I’m sitting here at 2:14 am waiting for this damn file to upload so I can bill for four hours of work that actually took eight—my eyes feel like they’ve been rubbed with sandpaper. I’m thirty-eight and my back has this localized *throb* right where the spine hits the hip, and for some reason, I can’t stop thinking about the St. Jude’s Community Center basement. Nineteen years old, sophomore year, supposed to be out at some rager or studying for Econ, but instead, I was paying five bucks a session to learn the Foxtrot with people who remembered where they were when JFK died. reasons I went: 1. the student union was too loud and smelled like stale beer 2. i liked the way the floorboards creaked 3. i was lonely in a way that felt like a physical weight, like carrying a bucket of wet sand 4. mrs. Gable—she was 82—smelled like lavender and gin and she didn't ask me what my major was. 5. five bucks was cheaper than therapy and they gave you free ginger snaps It was weird, right? This skinny kid in thrift-store flannels trying to maintain *frame*—that’s the posture, chest out, hand firm on the shoulder blade—while some retired dental hygienist led me through a Box Step. They called me "The Professor" because I wore glasses and didn't talk much. I didn't tell them I was failing three classes. I didn't tell them I spent my meal plan money on cigarettes and art supplies I never used. I just stood there in that fluorescent-lit box, listening to a scratchy CD of 1940s big band hits, trying not to step on any orthopedic shoes. "Relax your shoulders, honey," Mrs. Gable would say. Her hands were always cold, skin like crinkled parchment paper. "You're holding the world up and you haven't even seen it yet." She thought she was being profound, or maybe just being a grandmother, but I remember looking at her liver spots and thinking she had it lucky. She had a house. She had a pension. She had a dead husband and a set of memories that didn't feel like a series of unfinished tasks. I was nineteen and already felt like I was running out of time. my current reality: - Rent is due in three days and the landlord is a prick - I have $42.17 in my checking account - My insurance premium just jumped because of some "actuarial adjustment" I don't understand - I haven't eaten a vegetable that wasn't on a frozen pizza since Tuesday - I’m tired in a way that sleep doesn't fix—it's a deep, cellular fatigue, a malaise of the soul. I remember one night specifically, it was raining, the kind of cold October drizzle that gets into your marrow. We were doing the Waltz. Three-four time. One-two-three, one-two-three. It’s a mathematical rhythm, very precise, very *unforgiving* if you lose focus. I was dancing with a guy named Arthur, a retired longshoreman who took the "lead" role because there weren't enough women that night. He had a grip like a vise. He told me, "Don't look at your feet, kid. The floor isn't going anywhere. Look at the wall. Look through the wall." I tried to look through the wall of that basement. I tried to see where I’d be at nearly forty. I probably imagined a corner office or a wife or at least a car that didn't make a screaming noise every time I turned left. I didn't see this. I didn't see the gig economy. I didn't see the way "flexibility" would just mean "working until your retinas burn at 2am for a client who won't pay the invoice for sixty days." I just felt Arthur’s hand on my shoulder, guiding me in a circle, and for forty-five minutes, I wasn't a failure. I was just a body in motion, following a pattern that had existed for a hundred years. It’s funny how the memory doesn't hurt. It just sits there. It’s an artifact. I think about the way the light hit the dust motes when we took our ten-minute break for sugar cookies and lukewarm lemonade. Arthur and Mrs. Gable and the rest of them, they’re all probably dead now. They lived through wars and depressions and they ended up in a basement in Jersey dancing with a kid who didn't know how to be young. And now I’m the age they were when they were probably starting to feel the first real creaks in their knees. things I've lost since then: 1. the ability to stand up without a noise escaping my throat 2. my optimism regarding the concept of "career advancement" 3. that one pair of dress shoes I bought at Goodwill for the classes 4. the rhythm. The file finally uploaded. 100%. I should go to bed, but I’m just staring at the cursor blinking in the corner of the screen. I tried to do a Box Step in my kitchen a few months ago, just to see if I remembered. I tripped over a pile of mail I haven't opened yet. My kitchen is too small anyway. It's not a ballroom. It's just a place where I make coffee and wait for the next notification to pop up on my phone, telling me there's a new "opportunity" for a three-hour task that pays twelve dollars. One-two-three. One-two-three. The floor isn't going anywhere. I’m just waiting for the music to stop, I guess.