Just Like The Wind (Chapter 2)

Oh those who can dance, how I envy you. You move your high heels to the rhythym, your hands always know where to go. Your arms, nothing like the wet spaghetti so dreaded by Patrick Swayze. You spin, again, again, again, and eight more times, never once stumbling from diziness. You relinquish control of decision making, and yet, you are not a passive lump of clay. You are active, engaged, filled with passion and expression.

Okay. . I'll put that out of it's misery. . forgive my attempt at being poetic. . while it's not early, I went to bed late.

Point being, there are some people here in this town who can dance, Mexicans and gringas and Japanese alike. The grinding and booty shaking that people do all over the world, that's not as hard as I once thought it was. Ballroom dancing, salsa. . that's a challenge.

We had some great conversations at the Cuba Mia (the Salsa Bar) last night. . mostly in Spanish, occasionally in English. We talked politics, we talked about how to tell people from different countries apart, we talked beer. And then some of our other teachers came into the bar and we went to join them. This is when the music got loud, the talking stopped, and the dancing started. So we all danced a little, but mostly we watched the almost professionals. There were about 6 or 7 people who I was just enamored with. They all kept switching around with each other (I think several of them teach salsa at this place). It was awesome too, since the guys even danced with the guys. . which were probably the best dances of the night. They were imaginative yet controlled. I really did feel like I was watching Dirty Dancing.

And speaking of Dirty Dancing, at one point during the night, I made eyes with one of the 'professionals' (as I like to call them). We exchanged smiles and, just as my group was getting ready to leave (at like, oh 3:30), he came up and asked me to dance. We danced. . well, he danced and I stumbled. But he was a good teacher, good at controling my direction, good at helping me feel the music, good at not letting me leave to join my group, and by our third dance, I think I was feeling it a little more. He was not modest, he knew he was amazing. I felt like this lump of clay that he was molding. . . I felt like his project. This was all augmented by his not so subtle attempts to charm me: he would not speak to me in Spanish, he tried to figure out how long I was in town, he tried to make me feel special (just like I'm sure he did to the girl who was here last week). It was not important that he was almost certainly gay. It was a harmless game and I was loving it. So after two and a half glorious dances, my friends finally came up to get me and I was reluctantly pulled out of my eighties fantasy. Just call me Baby.