Comb-Overs and Coy Glances at a Senior Prom

It’s a little like being in school again. Girls sit demurely against the wall, shy boys shuffle up to ask for a dance.

Some are really struggling. Their faces scrunch in concentration and you can almost hear them counting to themselves--”one, two, three, oops”--as they mangle a simple box step.

Others respond to the music as if invisible chains are falling off their limbs. They are weightless, they are transported. They are dancing.

I am sitting against a far wall, fascinated by what I see, but trying not to look conspicuous. I have been gently instructed not to accept an invitation to dance (it wouldn’t be fair to the other girls).

So when he leans down and reaches for my hand, I am honor-bound to refuse.

“Ach,” he shrugs. “You women! A dime a bushel, but no one wants to dance with me. I’m not crazy.”

Well, yes and no. No one will dance with him because he is, as one woman puts it, “a mental case.” Each one he approaches shrinks back and shakes her head. When he begins making a stink about it, he is ejected from the premises. Just like high school.

Except it isn’t school. And these aren’t teenagers. They are grandparents and great-grandparents, members of the Culver City Senior Center. The youngest are in their late 60s, the oldest approaching the century mark.

And the band is playing swing.

They dance to remember their pasts, to recapture their youth. They dance because it feels better than sitting. I look at them, with their comb-overs and their coy glances, and can’t help but see the future.

As I sit on the hard linoleum under the bad fluorescent lights, it doesn’t look half bad. Still, I can’t quite picture a scene that includes me, the frug and “Light My Fire” in the year 2045.

*

In the back row of the band, cheeks puffed out on second trumpet, is a man with whom I have danced all my life.

My father, on the eve of retirement, has taken up his trumpet again, and with a passion. This band, the Melody Masters, is one of several to which he belongs. In exchange for free rehearsal space, the Melody Masters play a free gig each month for the seniors.

These songs--”The More I See You,” “Pennsylvania 6-5000,” “The Sunny Side of the Street”--are part of the soundtrack of my childhood--and it’s sweet to witness the return of my father’s long-rusty chops.

There are perhaps 15 players--on trombone, trumpet, piano, guitar and drums. Most of them are gray too. Like my dad, they are professionals in the twilights of their careers--semiretired architect Jerry Caris launched the band--and here is a pressure-free way to rekindle a love for music.

The talent level is uneven, I am told, but the band sounds great to me.

What do I know?

A dancer looks at me sourly as I clap after “New York, New York.” He shakes his head.

“They’re outta tune,” he says. “But whaddya want for nothin’?”

“How old was he?” my 66-year-old father asks later.

“Ninety-four,” I reply.

“Maybe he’s the one who’s out of tune.”

*

What’s amazing, and unexpected, is the friskiness of this crowd.

A man with a dark pencil mustache wanders over.

“You want to go over here and see the people?” he asks me, tapping a flier for a dance later in the month.

“Oh, gee,” I say, realizing I am being hit on by a man who was entering middle age on the day of my birth, “I don’t think my husband would approve.”

He looks at me with disdain. I have just wasted one of his increasingly valuable minutes. He taps my shoulder lightly but dismissively: “See ya later in that case.”

There is no doubt that Saul and Sylvia Stuppler, who say they took first place among 400 couples in a Lindy Hop contest at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, have eyes for only each other. On their next birthdays, Saul turns 80 and Sylvia, 75.

I’m revealing to them my own angst at the prospect of turning 40. Ridiculous, Saul says. Age is in your head, “justa buncha numbers.” Old age, he says, is full of bonuses.

As the Melody Masters strike up a mambo, Saul and Sylvia drift away, but he slinks back to whisper something in my ear.

“She’s still a great lover!” he says. Then, with a big grin, he raises his arms, snaps his fingers and bellows: “ Bo -nuses!”

As they danced away from me, I think I saw Sylvia swivel her hips.

* Robin Abcarian’s column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Readers may write to her at the Los Angeles Times, Life & Style, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053. Send e-mail to HBZK23A@prodigy.com.