...just dance

my girls, with their hands up in the air

i remember the first time we danced. the memory comes in flashes like an old movie created from stills. it was hot and humid outside and the airconditioner wasn't making the club any cooler. i smirked when you asked me to dance. i was a 5 night a week bar star back then--and a beat snob. i was caught offguard when you found the beat and then found me within it. dancing with you was effortless. it was the only thing that was ever effortless between us.

the film pans to static and then back into focus. i'm reaching to take the outstretched hand of D one of my three best friends. There are few people in the world i love to dance with more than this beautiful man who is always late. We are standing outside in an atrium/indoor garden area in a swanky club by Durham standards. By DC standards, it's still a dive. The air outside is cool--it must be early fall. There are fairy lights. We spin easily to a slow salsa beat and laugh. It's been the same since we were sixteen. Dance, laugh, drink horrible coffee at Waffle House for hours, dance somemore in the living room.  The next time we dance will be my wedding.

Static again. I'm 13. There's a stage and a huge crowd and the rest of Workshop is getting ready to go on. I have no idea where i am other than somewhere in BC, Canada. The music cues and the adrenaline takes over. At the end, i have no idea if i got the steps right. It doesn't matter. People's eyes are welling with tears from this dance racism being a learned behavior. For the first time, I realize the power of dance to move souls.

More static. It's the middle east and a friend is teaching a salsa class. I haven't been before--I've been boycotting dance because i miss D and i'm not willing to go to the place in my heart dance holds. I'm scared i'll feel empty without it. People are counting--trying to make the music conform to the steps. It's painful. The movie in a movie of my life flashes to learning to dance years before and the sage advice--feel the beat in your soul before you move--rushes through me. The dance snob in me flares again. I smile at the instructor/friend and say--don't count, just turn me...inhaling the music and following him. He looks surprised as i do the step the rest are still counting out. Granted, i've been doing this for a decade longer than they have but I still. It's about the beat not the steps, I mutter.

The last few days have been a struggle. i feel like i have been forcing the steps of my life rather than letting them flow with the harmonious beat that lies under. I'm trying to hold still long enough to feel it flow again before i move.