i recently admitted i don't like to dance. it even more recently struck me what a vast understatement that was. to say i don't like to dance is like saying i don't like to run the underside of my penis through a cheese-grater often.

i'm not a dancer. marty is a dancer. marty is a groin-grinding, hip-bucking, trunk-slapping dancer. it's a fame thing. it's a solid gold thing. it's a rhythm thing. and if you catch marty in a semiserious moment, she'd confess it's also an attention thing. i have spent a large part of my life trying to avoid attention. admittedly, i've spent an equally proportioned part of my life, trying to collect every molecule of attention a room had to offer. but, this attention must be on my terms. one too many people at the event, game over. dislike one of the participants, no show. no sweet tea served at the bar, i'm out.

the shrinks/sociologist call this code-switching. you act one way at church, you act another way at a vegas brothel. we all do it. people who have known me one way and then see me another way gawk at the sheer disparity between the two me's. this make me guess my personality swing may be greater than some. and you don't have to be a stranger to suffer this schizophrenia. in the six months before getting married, marty asked me these two questions.

1. if you are going to be a ravenous man-slut who sleeps with women every chance he gets, just tell me now because i'm not even going to cope.

2. if you are a closet, serial-killing homosexual who will be investigated by the fbi who just dug 12 dead bodies out of my backyard tell me now, because that's an embarrassment i'd rather not endure.

sadly, she is not the first person to ask me those two very questions.