Sweat dancing is a spontaneous participation sport endemic of wedding receptions and overcrowded rooms with high humidity and poor ventilation, with cover bands loudly blasting songs from the sweatees’ formative years.
The igniter is booze, the supreme catalyst an open bar. From it shall flow mountains of jiggles and fountains of sweat.
Sweat dancing is a growth industry, fueled by the obesity generation, and Americans would dominate this if it were an Olympic sport. I’ve circled the globe three times and trust me: Our nearest competitor, Great Britain, is miles behind.
Sweat dancers come in all sizes but the truly great are oddly shaped. Men are round, sometimes with hair plugs or astroturf toupees. The best middle-aged female sweat dancers are perplexingly engineered inside a too‐small dress challenged to reshape roundness into a theoretically hotter state of chunkiness. Waddlers of both sexes tend to sweat brilliantly.
Why sweat dancing exists in such rampant numbers—the USA has millions of masterful sweat dancers—I do not know. For all the energy and effort it takes to create puddles of river sweat, participants could easily run a 10K footrace. But they won’t run a 10K footrace. They are allergic to running; but they will flail for hours to inexpensive cover bands loudly playing KC and the Sunshine Band.
At wedding receptions of basketball players, sweat dancers are tall. At horse tracks, post-race parties with sweat dancers come in two sizes, small and XXL; the XXLs are 3:5 favorites to dominate. Regardless of the venue, the very best sweat dancers have jumbo sweat glands on their forehead with vascular tubing watersprinkling their thorax and armpits.
Alcohol, surprisingly, is an enabler but not a requirement. Another enabler is the band. If someone—anyone—can lustily blow a trumpet loudly for very little pay, white people will shake and quake. It is also important for the band’s drummer pound the drum loudly, like he’s trying to draw a crowd to the grand opening of a new Subway shop while his buddy walks around in a sandwich board oblivious and texting as passing motorists throw chili cheeseburgers that splat against his board, just because this is America and doing that is American.
Sweat dancers are committed to their sport and have fans, less committed sweatees who watch from the dance floor periphery with a bent‐elbow cocktail in hand.
If the observer is a man, his other hand is deep in his pocket counting loose change or checking his manhood inventory. Women who watch smile a lot, which lures in male sweatees. If the women are attractive (and 93 percent appear to be during booze fueled sweat dances), this is about as hard as attracting a sparrow to an overflowing feeder. If they are unattractive, it’s like trying to pack an elephant inside a Volkswagen.
Sweat dancing men grin non‐stop, too. They have to; it’s their only move, and it’s a relevant move since sweat dancing women gyrate in a sexually suggestive manner and men like that. They like it a WHOLE LOT. Men overheat instantly and sweat like a turned on spigot when a woman dances teasingly with another woman. Male sweat dancers who see this dance faster and count their change mid-song, even if singing loudly off-key and word for word to “Shake Your Booty.”
The best male sweat dancers diet on Krispy Kreme donuts and beer and have a lot of body hair. The best female sweat dancers are those who don’t get out much.
The greatest joy for every devout sweat dancer is the thick of the scrum, broiling in the elbow-to-elbow, bunions-be-damned bumper cars of a crowded dance floor. A truly great sweat dancer shows commitment and a devil-be-damned determination to share his or her sweatiest moves with expressive vigor. He or she has but two great sorrows: break time for the band and YouTube replays.
I know this because I am in New Orleans doing research. While doing so I counted sixty‐six pocket cents in pennies and nickels. I slyly recounted several times. Pocket math is easy when observing sweat dancers in The Big Easy. Try it and see!