During our freshman year of college, Kar3n and I would drive from the dorms to Hollywood with our friends, known as the Chrisses, every Friday night to go to Stigmata. Somewhere inside that packed Highland and Melrose club, as Smashing Pumpkins and Garbage intertwined with Soft Cell and Depeche Mode in the background, we developed a knack for bestowing nicknames upon unsuspecting patrons that we assumed we might never see again, but often did.
Take Moonwalk as an example. Moonwalk was something of an average guy: tall, but not towering; thin but not hipster-scrawny; good-looking but not the sort who might make someone gasp for breath on sight. As one might gather, Moonwalk earned his nickname from his style of dance: Jackson step; Jackson slide; Jackson pivot; Jackson push the invisible wall.
Moonwalk always arrived to clubs early, as we did, and had no fear of hitting an empty dancefloor, just like my three friends and I. But, as my friends and I stayed nearly huddled in one corner, Moonwalk would move across the floor at alternating speeds. On the night wherein we dubbed him Moonwalk, he slid across the dancefloor as I gradually danced further away from my friends, slowly losing myself to some new wave song that was just obscure enough to bar it from airplay after 11:00 p.m. Moonwalk approached me and I stopped, not really sure if he wanted to dance or if he just didn't realize where he was going and was about to run right into me. One of the Chrisses, the one with the Van Dyke and closet full of Depeche Mode t-shirts, grabbed me by the hand and pulled me towards him, chuckling in that weird "is he laughing at me or someone else" fashion that he had. He then dropped my had quickly and proceeded to make sound-effects in time to the song. That was his way.
I laughed and remarked, "That guy is a full-on moonwalker."
The name stuck. At least it stuck with me. I'm not sure if Kar3n remembers it or not and, since we haven't heard from the Chrisses in years, that is a moot point.
Over the course of the decade that followed, Moonwalk became a fixture at virtually every club I attended, always there early, always busting the same moves. Sometimes he would approach me, as he did on that first night, as part of a mute flirtation that involved every other girl he encountered on those dancefloors. He slides forward and stand for a moment. The girl's face drops with confusion. She takes a step back. He pivots and slides to the next in line, all without saying a word.
At the staple Friday night indie rocker, I sat with my brother, Estelle and her friend British Liz on barstools watching Mere Mortals play a fairly long set, remarkable mostly for an acoustic number played sometime during the show's midpoint (I think it's called "All the Rumors"). As the crowd danced to the hopscotch beat of British pop by way of Los Angeles, I saw a girl run up to Moonwalk and try to drag him towards the miniscule dancefloor. He pulled back, hesitant at first, but then followed her and went through that same pattern of steps inches from the microphone. He then walked away from the floor, dancing in the bar space toward a small group of typically indie girls. He inched closer to them and stopped.
"I'm watching to see what happens next," Estelle whispered to me.
"Nothing," I predicted. "He never goes in for the kill. It's not his style."
True to my words, nothing happened.
After the band finished, Moonwalk stood at the bar, crowding me into my stool so that I couldn't spin around to face Dave, who was rehashing the tale of how he was dragged to the dancefloor during Mere Mortals' set, when all he wanted to do was watch the band. I heard a voice to the side of me, a low, indistinctive male voice. Moonwalk was engaged in conversation! Moments later, he was out on the dancefloor with a willing partner. We were in shock, as if this deviation from club ritual was surely a sign of the apocalypse.
I suppose you could take this tale as a means of stating that every club story has a happy ending or that slight alterations in the scheme of the nightlife can drive an observer mad, but, in reality, it probably doesn't mean a damn thing. It's just something that happened, like any other night in Hollywood.