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Damn You, Chubby Checker

Vern Fein

Silky ballroom dancers, my folks also loved the jitterbug.
I took to that jive and won contests, gyrated my way through my teens
into girls’ hearts and arms, straight through American Bandstand,
college, and a job teaching my art to all-girls PE classes.

Also taught the heavyweight wrestling champion from our school
who bear-hugged me in gratitude because he was able to dance
with his sweetie at Homecoming, well worth the twenty-five cents an hour
I charged him to practice at the mirror with his dorm room doorknob.

I was a star, the Cab Calloway of my small Midwestern college,
until along came Chubby and my life got suddenly Twisted,
forced to practice with a towel and swing my butt back and forth—
the magic of the jitterbug gone, a wallflower dance master now.

No one touched each other anymore.
No hand holding, no cool twirls or Ricky Nelson slides.
You could twist with yourself. You could twist with a group.
No one needed to teach you if towel swivels convinced the mirror.
Dull anonymity. Damn you, Checker!

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