We’ve Cast Off Something Most Becoming

The boys over here, the girls over there. Just a short space kept them apart.

They were being pulled to the dance floor in between where two people deposited their physical beings and nervously merged into a dance. It was a close dance, a cheek-to-cheek dance, a warm dance.

The tempo was slow, every so gentle, charmingly comfortable to be touching someone. To achieve that bonanza of bonding all you needed was to overcome a slight hesitation - a tiny bit of self doubt, a feeling of shyness - and have just enough nerve to ask a girl, though with failing voice, to dance.

Records were being played and lights were flickering and dashing all about the wall and floor. Amidst the faint scent of mixed perfumes the adolescent was meeting, for the first time, a future love.

How remarkably beautiful. How beautifully simple.

Things have changed.

When dance gave way to perky, jerky movements, the closeness went away and, with time, that yearning to feel comfortably close was dashed forever on the hard rocks of “progress.”

Shyness was such an easy rule, enough to keep young love apart, overcome only with a slight impulse and one deep breath.

These are bad times. Nobody has shyness any more. It was traded in for predatory instincts.

There is no private space anymore. Nobody is waiting, but taking. Nobody is beholding or wistfully gazing, but grabbing.

What you can get you take; what you may say, you say. How anybody feels is unimportant.

There are too many of us. Perhaps that is the problem. Have we become animals gone berserk in a lovely land?

Those rules and laws that must control harassing actions are directed at, you know what? Manliness. It is just a word that says a guy may be unsure about himself.

Be careful what you touch, what you say. A “honey” will get you into big trouble. You can harass with the blink of an eye. You can be written up for buying a cup of coffee if you include a salacious smile.

Many women are becoming so devout, you can’t believe it.”Thou shalt not covet” - a commandment which has been endorsed by the feminists. Bless them all for their religiosity. They’ll effectively knock out togetherness. The shy guy has been doomed to everlasting loneliness.

Perhaps the dance floor is not enough separation between He and She.

Then let She-Territory and He-Land be separated by the Mississippi.

xxxx