My Two Left Feet

Growing up in Sri Lanka in the 1970’s, a schoolboy did not have the distractions offered by digital media, the internet had still not arrived, the idiot box had still to make its appearance and the profusion of clubs and pubs we see today were nonexistent.

Mind you this was not a cause for complaint, we were quite happy in the world of books, comics and being hot-blooded young men with a keen interest in the mysteries of the opposite sex; we regularly updated ourselves on this topic thanks to magazines like Playboy, Hustler and Rustler, within whose glossy pages all was revealed in more ways than one. These literary works were usually obtained from the row of booksellers situated at the New Olympia Cinema roundabout in Maradana, where behind the dusty shelves, away from prying eyes, clandestine transactions would take place and pocket money would disappear in our thirst for knowledge. The bookshops still exist, their existence threatened by a dwindling reading public and the march of progress.

The more athletic amongst us spent our leisure hours playing cricket, football, rugby and whatever the seasonal sport was at the time, or simply getting on our bicycles (the two wheeled pedal variety) and wandering our neighborhood. Sometimes further afield, and of course there was the joys of cinema where we sat transfixed by the exploits of James Bond, Tarzan and the Wild Wild West or laughed at the antics of the Carry On Team, Laurel and Hardy and The Crazy Boys (Les Charlots) to name a few.

Like most topics that occupied a young man’s mind at the tender age of sixteen or so years, and to some of us early learners even earlier, the topic of GIRLS seemed to be uppermost in our minds, and most of our parapet wall conversations as I called them (most of the houses down our lane had parapet walls ideal for sitting on, when taking a break from other pursuits), veered at some point towards girls.

Nightclubs as we know it did not exist, the few that did was the province of the adult world our only opportunities to mingle with ladies of our age presented itself at house parties, school carnivals, which we patronized most loyally, amateur theatre and beat shows as musical concerts were termed. I even joined the school debating team which regularly visited or hosted girl’s schools as a part of our educational process, since co-education was unheard of and only existed within the pages of the popular Archie comics.

It was at one of these parapet wall discussions that my friend and I made the momentous decision to learn dancing. The house parties were becoming more frequent as we got older, the courage to ask a lady to dance was rapidly overcome with a quick visit to the punch bowl (generously doctored with the right amounts of spirits unnoticed by the inevitable adult who had drawn the short straw to keep an eye on things), or our hosts garden where one could always be sure of a swig from the cup that cheers away from watchful eyes. Yet, our ungainly gyrations on the dance floor left much to be desired. Hence the decision to learn dancing.

Kreme House in Collpetty, was an ice cream parlor that was well frequented by us, dispensing ice cream sundaes and refreshing milkshakes that have still to be matched. Housed on the floor above was the Vevil De Kauwe School of Dancing and to drive home the message was a sign with the silhouetted figures of a dancing couple protruding from the side of the building which left no-one in doubt that having entered that establishment you would leave gracefully twirling away. They hadn’t bargained for yours truly. We climbed up the staircase and announced our intentions to the lady who met us at the door, beyond us we could see earnest men and women of all ages, shapes and sizes mumbling to themselves moving their feet in and out in all directions while others twirled and whirled watching themselves in the mirrors provided for this purpose.

Having gone through the preliminaries our initiation into the mysteries of dance now began, I will skip over the initial bits where I could see my tutor getting increasingly frustrated at my seeming inability to count from one to three and move my feet at the same time (multi-tasking was never my forte). Half way through the lesson she threw caution to the wind and threw me into the deep-end where I was assigned a partner to twirl and whirl with, and it was at this point things started to go rapidly downhill. My chosen partner was not exactly what could be described as a ‘young lady’, nor was she in anyway under-nourished. To add to this, she was quite tall! All these attributes computed very rapidly as she engulfed me in what felt like a wrestlers hold, and in a moment there I was my face partially buried in an ample bosom (that’s as far as I could go), my hand clutching onto what seemed a waist with no end, and her voice whispering in my ear one, two, one, two three, as we maneuvered across the floor. You have to be able to understand my dire predicament, this had been the closest proximity I had been to a female bosom, my feet had lost all sense of coordination, and there I was in the hands of this buxom amazon. My pulse racing, my blood pounding, being wafted across the floor, I had by this time given up all attempts at dancing or attempting to dance. I was quite happily buried in heaven with a one, two, one, two, three echoing in my ear. At the end of the lesson, I staggered out and repaired to the relative calm of Kreme House; the ice cream parlor on the ground floor, where over a refreshing milkshake, I calmed my shattered nerves.

It goes without saying I never returned, not having the courage to go through another experience. I still have two left-feet and I avoid the dance floor; my occasional visits would make an octopus go green with envy. I shifted my ice cream sundae hangout to the relative safety of Zellers Bambalapitiya.