The Topography of Joy

Joy has a texture. It appears out of nowhere, like those bumps on the road that keep you from falling asleep. Rumble strips. Along every highway, just past the white line. Joy’s there too. It will startle you awake when you’ve been doing the same thing for far too long.

I am thinking of the dance floor. How I would ask some perfectly nice boy to the prom and then use any excuse to dash to the bathroom, powder my nose, or leave the country altogether rather than dance with him. I spent a lot of time stalling in the stalls. Blame the slow songs, which slogged on for three, four, five minutes, good lord. To this day, if I hear the opening chords to “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” I’ll make a break for the commode. Back then I didn’t know why I felt like fleeing. What’s wrong with me? I wondered. Just dance with him. Just lay your head on his shoulder. Just kiss him goodnight. Instead, I sat there waiting out the final chorus of an Aerosmith song in my big tulle dress. You might say I was missing a thing.

This is why joy shakes the car. This is why ten years later, at a wedding with my girlfriend, I insisted on dancing a blue streak. I had acres of dance floor to reclaim, years of rug-cutting, cha-cha-cha-ing, and swaying to catch up on. I waited all night for a slow song and when it finally came, I held my sweet girl tight.

The opposite of joy isn’t pain, then, but a certain kind of dullness. It’s a box of raisins when you want a popsicle. A B+. A Tuesday. A penny with the face rubbed off. All the while, you have this sense that there’s more out there. As I gazed across the garlands and the couples, the punch bowl and the disco ball, even the teachers chatting two by two in the bleachers, I sensed there was something everyone else had agreed upon, something worth celebrating. I asked my friend Emma to drive me home so that my date wouldn’t try to kiss me at the front door. There, that’s what I mean. I knew there was such a thing as a kiss at the front door, but I couldn’t put my finger on why you might want one.

The song that finally got me out of the bathroom was “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.” It was too big to ignore. Too loud. Too right. I wanna dance with somebody, Whitney sang, with somebody who loves me. Suddenly that feeling I’d wedged between the toilet and the sink began to rattle and shake. It was joy. And it has led me here.