A young, psychologically immature woman named Shelly Surandon on FB has written some vile and perjurious lies about my conduct in the dance clubs. She falsely accuses me of groping women and grinding into women's bodies, just for starters. Now to be honest, my first reaction was anger. Most people, I included, do not like to be accused falsely. As people who have observed me in the dance clubs over time recognize, I do not grope or grind into anyone. I do, however, make it clear that I have no objection to women groping or grinding into me. The DJs, guitarists, bands, waiters and waitresses, bartenders, and bouncers, at Mezzo Grill, and the DJs, owner, bartenders, and bouncers at Titanium Club can confirm this. That's not to say that one or more of them, especially at Mezzo Grill, now that the manager there, David, has banned me from Mezzo, won't lie to please David, but I cannot stop people from lying. If I ever decided to sue Mezzo Grill for treating me unfairly and unequally, and in violation of my federal civil right to be treated no differently than any other patron, I know that most the employees of Mezzo would, if questioned under oath, under penalty of perjury, testify that I was a sober, unharmful dance patron. If anything, my biggest fault is this that I only drank water at Mezzo, and, although I ALWAYS gave the bartenders a $1 tip for the water, I didn't contribute to the bar's bottom line directly, although to the extent people liked my lively spirit on the dance floor, I probably increased alcohol sales. The same testimony could be elicited in a proceeding before the Liquor Control Commission or the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, should I decide to make complaints against Mezzo, and in particular, the manager, David, for denying me an equal opportunity to patronize his establishment. The two things holding me back from litigation or administrative complaints are these: I don't want to get any of the employees of Mezzo in trouble with the manager, David, for testifying truthfully and at variance with David's claim to me the other night that he was barring me from the premises because he had gotten complaints that I had "infringed on the personal space" of some women whom he was unable to identify for me, or the dates when such behavior allegedly occurred. He couldn't so identify because he was lying, or if someone made such a complaint, THEY were lying.
On an interesting side note, I had my wallet lifted from my rear pants pocket back in September at Mezzo, when David still allowed me to dance there. I could have called the police and demanded they search the dance floor up in the disco to find who stole my wallet. That would have stopped the party, two hours before closing time. Instead, I went downstairs, told David what had happened, and told him I loved the dance club and didn't want to stop the party, so I would just take the loss of the money in the wallet, cancel my credit cards, and get a new driver's license. David seemed to appreciate this gesture of mine. When I got home from the club, I cancelled the credit cards and got up in the a.m. to a call from the Middletown Police that they had found my wallet, without the money, outside the police station. Whoever the thief was, he or she just wanted the cash in the wallet. I just ordered new credit cards and, from then on, leave my wallet in a secure location elsewhere on nights I dance.
Now, back to Shelly Surandon's ageist prejudices. She seems from her rantings and ravings about me on Facebook to have two objections to my dancing in the clubs. Alleged "creepy" behavior, and my age. She only has a high school education, which shows in both her thought process and writing style, so I readily understand the intellectual and emotional puzzlement, conundrum really, which my presence in the dance clubs evokes in her immature mind.
If Shelly Surandon focused her objections on what she claims, wrongfully, about my BEHAVIOR on the dance floor, apart from my age, I would have no objection to her making the complaints, even though they are without foundation in actual fact. Everyone I talk to, everyone who observes my behavior on the dance floor knows that I think of all women as Goddesses, regardless of their age or physical appearance. And I treat them as if THEY own me, not the other way around. I frequently tell men, mostly young but even older men when older men are there with their girlfriends or wives, who want me to dance with "their ladies," "Look, that violates my rules. If SHE wants to dance with me, she can come over and dance with me. But I don't dance with anyone who doesn't indicate that she wants to dance with me." Obviously, anyone who has been in the midst of the somewhat chaotic atmosphere of a dance floor knows that mistakes can be made about these things, but these are my rules and I follow them assiduously.
But Shelly Surandon doesn't limit her complaint to what she alleges, wrongly, is "creepy" behavior, i.e. groping and grinding into "young" women. She mixes in my age by calling me a "creepy OLD man." As if creepy behavior becomes more creepy, or more objectionable, if engaged in my an older man rather than a younger man. On all the dance floors I've been on, I have ALWAYS seen instances of younger men grinding into women's bodies without their consent. When the man does not seem so drunk he might lose control and take a swing at me, I sometimes go over to him and whisper in his ear, "Hey, she's a Goddess. She owns us, but we don't own her. Why don't you let her decide if SHE wants to dance with you and not just go over and make physical contact with her like that?" All the men and all the women who hear this from me universally have approved the sentiment I express about the proper relationship of Goddesses to Mere Mortal Men.
I love it when I see "older" men and women in the dance clubs. Back when Mezzo Grill still allowed me to dance there, back in September, a man of 50 and his wife of 47, and the wife's girlfriend of 33, were there. The the two women started to dance with me. I could tell that the 50-year-old man was smiling his approval. I was delighted that these "more age-appropriate" women were in the club and interested in dancing with me, even though some would not see a 33-year-old mother as "age appropriate" for me. But that just goes to show how vague and unclear the term "age-appropriate" is. I didn't then know who these three people were. A few weeks later, the three of them again were at Mezzo in the disco, and the women came over and began dancing with me and taking video and stills of the dancing on an I-phone. I noticed that the husband was not standing up dancing, but he was getting into the music and moving his arms and hands to the beat. In that situation, when I see a man who does not seem to be as free as I am to dance with abandon, I go over and sympathetically mimic his arm movements, smile, whistle my approval, indicate by hand gestures that I think he's cool, and generally try to get him comfortable to loosen up and dance. In this case, the man responded by getting out of his chair near the pool table and dancing a bit with his wife, her girlfriend, and me.
At one point, some obviously much younger women, very attractive (but not as attractive to me as the older women, partly but only partly because of the older age of the Goddesses who were dancing with me), began dancing near us. The 47-year-old wife said to me, "Why don't you go dance with those women. They're much younger than C and I." Immediately I smiled and replied, "Because I wnat to dance with you and your friend, and your husband. You're all better-lookin' and more fun for me to dance with." She smiled broadly, and beautifully, with her Sicilian great looks, and the three of us continued to dance.
About a month later, either I saw a photo on FB of the Sicilian woman, or she did of me, and we "Friended" each other. I also "Friended" her husband, who's also Sicilian. I then realized, to my delight, that their daughter is married to one of the DJs in one of the clubs I've danced at. I've since become good friends in real life of the woman's 50-year-old husband and was even invited by the DJ to the christening of his second daughter with the "older" couple's own very beautiful daughter. (I mention their daughter's beauty only because she truly is a beautiful 25-year-old woman, with two beautiful children of her own. Like the DJ, she's also a very smart, competent career woman who gracefully balances her work and her mothering of her children.) My buddy, F, has even said that Susie and I should go out with his big Sicilian clan when they go dancing on occasion at restaurants and other venues where a particular local band they love plays music to dance by. I'm hoping that Susie will agree to do this. I've promised her that when we do such activities, I'll not show off and try to perform, as I do in the dance clubs, but dance with her and pay attention to her. I don't conceal the fact I'm a natural show-off and performer, but that doesn't mean Susie has to be "subjected" to that when I'm out with her and our friends.
Some young women in the dance clubs have no problem dancing with an older man, old enough to be their father, or, if I'd had children at 20, instead of starting at 26, and my children had started having children at 20, instead of 31, as my oldest son did, their grandfather, at least in the case of the 21-year-old women. These women have no unresolved Electra Complex issues of the sort Sigmund Freud wrote about with respect to the psychological development of children.
Oedipus was the Greek mythological figure who killed his father, the King, and married and slept with his mother, the Queen. Freud hypothesized that men who identified women unconsciously with their mothers, regardless of the age of the woman, had psychological resistance to letting themselves love women. Freud's theory said that such men are afraid, but not aware of why, that even a young woman they want to sleep with is his mother. When that happens, the man has difficulty feeling positive loving feelings towards the woman, even though the reality is that the woman is the man's age and cannot possibly be his mother.
In women, the comparable complex was called by Freud the Electra Complex. In such cases, women have a hard time loving men because they unconsciously identify all men with their own fathers, whom they of course do not want to feel sexual feelings about, even though the psychological reality is that what Freud called "the Id," the complex of libidnous energy which is not socialized or civilized, leads people to be attracted to both conventionally "appropriate" and "inappropriate" love objects. As Woody Allen said when he fell in love with his step-daughter, Mia Farrow's adopted then 18-year-old daughter, "The heart wants what it wants." Now while that is so, it doesn't follow that every person one is attracted to is a person one would be wise to get into an intimate sexual relationship with. That depends on a lot of circumstances other than mere sexual attraction alone.
Back to Shelly Surandon's psychological resistance to my dancing in dance clubs where she's also a patron. I don't know anything about her except, she went to high school in the south, she is inspired by Sarah Palin, she likes to drink and she likes wine, and, from her Facebook profile picture, which is the only picture of her which is available to people she has not "Friended" on Facebook, she is not physically repulsive. I will leave it to other men and women to judge whether she is physically or sexually attractive to them. She doesn't do anything for me, but that's just me. Since I allow all women who want to dance with me, grope me, or grind into me to do so, I wouldn't object to Shelly Surandon doing so, but I would not, on my own account, choose to do any of those things to her. Also, while she fantasizes I want her to call me because she thinks I like her, that idea is only in her mind. I invited her to call me anytime if she wants to discuss the false allegations she's made against me with respect to my behavior and presence in the dance clubs. Personally, if she falls off the edge of the earth and I never see or hear from her again, that will be entirely too soon. But I bear no ill will or animus against Shelly Surandon. I am, quite simply, indifferent to her or her existence. I do, howver, take issue with, umbrage even, with the lies she tells herself about me and also broadcasts on the internet through Facebook. But I'm a big boy, and "old" man actually, with a long career as a very successful trial lawyer behind me, nearly 36 years of seeking justice for my clients and making money to support my family and the families of my firm's employees. As a young high school graduate, who likes to drink wine and fawn over whoever she fantasizes Sarah Palin is, Shelly Surandon has not actually accomplished much of value to society in her young life. She is just barely out of puberty, it would seem, assuming the ID she shows to get into the dance clubs does not overstate her age, and as long as her Profile Picture on Facebook is not the picture of somebody she is just an imposter to, so we can't hold he lack of any accomplishment against her. Other, of course, than her being an accomplished drinker and a person who tells bald-faced lies about me. But hey, it's a free country, except to the extent that her lies become defamatory and damaging to me. Then they could become the genesis of libel litigation by me against her. I doubt she has a proverbial "pot to piss in," so the libel damages route is probably pointless, and, unlike countries like France, we don't incarcerate liars and defamers. Maybe that archaic institution would deter liars and defamers like Shelly Surandon from plying their prevaricating trade.
Now, the fact that Shelly Surandon tells lies about my actual behavior on the dance floor, what other possible explanation could there be for her enmity towards me? For her expressed wish that I never again enter the dance clubs she frequents? Well, consider this possibility. Maybe my Dionysian, free-spirited dancing actually but secretly, and unconsciously, excites Shelly Surandon? What if she rather likes my moves on the dance floor, my free-spirited, energetic, physically-strong, creative dance moves? What if, God or the gods forbid, Shelly Surandon actually wants to dance with me, to grope me, to grind into me, to be groped by me (only in her dreams), be ground-into by me (see, dreams, hers, only in, supra.)? If that were the case, then Shelly Surandon clearly has an internal, perhaps only unconscious, conflict about me being on the same dance floor, within groping and grinding distance of her. And if that's the case, and she feels a strong wish to dance with me, and the like, then one psychological defense against becoming aware of, and admitting those wishes to herself or others, is to instead tell herself a story, an untrue story, that it is I, not her, who wants to dance with her, and the like. And, the story might go, in her mind, "This guy is old enough to be my father. I have unresolved romantic feelings towards my own father. I'm afraid that if this 'creepy old man,' Bob Dutcher is out there on the dance floor, near me, I might lose control of myself and go over and begin dancing with him. And then I'd feel like I was dancing with my own father, feeling attracted to my own father. Oh my God, I can't handle the internal psychological tension resulting from this conflict within my mind, my soul. There's only one way to relieve the tension----Bob Dutcher has to go. I have to tell myself and everybody else that he misbehaves on the dance floor, so I can pretend to myself and others that I have good and sufficient reasons to want Bob Dutcher never to return to the dance clubs, apart from my actual attraction to Bob and to my own father."
Okay, I think that gives you all a glimpse of the way I turn whatever happens to me in life into a story to write about. I am so much happier creating art than making money.
