My First Barn Dance

I attended my first barn dance on Saturday night. It was the event held prior to my friend Sara's wedding. Those of you who are hardcore My Masonic Apron readers might remember Sara-- I talked about her on my second ever post on this blog, which amnesiacs and the un-hardcore can read all about here.

While the wedding was beautiful and sweet, the barn dance could have gone better for us. My wife showed up in an Anthropologie dress, I showed up in a wool sport coat, shirt, tie, courderoy pants and a silver pocketwatch chain. I realized I would probably be the only person there with a pocketwatch, but I thought, as this was part of a wedding celebration, people might be wearing ties. They weren't. Not even those western bolo ties preferred by used car dealers and Kentucky-fried mayors.

Held as this event was in rural Vermont, I should have expected that our attire would be considered overdone, but not extra-tasty-crispy. It was okay, nobody made us feel out-of-place or ashamed, not even the manish-looking, probably autistic young woman in filthy jeans and a repair-shop sweatshirt who kept fondling our dog throughout the party. Oh, yes-- Finley was there as an invited canine guest. He cowered under the table and chewed vigorously on a goat bone.

Yes, there was shish-ka-goat.

Now that I have experienced my first barn dance, I feel like I should impart some of my accrued wisdom to you, in case you happen to be invited to one and you don't know what to wear or how to act. It is my hope that, if some lost Googler out there types in the boolean phrases "barn dance" and "etiquette" they'll be directed here first. So now, without further ado, y'all, My Masonic Apron presents:

So, It's Your First Barn Dance

1.) Leave the Anthropologie clothes and sport coats at home.

Trust me, you will be much happier and much more comfortable in a pair of Carharts and a blue denim work shirt. Boots are preferable to shoes, with or without slatherings of animal feces.

2.) If you see a cooler, do NOT open it.

It may not contain cans of soda like you think. It may contain a half-eviscerated goat carcass.

3.) If something is pleasing to you, do NOT clap.

At a barn dance, if a "speech" is made or if you like the band, screaming and howling is the preferred method of approbation. Clapping is a sure-fire way to instantly feel gay.

4.) Gender is NOT to be assumed.

When square-dancing with children of indiscrimate age and gender, do not presume that the "lady swingin' to the left" is actually a lady-- it may just be a beautiful-looking, awkwardly-proportioned boy with mounds of angelic blond curls. To be certain you will not give offense, refer to all guests as "Hey!"

5.) Square-dancing is NOT for novices.

I don't know how one learns how to square-dance, but it isn't at a square-dance. And it especially isn't at a square-dance where the caller is a sixty-year-old drunk woman.

6.) There's always another party going on nearby.

Bored with the festivities inside the barn? Take a walk outside by the cornfield and you'll spot several other tertiary parties going on in full swing-- like the one inside the bed of the tan Chevy Silverado where two or three buds might be sitting in lawn chairs drinkin' cold ones and smokin' cee-gars. Someone might even be getting high inside the port-a-potty. And there's always a game of horse-shoes going on, which is especially engaging to watch because the participants are all very far gone.

7.) Expect the unexpected. Facial hair.

Steel yourself for the very real possibility that you might have to engage in conversation with a young man whose face bears Civil War-era sideburns and a walrus mustache. You may even encouter a gentleman with a beard that doesn't connect to either sideburns or mustache, it sort of just hangs there in liminal space, like a neutron star.

8.) Your hamburger has a name.

People in Vermont are very proud of the food that they grow, kill, cook and serve. Get to know a little bit about the animal which you are about to consume. It had a story, a personality and, yes, a name. So, learn a little-- it makes dining a much more personal experience.

9.) You will want to take the children home.

While most of the adults are dubious-looking at best, the children are beyond adorable, even the ones of indeterminate gender. But remember, you can't take them home with you-- their real parents need them to fetch beers from the fridge and goat bits from the cooler.

And, of course,

10.) It's your first barn dance, and you're going to look like an asshole.

Don't worry about that, though. There's always your second barn dance.

My Friend the Farmer

Being a blogger, I tend to spend a lot of time talking about myself.

And I guess that's okay, however, sometimes it's nice to spread the wealth around a little bit. With that in mind, I thought I would spend some time today talking about my friend, Sara.

Well, I guess I'll talk a little bit about me, too.

Mrs. Apron and I just got back from a weekend in rural Vermont where we visited Sara in the rustic, half-finished home she is building with her longtime boyfriend. By "half-finished" I mean, "they just put on a bathroom door for us a couple hours prior to our arrival." That arrival was 11:58pm on Friday night, after getting in the car at 5:19pm.

Last year, we spent 5 days at Sara's over Christmas, which none of us celebrate. Sara's boyfriend does, though, and it was fun eating a Christmas goose for the first, and probably the last time ever. This visit was prompted by the fact that Sara was starring in a community theatre production. Though we drove the longest, we were by no means the only nutjobs who schlepped 330 miles to see a play produced in a converted barn. Two of her friends from college came over, the one from upstate drove 2.5 hours and the one from New York drove 5 hours. Sara's parents came up, too, but they don't really count because her mom flew, and because they're her parents.

Sara's being in a play, as you can speculate from the vast distances people covered in order that they might see it, is an event itself. This was her first onstage appearance since 1997. She and I acted in shows together in high school, and we were quite close. Sara, under the moniker of Margaret Hyland in a totally inappropriate play for high schoolers called The Rope Dancers, was, in fact, my first kiss-- and I was hers. She was also my first slap-- I clocked her across the face pretty goddamn hard during that show. This was before we were fully introduced to stage combat.

This, by the way, is what happens when high school students are allowed to direct themselves.

A side-note about The Rope Dancers: I've said that this play was inappropriate for high-schoolers. We, as high-schoolers, didn't know it, though. The play concerned the plight of an Irish Catholic immigrant couple, James & Margaret Hyland, who moved to New York City at the turn-of-the-century. Their daughter, Lizzie, was conceived whilst James was drunk and had already fucked a prostitute earlier that evening, came home (to quote Margaret "still wet with the whore"), and had forced himself on his wife. Lizzie was born with a sixth finger on one of her hands, which Margaret believed was a punishment from God. During the course of the play, Margaret tries to hang herself, James smashes her across the face, Margaret lies down on the floor and spreads her legs, Margaret shoves Lizzie's sixth finger into her own mouth, a Jewish doctor cuts the offending digit off, and Lizzie dies.

Now you know why high schools do Our Town.

I always thought Sara was a shockingly talented actress, and not just for the insane shit she did with/to me in The Rope Dancers. Her talent was a ferocious kind, it was passionate and intense, never waning or compromising. But Sara had other interests. Primarily: shit and the animals who made it.

Back in high school, Sara always smelled like shit. Her car smelled like shit. So did her hair and her clothes and her aura. When she wasn't at home or on stage, she was shoveling copious amounts of horse shit at the farm where she rode, volunteered and later worked. She went to Cornell and became an Ag major, which is a polite name for people who enjoy shoveling and smelling like shit. She voiced her unremitting desire to, upon graduation, become a farmer-- much to the chagrin of her affluent and highly conservative Jewish parents.

They didn't take it well.

In spite of their objections, that's exactly what she did. Today, this Jewish girl from suburban Philadelphia sells fresh eggs, yogurt, yogurt cheese, raw milk, and grass-fed beef to drive-by customers. Sometimes, she even sells pork. And, yes, she still gets to shovel shit-- thanks to her twenty-odd cows.

A small, white painted sign that's as unassuming as she is reading, "Fresh Eggs and Milk for Sale" is just about the only advertising she can bring herself to do. Not much of a businesswoman, we witnessed her tell prospective customers that they could "get raw milk closer to where you live from another vendor." And so falls another stereotype about Jews.

As I stood next to Sara's father, watching her drive a tractor that was stabbing a load of hay with an enormous spear, I watched him smile, and it made me smile, too. I think he's still probably more or less a little shell-shocked at what has happened to his daughter, but this is a natural thing-- a thing that was bound to happen. Her on a tractor driving through a field of mud and shit is certainly no less natural than her pretending to be an Irish Catholic woman with a disordered brain. The Sara on the tractor isn't pretending, not for you, or me, or anybody. And I think her father is finally coming around to the idea that this is not a phase or an act. This is his daughter, who always, and who will always smell like shit. And like it.

By the way, the play we drove all that way to see was wonderful-- and she was heads above her castmates. Even though she probably should be a little rusty.