I can play things by ear or be there on time. I adapt when things don’t go my way. If we make a plan and you have to cancel, I can work with that. I just don’t like to be left hanging. If we’re talking about getting together and I’m stuck in neutral waiting to hear go, I get pissy. It’s who I am. I’ve broken up with friends who do this to me. So I blew off a date the other night with a gentleman who couldn’t figure out when he he might be available on the evening in question…because I don’t like getting pissy.
Instead I had drinks with a friend, dropped in for dinner at a restaurant where another friend was working, and then noticed in my facebook feed that another friend’s band is playing a “dance party” just around the corner. The last time I went to a dance party my date was gay and I was overdressed. Venue? The junior high gymnasium. It turns out things don’t change all that much, at least not for me.
I walk into this loft space in SoHo and all these dancers, trained, professional looking dancers, are rolling over each others backs and catching each others momentum in a way that looks both improvised and conceptualized. A man walks over to me in my open toe stilettos and fancy ass-jeans and says, “So…you’re with the band?” Overdressed, check; attractive gay men not dancing with me, check. I say, “I guess I don’t really know what this is.” He shrugs and says, “I don’t know either.” I peek around the curtain and see my friend and his band. They’re playing in response to the dancers who are dancing in response to the music. It’s a captivating conundrum. So I sit down and watch, for two hours.
It was like Fame had a wet dream. Well that’s what I thought at first. I imagined it as akin to the ideal orgy: so much physical facility and uninhibited movement from one body to another, and another…so much attention focused on serving the movement of another or launching with its support or spinning off its informed flow. But after sitting there for an hour or so I thought, “No, this is how children should play.” Because these bodies came together and flew apart without prejudice or self-interest.
I was in such a good mood when I left that I smiled at the little old man in the crisp Hawaiian shirt begging change off the tourists in front of the Mercer Hotel. As I passed he hobbled my way and whispered, “You bend over, I’ll do the rest.” My heart was so full of peace, I refrained from taking the cane from his hand and giving him the beat down he deserved.
