Last night I took a lot of drugs and went dancing. After I got home, I dreamt that I got home and took a lot of drugs after going dancing. Sometimes my dreams are incredibly derivative.
It's going to be a whole weekend of dancing - but not club dancing. Partner dancing - mostly salsa, my chief passion for the last four years. And the drugs are painkillers. All of which takes the plot in a far less lurid and entertaining direction than you might have hoped.
In any case, I started last night at East Hall in the Oddfellow's building with an on2 salsa class taught by Troy and Jorjet, the visiting instructors this weekend at Century Ballroom. Today at noon I take three on1 salsa classes in the U District with another visiting salsa dancer, Eli Torres.
There are classes in both venues on Sunday that I'd love to take but I have podcasting to do on location - EdwardT and I are going to a restaurant on Bainbridge Island to talk about food.
Otherwise I'd just dance all day and night. I think. My headache from Thursday night is still here 36h later. Too stubborn to miss class last night, I tanked up on my favourite painkillers, advil and tylenol, which took the pain down a notch, but left me pretty loopy and dizzy.
It's been years since I routinely had multi-day headaches. I suspect a combination of dehydration (clue-in: perpetual dry mouth and pee the color of yellow Gatorade), caffeine overdose (I've started my day three times this week with hot chocolate instead of protein), and sinus congestion combined with the barometric pressure, aka I-fucking-hate-that-that-it's-overcast-every-day-now. I'm carrying the tension of ten angry gorrillas in my neck and shoulders for some reason; maybe the gorrillas are just mad that the sun went away.
When I nearly clocked one of my favourite leads - who also happens to be the owner of the Ballroom - in the face with a stray elbow, I knew I wasn't on my best game. Then I walked down the hall to the bathroom on a break and noticed that I probably wouldn't pass your standard highway checkpoint sobriety test. For a dance that involves multiple spins and at least a modicum of balance, being able to walk in a straight line probably should be a pre-requisite
My medicated compromise wasn't a total bust: at the social dance after class, one of the leads compared dancing with me to driving a Mercedes. Apparently even on my bad days I'm still good by some people's standards. To temper any inflation of my ego, I got to see the real pros dance: watching Troy perform was sheer delight, especially since I had just caught the last fifteen minutes of Singing in the Rain, down the hall at Century's new free movie series, View and Chew. Turns out there really isn't that much difference between Gene Kelly tap dancing in a 1950s musical and elite salsa dancers doing solo footwork. Basically it's all "shines" with roots that stretch back to Africa.
I got home after the dance and dreamt I was getting home after dancing, only home was the condo where I grew up. It was no shrine to the past; more like a frat flop house, with half a dozen roommates coming and going at all hours.
I rolled into the place at 1 am and spent the next hour fielding calls and texts from salsa friends asking me to come out and dance. I begged off because I had a headache. Even in my dream I was popping little brown and white pills like candy. My roommates were consuming far more interesting recreational chemicals, ones that have acronyms and nicknames but also come with a risk of permanent brain damage. My drugs of choice primarily target internal organs, and isn't that what liver transplants are for?
The coolest part was that there was a pool out back. This would have been both awesome and pretty incongruous in reality, given that my neighbourhood was largely lower middle class and a pool of any size would have consumed the entire footprint of the back yard. It also seems like a waste, considering that even in my dream there wasn't a drop of sun in which to laze around poolside. I feel the same way about hotels with pools; it makes me sad when I don't swim in them.
Time for getting up now. And showering. And more drugs. So I can keep on dancin'.
Some dance videos for your weekend:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ejSQnAOORg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmCpOKtN8ME
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZn4-BvJxr8
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