Jay Gatsby Would Have Lived Longer if He Had Learned to Tango

Jay Gatsby would have lived longer if he had learned to tango.

It is Sunday night, Labor Day weekend, and the marble pavilion at Cheesman Park is lit like a fairy barge, floating in a pool of blue-white light. This is the light of enchantment, the pure distillation of the three-quarter moon.

Imagine Gatsby.

He stands on the grassy slope beyond the pavilion, outside the reach of its glow, looking on, feeling inadequate and common. He hails from the midwest. He looks like the young Robert Redford.

In the fey light, beautiful people are mingling, dipping and flowing in intricate patterns. The men are dashing, the women light and graceful as orchids. Music pours over them, at once exotic and haunting, mournful and seductive. The effect is profuse, lush and procreant as a Latin jungle.

Shane and I run trippingly across the dark lawn, across the apron with its twin fountains, up the marble stairs and into the light. It is lush and beautiful and we are beautiful in it.

Gatsby sees this: Common people transformed as they ascend the marble steps.

Gatsby throws off his coat and loosens his tie. He bounds up the steps, eager to step into the polished light.

Shane vanishes and Gatsby catches me up in a close embrace. I disapprove, but I don’t let him know it. I let him tread on my feet, and I tell him he’s perfect.

Bred of farmers and lumberjacks and sailors and laborers and marauding industrialists, Gatsby has much to forget to realize his vision of grace. The steps are only the means to this end.

Now he is dancing, now he is convinced of his own beauty.

At last, tired and thirsty, Gatsby steps off the back side of the pavilion and into the potluck. There are long tables covered with food. Coolers with bottled drinks. Red-checked cloths, fake flower centerpieces and candles. Paper plates and plastic forks, paper napkins, plastic cups. All in the dark under the three-quarter moon.

In the reflected glow of the pavilion, Gatsby takes up a plate and forgives himself for loving the coleslaw.