CHAPTER FOUR

LAURA

Shorty would take me to groovy, frantic scenes in different chicks' and cats' pads, where with the
lights and juke down mellow, everybody blew gage and juiced back and jumped. I met chicks who
were fine as May wine, and cats who were hip to all happenings.
That paragraph is deliberate, of course; it's just to display a bit more of the slang that was used by
everyone I respected as "hip" in those days. And in no time at all, I was talking the slang like a
lifelong hipster.
Like hundreds of thousands of country-bred Negroes who had come to the Northern black ghetto
before me, and have come since, I'd also acquired all the other fashionable ghetto adornmentsthe
zoot suits and conk that I have described, liquor, cigarettes, then reefers-all to erase my
embarrassing background. But I still harbored one secret humiliation: I couldn't dance.
I can't remember when it was that I actually learned how-that is to say, I can't recall the specific
night or nights. But dancing was the chief action at those "pad parties," so I've no doubt about
how and why my initiation into lindy-hopping came about. With alcohol or marijuana lightening my
head, andthat wild music wailing away on those portable record players, it didn't take long to
loosen up the dancing instincts in my African heritage. All I remember is that during some party
around this time, when nearly everyone but me was up dancing, some girl grabbed me-they often
would take the initiative and grab a partner, for no girl at those parties ever would dream that
anyone present couldn't dance-and there I was out on the floor.
I was up in the jostling crowd-and suddenly, unexpectedly, I got the idea. It was as though
somebody had clicked on a light. My long-suppressed African instincts broke through, and loose.
Having spent so much time in Mason's white environment, I had always believed and feared that
dancing involved a certain order or pattern of specific steps-as dancing is done by whites. But
here among my own less inhibited people, I discovered it was simply letting your feet, hands and
body spontaneously act out whatever impulses were stirred by the music.
From then on, hardly a party took place without me turning up-inviting myself, if I had to-and lindyhopping
my head off.
I'd always been fast at picking up new things. I made up for lost time now so fast that soon girls
were asking me to dance with them. I worked my partners hard; that's why they liked me so
much.
When I was at work, up in the Roseland men's room, I just couldn't keep still. My shine rag
popped with the rhythm of those great bands rocking the ballroom. White customers on the shine
stand, especially, would laugh to see my feet suddenly break loose on their own and cut a few
steps. Whites are correct in thinking that black people are natural dancers. Even little kids areexcept
for those Negroes today who are so "integrated," as I had been, that their instincts are
inhibited. You know those "dancing jibagoo" toys that you windup? Well, I was like a live onemusic
just wound me up.
By the next dance for the Boston black folk-I remember that Lionel Hampton was coming in to
play-I had given my notice to the Roseland's manager.