The Merits of a Day Dance Party

My knees did better than I thought they would

For my birthday this year, I decided to have a dance party. Well, the truth is I decided years ago. I planned a trip to New York with one of my best friends for my 30^th birthday. It was on this trip I decided I’d keep a birthday tradition for myself. On birthdays that ended in zero I’d travel, because these birthdays seemed to carry extra emotional weight with them that might be too much for a party. The kind of emotional weight that could cause a person to fixate on who RSVPs yes and no, who RSVPs yes and then at the last minute says no. On a trip, no one has to RSVP but me and maybe one other person if I so desire. I felt emotional about my 30^th birthday and I shed a few tears as I processed it all, but I shed those tears listening to amazing jazz in a hole in the wall in Harlem, looking at a Picasso in a museum, eating handmade pasta at a small restaurant in Little Italy, swaying in my seat while seeing Fela on Broadway.

I also decided I’d plan to have a dance party for birthdays that ended in 5. I love to hear a good deejay and I love to dance! I like to go to the kind of club or dance party where everybody wears sneakers and cute, comfortable clothes because everybody intends to dance and sweat and have a good time. But when I turned 35, I had the opportunity to travel to Botswana instead. This seemed like a fair compromise for skipping what should have been my first dance party birthday.

Then I turned 40 in 2020. And we all know what that year was like. There wouldn’t be a trip and there wouldn’t be a party either. This year I turned 45: a year where you start noticing the tightness of your hips and the crackle in your knees and schedule your mammogram and colonoscopy. It’s also a year where you start noticing more and more how the music you want to listen to, sing to, rap to, dance to is not the prevalent music you hear at a club or a party, unless it’s marketed to the grown and sexy or the old school and even then you might discover you are more old school than the old school mentioned on the party invitation.

This year I wanted to keep that promise to myself. I wanted to dance. Good news for me: I married one of my favorite deejays, DJ Opdiggy (rhymes with hope diggy). Deejays have all sorts of concentrations and functions. Some deejays focus on a particular genre, some deejays focus on the technical aspects of record scratches and turntable tricks, some use technology and some only spin vinyl. My favorite type of deejay is a dancefloor deejay, a deejay that siphons through tunes, hits, deep cuts, beats, bass lines and instrumentals to get people moving. The type of deejay that *Erykah Badu voice* makes you put your phone down. My favorite dance floor moments have been realizing hours have passed and I forgot to look at my phone or go to the bathroom or check if I sweated off my makeup because the deejay kept PLAYING MY SONG. This is one of my husband's deejay specialties. When he asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I said a dance party where I can dance to music I actually like. He said say less.

Now I had the answer to the what of my party. I knew the answer to the who for my party (my friiiiiiiennds!), but I still needed to answer the where and when. My homeboy and brotha from anotha motha Adán Bean and my homeboy David Perdue host an event at Buteco Grant Park called Good Night. I asked Adán if he could use his celebrity status to see if it would be possible for me to host my birthday party there and even though he resented me saying celebrity status, he still connected me with the good folks at Buteco who thought this was an excellent idea.

Now, the when. We’ve already discussed how I’m no longer a brunch girl and how it’s really breakfast for me now. And I needed to be honest with myself and about my friends. My friends and I are not up for a party where the doors open at 9pm. Many of us would like to pull the covers back and get ready for bed at that time so I decided my dance party needed to also be a day party, 2 to 5pm on a Sunday.

The homies said yes and let me know their backs, ankles, and knees appreciated the early start time! My friends and my sister who is also my bestie came through and shook what our mamas gave us on the dance floor. I had the most fun I’d had in a long time and so many people said the same. DJ Opdiggy had a gig that Saturday night and that Sunday morning. He was running on less than fours of sleep AND he deejayed the shit out of that party!

Some people think if you’re in a relationship with someone that maybe you would lie about their expertise just because you’re in a relationship with them, that you’d say their comedy was funny or their crochet art was inspiring whether it was or not because you like that person. I do not ascribe to this philosophy. I can’t lie about dopeness and I generally did not want to be in a relationship with someone where I would have to pretend that they were dope.

So when DJ Opdiggy remixed and blended amazing hits live right there in front of us, I was so proud that he is my person! That he is dope! That I don’t have to lie! Many of my new friends were like “yooooo your husband can DEEJAY!” And all I could say was “I know that’s right!” We danced to 1990s booty music, to as many of Beyoncé’s hits as my husband could fit in his deejay set, to Cheryl Lynn and Janet Jackson, to Jay-Z and Outkast, to Cardi B and Bobby Brown. We rapped “allow me to reintroduce myself” and “what’s my favorite word” and “’cause I’m the miggity miggity miggity miggity mack daddy.” We sang “y’all haters corny with that illuminati mess” and “a thousand kisses from you is never too much” and “before I let you goooooooooo”. I smiled so much my face hurt. I danced so long the top of my knee meat hurt. When the party was over, my friends looked at the time and smiled at the fact that they would still have the evening to themselves to meal prep, to watch their Sunday night TV shows, to finish up weekend errands, to stop through another party. Right place, perfect time.

According to the calculations of 30-year old me, I wouldn’t have another dance party for ten more years. I don’t think I’ll wait that long. I think I’d like to have a dance party life. But, you know, before 7pm because I’m GROWN grown.

amenabee

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TAKE ACTION: As I type this, violence continues in Congo, Haiti, Sudan, and Palestine. Unlawful ICE raids continue in America. It is overwhelming and it pisses me off and makes me so fucking sad. I am trying not to let overwhelm drive me to doing nothing. This is a time where we all should do something. So pick your something. I’m leaving a few suggestions here:

Text RESIST to 50408 and use Resistbot to communicate with your representatives and to sign petitions. Read a banned book. Participate in mutual aid in your local community. Try to stay informed without doomscrolling. Take care of your mental health the best you can.

I’m listening to…Jay-Z’s album American Gangster

I’m watching…Caught in the Act: Unfaithful and Caught in the Act: Double Cross because I’m here for Tami Roman and Tamar Braxton

Shoutout to…blackberries for breakfast