5-8: “I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can

My friend Elizabeth has with me since the beginning of this blog, and she’s just had a birthday. For her birthday, I’m taking her somewhere secret. It’s Mrs. G’s birthday too, and she, Blair and Jo are coming with us. Along the way, we’ll discuss sex work and slut shaming and prudishness.

Tootie and Natalie beg Jo for one teeny weeny hint as to where we’re all going tonight. Jo: “It’s a place.”

But Tootie and Natalie are too good, and Jo relents. We’re going to Wedgewood’s!

SHHHHHHHHHH! Don’t tell Mrs. G or Elizabeth!

Don’t feel bad. Tootie doesn’t know what Wedgewood’s is either. Natalie: “It’s a male strip joint. We could see things there that’ll trigger hormones we never knew we had.”

SLUT SHAMING! There are so many things wrong with Tootie thinking this is at all scandalous. I’m sure Mrs. G has seen a naked man or two in her life. She has kids, after all. Jo insists that it was Blair’s idea, and she is just going along to make sure no one gets arrested. Oh please. It’s so much less dramatic than all that. When I lived in Houston I put a dancer through chiropractic school. I wonder what happened to ol’ Lex/Marty?

My girl Natalie, of course, is very matter of fact about the whole thing.

Enter Mrs. G, and Natalie and Tootie delightedly deliver her the gift they got her. She fawns over the paper and the wrapping job, and when she starts slowly pulling off each individual piece of tape. Natalie can’t even.

Mrs. G: “Oh what a lovely box!”

She opens it before Natalie can jump in again.

“Quiche me, you fool!” That’s pretty cute.

Oh, hi Blair and Blair’s boyfriend!

I am very nearly certain that this is the first time we meet Cliff. His card thanks Mrs. G for all the free lunches, so he and Blair must’ve been dating for a minute or two. Yes, he brought a card for Mrs. G! And a rose! Isn’t he perrrrrrrrfect? Blair thinks so.

Cliff, by the way, is in medical school. A freshman dating a med student seems kind of ick. He comments that it’s expensive, but when he becomes a doctor, they’re going to be rich. Gross. I don’t think I like this guy.

He mentions that Blair won’t tell him where they’re taking Mrs. G for her birthday, giving Natalie a chance to gloat that she and Tootie know and they won’t tell. Cliff laments that he can’t be there (did anyone invite him?) because he has to study all night.

On his way out, he says, “Bye, Monkey,” to Blair, leaving the girls to comment how head over heels she must be for him to allow those kinds of pet names. Blair even blushes! Blair doesn’t blush!

Much is made of how Cliff isn’t her type. Notably, he’s a broke med student who doesn’t have a car so he rides the bus. Blair: “Isn’t that cute?” Hay I ride the bus. Maybe I can get in on some of that Blair action.

Jo comments that he seems too perfect; there must be something wrong with him. Is there? I wonder. [Spoiler: there’s absolutely nothing wrong with him, but in our puritanical hell of 1983, he’s just the worst.]

Cut to:

Give Charlotte Rae an Emmy for nailing the “Well, isn’t this awkward?” smile.

Back at home, Blair is devastated, Jo is annoyed, and Mrs. G is drunk. Tootie and Natalie bound downstairs demanding to know all the details. It doesn’t take them long to figure out that something is up, and while Jo and Mrs. G try to deflect, Blair is ready to go all out with it.

She goes into a tirade with all the go-to criticisms against sex work, and I’m not too impressed with her. I get being frustrated that your significant other withheld that information; indeed outright lied by saying he’d be studying all night. And no one is required to date a sex worker; if that is a deal-breaker, that’s fine, same as it’s a deal-breaker for me if someone has or wants kids; same as it apparently was a deal-breaker for my ex-husband when I decided I didn’t want to practice law.

But spare me the fucking judgment and the attitude that the way this person makes their living is somehow objectively wrong.

OK, it’s fine for Blair to be hurt that he didn’t tell her. (“When were you going to tell me? When I introduced you to one of my mother’s friends and she said, “Why, Dr. Love! I didn’t recognize you with your clothes on!”) But her “Don’t you feel dirty” bullshit is unacceptable. Cliff defends his choice: dancing makes him enough money in little enough time to allow him to study. She snarks some more, and he refuses to apologize for anything other than lying to her. She says his apology isn’t good enough, but she doesn’t know what else she wants from him, and holy shit I didn’t expect this episode to hit me so hard in the gut with all that.

Cliff: “If you made a mistake, even a big one, I wouldn’t throw you out.”

That’s not…that’s not a realistic thing to say. Not all “mistakes” are the same. Sometimes you don’t know what you can’t tolerate until you’re asked to tolerate it.

The next day, Blair wanders around the house, looking for something to do. She was supposed to go a gallery opening with Cliff. Jo: “Oh yeah, don’t want to take a chance of running into that creep.”

Mrs. G tells Jo to give it a rest, but Jo can’t resist. “He was stripping up there in front of all those screaming women!”

Mrs. G: “Yes. We were screaming pretty good there, weren’t we.”

Jo continues to be a bitch, insisting that “it’s different,” and that Blair shouldn’t be confused; Cliff is just a bad guy who deserves to be shunned and that’s it. Mrs. G points out that it’s Blair’s relationship and it’s only up to her to figure out what she can live with and what she can’t.

Jo: “Well how would you feel if you found out your boyfriend was a stripper?”
Mrs. G:

Jo declares that she couldn’t live with it, and Mrs. G wisely points out that she doesn’t have to. Jo snots some more, and the doorbell rings. Who could it possibly be?

Oh hay, he’s been thinking, and he wants to talk. Blair wants to talk too. And they’re together later in the season so I guess they work it out, but we never find out how and whether he continues dancing. If he quit because she shamed him, and that made his life harder, that sucks. If he quit because he was a shitty dancer, that’s a decision I can support.

So, Elizabeth, I’m sorry that our evening out with the girls for the birthday celebrations got so dramatic. Maybe by next year I’ll have figured out how to make a gif so I can show you just how shitty Cliff’s dancing is.