sex on the beach, facing the cross

The title of this post is a direct quotation.  Allow me to explain.

I’ve been in Miami for 6 days and have been trying to explore the area.  This past weekend, I looked in the paper at the calendar section to see if there was anything interesting going on, and came across a dance class being held at a church Monday nights.  The ad said the class would be featuring the music of DJ Victor and all levels were welcome.  Naturally, reading such a thing as “DJ Victor,” I pictured hip hop, maybe jazz, anything funky.  Wrong.

I met Victor as he was sweeping the room before the class began.  He was about 82 years old and drooling a little bit out of the right side of his mouth.  As he explained that most people arrived late to the class, it quickly became apparent to me that he was hard of hearing, as he was really shouting at me rather than talking to me.

Enter Trudy, who I spent about half an hour arranging ice cubes, cookies, and Cheeto puffs with on little trays and in buckets.  She covered each tray with a bowl so that no men could sneak into the kitchen and eat before they were done dancing.

At this point, I have to admit, I almost left.  Actually, I almost left before the class even started, as I had arrived early and according to Victor the rest of the people wouldn’t be there for at least half an hour.  As with most things, I’m glad I stuck it out.

People filtered in and as I introduced myself and attempted to make small talk while ignoring the fact that I was the youngest in the room by at least 35 years.  I recieved multiple warnings that the teacher was a drill sergeant, that she would yell if I made a mistake, but that she was really a very good teacher.  Whatever, I thought.  I’ve had my share of being yelled at by dance teachers.

Turns out the teacher wasn’t too bad and I ended up having little to do with her as a nice guy named Bob quickly took me under his wing and taught me swing, then fox trot, and then a little bit of rumba and tango.  Who’d have ever thought I’d learn to fox trot?  Both Bob and I agreed it’s a little boring.  He said he and his dancing partner usually prefer tango, then swing, then waltz.  He was pretty excited when, after 15 years, his teacher had taught him how to pull his partner between his legs, a classic swing move.  I thought back to my days in my high school Dance Ensemble, learning ridiculous partner lifts on the fly and being paired with big football players who scared the crap out of me as a freshman.

Then we broke for snacks (Trudy begrudgingly uncovered the trays) and it was time for line dancing.  The electric slide was easy for me, although I can tell you that we do it with a little more pizzaz at camp than these people could muster.  Next was: sex on the beach!  Which is a line dance, apparently, and was actually pretty fun.  The moment of hilarity came when Trudy was calling out the name of the dance as she had been doing for all of the line dances, and which wall to face (face the wall with the clock, or face the wall with the cross), which came out, as you already know, as “sex on the beach, facing the cross.”  The women found this hilarious. I recognised one woman who was guffawing particularly loudly as the woman who had been earlier described as “the heavyset woman” by one of the older ladies.  I can’t remember the last time I heard a person describe somebody as “heavyset,” and I almost choked on my flat Diet Coke when she said it.

So that was one adventure in my Miami saga.  More to come (I hope).  Maybe tomorrow I’ll backtrack and write about everything that’s happened between camp and now… but that would be a lot to tell.

now i’m figuring it out. slowly.

I’ve had a blog for a whole week! Woo hoo. I’ve tried to write something for the past few days but not actually ended up writing anything.  That means I’ve clicked on the link in my bookmarks, looked at my blog’s 3 whole posts (or is it 4?), thought about writing, and not even tried.  One thing I’ve learned in writing classes is that you have to try. You have to physically write something down, anything, or it doesn’t count as trying.  And when you write something down, it’s a start, and usually ends up provoking something else that you like.  You can toss what you wrote in the first place, but you won’t have what you ended up with if you never started with anything.

 

I’ve been reading a blog by this girl who’s doing the Peace Corps in Mali, just so I can get an idea of what it will be like there.  I would send you the link to her blog but I’m not sure what the etiquette is like for that.  Also have been reading some blogs through blogher, where my mom works.  It’s crazy how many different things people do with blogs.  Some people seem to tell about their lives using lots of pictures and then explaining the pictures.  Some blogs are a set “100 days” or something so people can keep track of a challenge or idea.  Some people write about their art, or new music, or politics.  Here’s some more music for ya:

 

 

This was discovered by Jake, a guy I danced with in the Househedz project at school.  The song came on randomly when Micah, our DJ, was playing some stuff while Meida (choreographer) worked with us on some new material.  For the rest of rehearsal, all we could say was : and I’m Carolii-iii-iine!