, the associate Dean, and a number of faculty and their wives. The aunts were returning to Saudi Arabia and were taking two young doctors with them to continue their treatment. There was a huge buffet of every kind of fruit and lunch yummy that you could imagine. It was a large room and there was pop music with people dancing.

I saw one of the doctor's wives standing alone, looking out of place and only and lonely while her husband was engaged with conversation at the buffet. She beckoned to me with her eyes. When the music started up and a few there started slow dancing I took advantage of her plight and asked her to dance.

To my surprise she melted into me immediately like my cousin's wife had and began that familiar rubbing against my hip with a passion I thought strange with her husband in the room. But that was probably the point. As she nuzzled my ear, almost crying, I determined that she was scared to death of leaving Atlanta life to be in the desert and robbed of all of her freedom. Even her ability to drive a car.

But her husband, both dedicated to his profession, and like many doctors, finding money irresistible in their practice, was eager to leave. And I learned later that many wives of doctors, finding that their husbands were more married to their practices and sometimes cheated at work, resorted to their own infidelities.

This beautiful blonde young lady who may not have had children yet, to be able to go that far with her husband, was taking her fear and fear of losing what she had out on me and I was loving taking the responsibility of making her feel good one last time before she left. I think now that if I had asked her if we would both go to the restroom and then upstairs to one of the bedrooms, she would have gone with me. But I didn't.

To say that I didn't dance erotically with my wife or later with my professional dancing girlfriend would be a lie. But it was these three strangers, both of us leaving after having the equivalent of sex on the dance floor that remained in my mind. Perhaps, both of us left unfulfilled upon leaving, needing more. But of course, I had strong reasons why we didn't carry out what we were thinking while dancing.

Copyright 2022 © Ronald W. Hull

7/28/22