salsa and conversations.
in Funny Stuff, Thoughts and Feelings
as bathroom, courage, dancer, dancing, Dang, different times, facebook friends, first names, harlem, kind, muscles, perfect sense, salsa, tonight, universal law, way, what the heck, whomever
Tonight was three parts magic and one part groping.
But the magic of beautiful friends and salsa dancing far outweighs the minor groping that occurred.
I think I danced for over four hours straight. Save for the many trips to the bathroom I took in order to stop dancing with whatever partner I was trying to gracefully get away from at the time.
“You know you can just say ‘don’t do that’ to whomever is dancing with you,” said each of my friends with me tonight, in varying words and at different times.
Or I can just go to the bathroom.
A lot.
“Would you like to be facebook friends?” one guy asked me, literally mid-dip. Which is a rather calculated time to ask, I think, considering if he doesn’t like the answer, he could just drop me. In fact, one guy almost did, and then proceeded to say “just kidding!” over and over again. Judging from the way his muscles were quivering, working so hard to just hold me up, though, I am pretty sure it wasn’t really a joke.
Oh, but the facebook friend request mid-dip.
I politely declined.
And then went to the bathroom.
Another guy offered to put a GPS in me. “Cause you’re a dancer in the city,” he told me. “I can protect you.”
Which makes perfect sense.
While you’re installing the GPS in me, why don’t we tell each other our first names? Since I’m gonna be your little helpless pet and all, you should at least know my name.
But I actually met a kind of somewhat normal seeming guy tonight.
Normal-seeming.
Ha.
Aside from being terrible English, what the heck does that even mean?
Well, I guess he didn’t offer to install a GPS in me and he didn’t try to grope me.
I know, what a prince.
But he is here getting his master’s degree in public law. Or universal law. Or something about law. Basically, he seems like he must have at least half a brain.
He lives in Harlem, too, so I told him that I had just been there for the first time this week.
“Great!” he said. “What were you doing in Harlem?”
“Taking a class,” I answered, somewhat evasively.
“What class?” he asked.
“…Um…Pole-dancing…” and then I explained that it’s a fun class and I normally do concert dance and blah blah blah why’d I have to mention that I’d been to Harlem at all?
When he asked for my number, I gave it to him. Like I said, he seemed sort of decent and all that.
“But I am not dating anyone right now–on purpose, I mean. I am not looking to date.”
“I’d still happily take your number,” he said.
Who knows, maybe I’ll regret it, like countless times before.
Or maybe not, I guess.
Scintillating debate, I know.
“Since you’ve already been through just about the worst thing you could imagine,” one friend said to me tonight, “What are you still afraid of?”
She asked this with kindness in her voice. It was the kind of question your teacher might ask you when she knows you know the answer, but it would do everyone a world of good just to hear it out loud anyway.
“I guess getting hurt again.”
“But you also know that there’s really nothing you can do to keep that from happening,” she pointed out.
And yep, I know this.
“And actually? I was hurt terribly, but I am okay.”
“Right,” she said. “So then, live with courage. The worst has already happened and you’re still here, still strong. Live with courage instead of fear.”
Okay, then.
No, seriously, YES.
And then I got home and talked to Betsy.
“I think I am gonna pick someone I don’t care about at all to care about.”
It had taken me all of five whole minutes to forget about living with courage, you see.
“That makes absolutely no sense, Jess.” said Bets.
“No–it does. I will pick someone I don’t care about at all to be in a relationship with–then, when he leaves or doesn’t call or whatever–I WON’T CARE. Perfect sense, see?”
“But you wouldn’t ever do that–you’d never get in a relationship with someone you don’t care about.”
Dang it all, she’s right, folks.
Dang it all.
Anyway, salsa was magical.
So are my friends, by the way.
not gonna do it. sorry.
in Funny Stuff, Thoughts and Feelings
as brother jason, business, day, diatribe, friend, God, Jason, job, one of the guys, perfect sense, record, Shane, something, ten feet
Sometimes I skip one day of blogging and my brother Jason thinks I must have died or something.
And sometimes I say something that makes perfect sense in the context of whatever it is I am talking about, but when isolated, it can sound pretty bad.
Or funny, depending upon how you look at it.
Like today, for instance.
When I was talking with Shane, telling him about a conversation I was recently party to with some friends. Basically one friend was asking another friend (who is straight, for the record) if he would engage in, uh…non-straight relations… in exchange for ten millions dollars. My friend thought about it for about half of a second before saying, Absolutely. It’s ten million dollars. Then the question was posed to another friend of mine–who again, happens to be straight–and she was like, Of course. TEN MILLION DOLLARS, FOOLS.
But when they asked me, I was all, Nope. Not now, not ever. I’ll get a job, thanks. Er, but not that job. And as I was recounting this to Shane, I was getting more and more passionate about it, telling him that God could provide for my needs without me having to get all sexy for it. And the more I got into it, the higher my voice raised, until I ended my diatribe by loudly pronouncing:
SHANE, I WILL NOT HAVE SEX FOR MONEY!!!
At which point Shane asked me if I could say it a little louder please, because the fishermen who were about ten feet away from us might not have been totally clear on what it was I was talking about.
But then again, considering the way I shouted it, they just might have been.
And can you imagine overhearing that statement, and that statement alone, between a girl and a guy just sitting and minding their business? After hearing something like that, suddenly their business just became a whole lot shadier, I suppose. Or maybe it’s his business that got shadier.
And hahahahaha, we laughed a long time about that one.
And we also laughed about how one of the guys who was fishing nearby yelled over to us, asking us what kind of sandwiches we were eating. Because, who does that? Who asks total strangers what kind of sandwiches they’re eating, like it’s their business? And it’s not that we minded telling this guy, but we just thought it was even funnier when he could barely believe that we weren’t eating something with shrooms in it.
In fact, we ran into him again a little later in the day and he asked us if we were sure those sandwiches didn’t have shrooms in them. Like we’d forgotten that they did last time he asked us, but now that we were high or something, Ohhhhh right–they did have shrooms in them, after all! I think it was really disappointing to him that they were simply filled with plain old peanut butter and nutella. Can’t please ‘em all, I guess.
Oh, and he also asked if I go to Avon Grove High School. Good one. And once he found out that I do not, he asked if I was a hair stylist.
Because I guess it has to be one or the other.
And for the record: No, I will NOT have sex for money; I stand by what I said.
