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LoveStoryLogic.pdf ©2003 by A. D. Manning 15
“Not till you jumped off the table. Flint was after me to stay and dance some more. I
told him to go chase those little girls he made friends with. I made like I had to go to the
powder room. Don’t dodge my question. Where’d you learn the swing?”
“Mostly in church,” he said. “Youth dances on weekends.”
“You gotta be kidding! I thought your church wants to keep young, unmarried minds
off each other’s bodies.”
“That’s not quite what I said. More than anything, the Church wants lively, happy
marriages and another round of happy children. That won’t happen if boys and girls don’t
have a few things about each other’s bodies worked out beforehand.”
“But you said y’all keep your love-making score at zero before you get married,” she
said. “With zero practice, how exactly are you supposed to work anything out? Why don’t
you just teach your young people to practice safely?”
Felix frowned a little more at this. “That kind of safety is an illusion. Nothing you buy
in a drugstore can protect against betrayal, jealousy, heartbreak, or guilt...”
For this, Vanessa had no answer.
They were nearing the edge of the university campus now. A few other ETS readers
could be seen making their way across the parking lots to the dorms, but most were already
safely in bed.
In the morning, one more hard day of reading waited.
“So how do you solve this dilemma?” she asked. “Learning without practice?”
“We hold lots of church dances for one thing. The dance teaches important, basic
things about physical give and take with a partner. The dance is a vertical pattern for the
horizontal lovemaking that comes later. The dance is wrapped inside discipline, musical ritual
and symbolic rhythm. It is safe, behind those boundaries.”
“Oh really? It didn’t look safe to me, the way that little girl wanted to dance.”
“No. Not safe at all,” Felix said ruefully. “But I doubt she learned her kind of dancing
in a church. Speaking of which, thanks ever so much for getting me caught in that little
misadventure. It’s another story for people to tell, isn’t it?”