Last Night A DJ Saved My Life

For 10 years, a sense of shame about her body kept writer Melissa Febos off the dance floor, and only when high on drugs did she give herself to the music. But would getting clean mean giving up the heart-thumping, hip-swivelling joy of dancing that had become her lifeline?

- Melissa Febos

It’s a balmy Thursday night and the DJ is playing my song. She’s actually been on a streak of my favourite songs and, as a result, my face is slicked with sweat, stray hair from my ponytail is stuck to my cheeks and the back of my T-shirt is drenched. My jacket is in a pile in the corner and I lost an earring earlier, but I don’t care about either. When the last beats of Drake’s “One Dance” blur into the opening ones of Beenie Man’s “King Of The Dancehall”, I fling both arms into the air and swivel my hips, looking for Tara, my friend and fellow dance enthusiast. She’s my partner tonight, along with the other 50 people crammed into the small, dark club. Tara is grinning, too, face flushed and damp, arms raised as she works her way towards me through the crush of jubilant bodies.

We’re into our third hour of dancing and my thighs are on fire. It’s about four hours past my regular bedtime and, when I drop it low, nearly sweeping the floor with my 36-year-old university-professor ass, I wonder for a moment if I’ll make it back up. But I do and, side by side, we bounce to the bass, shoulders rolling, booties popping, eyes closed, hearts pumping.

I didn’t always love to dance. It’s such a constant source of joy in my life now that it would be difficult to believe if my former inhibition wasn’t so painfully vivid. The comfort in one’s body that dancing requires has been hard-earned. When I was growing up, I was a baseball player, not a ballet dancer. I was a tree climber, a pond swimmer, an avid reader, with perpetually skinned knees. My body was strong and resilient, and I felt confident inside it. For the first decade of my life, my feminist mother protected me from our culture’s darker lessons in what it means to have a female body, and I knew mine only as a source of strength.

Then my body changed.