Dancing in the Dark

This story is by Jess Gardner and was part of our 2024 Fall Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here.

The director of the unexceptional MBA program that I muddled through was appalled when I disclosed the scrawny details of my job offer. It was 1982 during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. I didn’t have the backbone to tell him that I was pursuing a girl I had been dating named Carol rather than a career. I had limited my search to Baltimore, and it was the only job I could find.

My parents hosted a small going away party for me the night before I left, and I remember a blue rinse church lady saying, “Skipper (my grandparent’s name for me) I hear you are a moving somewheres way up North like to Richmond!” I explained that I was actually moving to Baltimore, and she appeared faint and muttered, “Lawsa mercy!” while fanning away my terrifying response with a tissue.

The next morning daddy asked me, “Are excited about your adventure? No one in the family has wandered this far from home before.” I lied and said, “You bet!” as I hopped into the car. I departed in a half paid for, mostly empty, yellow and rust pocked Toyota wagon. The dual blessing of summer jobs in the paper mill that paid union wages and in-state tuition had enabled me to graduate debt free with two degrees. Still, I was flat broke, and the baby banker job I accepted only paid a paltry $15,000 a year. That was less than I could have made at the mill. Had I wasted six years and all that tuition I wondered as I drove north? I was surrendering the southern small-town dream of owning an F-150, a hunting dog, and a bass boat. All for a city girl.

Baltimore is a quirky place for a newcomer to navigate. I got lost and confused many times before I cracked the city’s pronunciation code. I got the Where did you go to school? question on my first day of work.  I answered with the name of my university and received the incredulous response of No, I meant your high school! And the inquisitor looked at me like I was the weird person in the conversation. I was out of my element. Carol and her family were the only people I knew but I survived, soldiered on and eventually proposed. Well sort of.  We were sitting in my car in front of her parent’s house.

Are you ready to get married? Yes, are you? Sure, I think so.

We made plans to marry soon. She lived with her parents, and I rented a room across the street from a neighbor to save money. My landlord was a sweet but eccentric and nosy, old German lady. I felt like a prisoner and learned the painful lesson that the cheap solution isn’t always the right answer. I had sold my independence for a couple of hundred bucks a month.

My job as a Credit Analyst trainee was at a small bank whose lineage went back to the birth of the railroads and a time when Baltimore was a hub of commerce. The institution was a dinosaur fossilizing in place and its headquarters was a squat dowager in the heart of the nostalgic central business district.

The Credit Department was forgotten in the basement where the enormous vault hid. I sat at a desk, Cratchit like, outside its maw with a handful of other Dickensian apprentices and clerks.  I learned a lot, but never understood Baltimore’s culture of moneyed families that ran and worked at the bank. I met many people with names like Bunny, Chip, Beanie, Missy, Trey and Trip. I heard the reverent conversations about Loyola vs. Calvert Hall, and other high schools. I had grown up in the world of Bubba, Booger and Gone with the Wind names like Melanie and Ashley. I was an unsophisticated Southerner, and these were the privileged class of Baltimore. I felt lost, underpaid, and restless.

Man, I’m just tired and bored with myself.

Then I moved out of the neighbor’s house and into the un-air-conditioned upstairs of an old bungalow. The plan was that we would live there after we were married and save money to buy a house. Carol’s great aunt owned the house and lived downstairs and there wasn’t a private entrance. Apparently, I still valued cheap over smart. One weekend, Carol’s family descended on the apartment to clean it, paint it and renovate the kitchen. I was suffocating, and that was before I volunteered to paint the closets, which I did with the doors closed. I settled in and life seemed better than in my one room cell. For a time….

You sit around getting’ older

There’s a joke here somewhere and it’s on me

I’ll shake this world off my shoulders

Come on, baby, the laugh’s on me

In the summer I laid in bed sweating, listening to revelers rolling out of the murky corner bar late at night. The noises were usually festive, sometimes angry, and once sounded murderous.  The apartment was walking distance from another bar, Jerry’s, which was rated as the “Smokiest Bar” in Baltimore at the time. The owner was a close friend of Carol’s father, and the place was a riot. Their $2 large tumbler of vodka with a squeeze of lime and a splash of tonic was a frugal drinker’s refuge. But it wasn’t enough. I was considering reverting to smoking pot.

Man, I ain’t getting’ nowhere. I’m just living in a dump like this. There’s somethin’ happenin’ somewhere.

Then it happened. My little world started falling apart. I succumbed to a fit of relationship insanity. I began confiding my anxieties about getting married, living in Baltimore and my dead-end career with a dodgy female co-worker. You deserve so much more she cooed over beers on the slippery slope of a clandestine lunch one day.

Hey there, baby, I could use just a little help

You can’t start a fire without a spark.

I broke off the engagement a mere six weeks before the wedding. The invitations were addressed and on the verge of being mailed. It was awful. Oh, and I had borrowed money from Carol’s parents to buy the engagement ring. Her mom told me she felt like someone had died. I had bought into the twisted logic of a Cheryl Crow song:

If it makes you happy
It can’t be that bad

Wrong! Man was it bad, despite the addictive high I got from the adventure of living on the edge. I tried to focus on my job, but I was lost in a distant land, squandering money I didn’t have, chasing foolish fantasies. I considered retreating back home to Virginia and interviewed with a bank in Richmond.  I had started a wildfire of emotional adultery that I couldn’t put out.

By now I was assigned to the commercial real estate department at the bank, and they sent me away to a week of training. It was a lonely time of attending class, studying and wallowing in the new phenomenon of MTV. I couldn’t afford cable TV. It was the summer of 1984 and it seemed like Dancing in the Dark played at least once an hour. It became my song. I would stand in front of the TV mesmerized, daydreaming, and dancing.

Messages keeps getting’ clearer.

Radio’s on and I’m movin’ ‘round my place

I check my look in the mirror

Wanna change my clothes, my hair my face.

Man, I ain’t getting’ nowhere

I don’t know what triggered the change but mercifully my sanity slowly began to return. One Saturday, Carol and I drove the complete circuit of the Beltway and talked. And talked. We ended up at Jerry’s, and I confessed to my stupidity and asked for a second chance. She acquiesced. It still took time, tears, and anger but we persevered. Love is a powerful healing force when combined with forgiveness. A job change lifted my spirits and gave me the time and distance from my coworker that I needed to recover.

The Boss told my story with Dancing in the Dark while Sting, years later, provided a warning to others who might make a similar mistake.

It could happen to you, just like it happened to me.

There’s simply no immunity, there’s no guarantee.

And he cast hope of a new day.

I wonder if she will take me back.

I’m thinking in a brand new way

My second proposal was far more intimate than the front seat of a car first proposal. We had a romantic dinner at a hip restaurant which has since faded from existence. It was Valentine’s Day on a Friday night, and there were snow flurries. I knelt on the damp sidewalk and asked Carol to marry me. She said yes! I will cherish that moment in my heart forever when we got our second chance.