Tidbits for the Average Girl

A clip teased directly out of one of a memorable scene in the more hard to resist rom-coms—you definitely know the kinds to which I refer. Those ones that you swear a little too profusely you will never be caught dead watching (you do, when no one is around to see).

That is not the kind of life I live. Sorry, I know, that’s disappointing to read. You wanted a story with me as the protagonist who lives the charmed existence; eternally young and pretty, living in an impeccably decorated rent controlled townhouse (I never figured that one out, isn’t the lead suppose to be just starting out and struggling?), probably has a nice job at a start-up thats business is always vague, maybe something tech-related, and of course, a closet, albeit tiny, crammed with designer samples. I was shaking my head just right now, reading this paragraph as I typed it. As charming as it seems, it is also a tad ridiculous and big dollop of impossible.

No, I do not at all traipse around in that dream scenario, but life does toss a tasty little morsel my way now and then, and I can pretend for at least a day in my own modern fairytale. Because even fairytales have to explode the pumpkin and turn the girl’s life back to sad-normal at midnight, right?

One perfect day I can recall did happen to me a good dozen years ago or so. You know how you can tell a day is starting off gorgeously when you wake up smiling for no reason and have time to lay in bed for a short while, staring up at the soft rose and buttercream patterns the early sunlight plays upon your ceiling? A day like that. It flows serenely from one event to the next and you’re momentarily unbothered by the world, its woes made to sit a time-out outside of your door until you are ready to let them back in and deal with them. Your normally stubborn hair is cooperating. You have clean clothes to wear to work. Your coworkers and everyone you encounter are amiable. You actually clock out from said work at the correct time without your supervisor chasing you around to take upon a little overtime and a whole bunch of poorly delegated tasks. You actually have energy to go out after work, too! The heavenly bodies all seemed to be perfectly aligned.

I was extremely fond of salsa dancing back then and I would designate Fridays or Saturdays (or both) as a form of week-ending reward for a full week’s worth of stress and hard work. On that particular good luck day, which fortuitously landed on a Friday, I was hurrying home on public transpo from classes to get a little downtime and some food in my system before throwing myself into nonstop sets of dancing punctuated by Modelo Negra breaks.

The day had already showed me so much promise and was continuing to do so. I actually purchased a lovely soft pink georgette/rayon number with a silky tie belt that I’d been waiting for the right opportunity to wear. That night instinctively seemed like a great event to premiere it, and as I donned it, admiring its flattering color and cut, I felt its magic envelope me in further positive vibes.

I arrived early enough to catch the first set of the evening, as the intermediate level salsa lessons were concluding and the live band had completely set up and were warming up with Celia Cruz‘ “La Vida es un Carnaval.”

Dancers would come in almost pre-determined groups: in the first hour, the visitors who would sometimes be first time salsa dancers and were making sure that they make it to the location early enough to get their money’s worth in dancing lessons, in the second and third hour, the regulars who stake out the best tables and chairs to claim for themselves, their crew, and all their purses and coats before they mingle and sway to the music. In the third to fourth hour, is usually when flashy, more aggressive dancers show up, consuming generous swathes of the floor with their larger than life swagger, crushing exposed toes under their pointy heeled ballroom shoes, and swatting you repeatedly full on the face with their high ponytail extensions, as they elbowed for even more real estate on the polished wooden floor. If you were lucky (or unlucky, depending on the recipient) you may even receive a saucy wink from one of the partners as they sweep past you (98% of the time it will be the male partner, no matter your chosen gender identity). This was as close to putting on an unofficial exhibition as they were going to get, and they wanted to make sure everyone in the room saw them.

These later last three hours of the night was also the time that other chill, pretty good dance partners would mosey in looking for familiar faces to dance with, as well as their doppelgangers with decidedly more sleazy agenda. This club, and this time of night was an unsurprisingly good time to get lucky, whichever their chosen agenda ends up being (no pun intended).

I leave to you to try to guess which of the above described groups I should be included in. I never really saw myself fit in any particular one, and more so in the role of the Seer that observes the whole night from start to finish and archives it to digest at a later time. I am a decent salsa and bachata dancer, nothing in neighborhood of fancy, precise footwork or heartbreakingly exquisite styling, but I love the de-stressing, the creative outlet, the pure, uncomplicated freedom and joy that emits from me when I would begin dancing, and I think it exuded enough to make me a pleasant person with whom to dance a long set (the joy wasn‘t a sure fire infectious siren call; some pretentious leads would find it irritating when I would laugh my merriment when they whirled me in an exhilarating turn, embarrassed perhaps that I wasn‘t putting up a façade of cool, precise sexiness).

Having these weekends to engage in a beloved ritual of dancing was incentive enough, but that night, the salsa dance goddess was magnanimous and wanting to rise up within me. All the leads who approached me to dance were fun, polite, and adept dancers. The band was killing it with the order of their music selection and it was impecable and I don’t think I sat out more than one or two sets that night. I had enough juice change, and my flourishes were all landing, enticing and spicy.

I would have breathed my contented sigh right there, thinking that this was already the yummy cake topper on the already decadent cake. It turned out the luscious drunken cherry to crown this already satisfying evening was yet to come.

In between sets the band would take a well-deserved break after intense back to back playing. The patrons of the club would also take this time to seek out their tables and regroup, fanning themselves vigorously and catching their breath as they sipped on their watered down cocktails.

It was during one of these later pause in sets that a small group of young men walked in and huddled at the wall opposite me. I had observed during these breathers that the tallest among them, a curly haired kid with smiling eyes kept sneaking furtive glances in my direction as he conversed with one of his companions. A few of these guys had been to club before, I recognized their faces, but I only began noticing this boy last week when he was also shooting occasional looks at me. I brushed last week’s behaviour from him off as a fluke; this week’s repetition had made me curious.

I knew the band would only play a handful more songs before they packed up for the night, so I began to gather up my things as well, donning my coat and changing into my street shoes for the five block trek to the El Cerrito Plaza BART station. The crowd was thinning out, people either heading home as well or congregating at the bar nursing their last drinks or out on the sidewalk nursing their cigarettes against the strong gusts of wind that always ran through Solano Avenue.

I was heading on my way to the lobby when Smiling Eyes‘ companion came up and greeted me. He told me that his cousin had been wanting to ask me to dance since last week; he had refrained from doing so because he just moved to the Bay Area from Mexico and didn’t speak more than a few words of English, and he thought I would flat out reject him.

Me? Reject anyone who asks me to dance? Only if you are a completely disrespectful douchebag or you haven’t made friends with a bar of soap in some time. Pretty-Eyes Kid? Sure, I can live with missing the next train home to dance a song (or two!) with him.

I left my coat and purse by the edge of the stage and quickly slipped my dance shoes back on. By the time I was done I looked up in time to see Pretty-Eyes walking up to me, shyly smiling. Man, it must have really been dark in the club because this boy was even more gorgeous up close, and grrrr, why did he smell so good. His name was Javi (that’s the pseudonym I’m sticking with, so you don’t have to wrack your brain too hard to figure out if I am talking about you).

The band started up the strains of a familiar song: Luis Enrique’s Yo No Se Mañana. I loved that song! Apparently Javi did too, because he smiled so widely as he swayed and turned me around until I was breathless and giggling. I adored the tempo and song’s story of impermanence, and the ridiculously romantic flavor of the moment made the song gain even more traction in my reserve of good memories.

So many years later, this song still makes me, secretly giddy and silly, believing briefly in kismet and finding love at first sight, finding a soulmate, attaining the fairytale ending.

Javi and I did not end up together. We didn’t even last few a through months total (if you string together all the times we broke up and got together). He certainly was dream material at first glimpse, but less so as daylight, lack of common goals and interests, and his perpetually wandering eye begin to erode at the edges of our passionate whirlwind fling. I think we both loved the fairytale beginning at first—I tried to sustain it, even when reality was a far stretch from it; he continued to try to chase it in other pretty bodies encased in other pretty, dreamlike dresses.

I bear no ill will, to either the song that reminds me of him, or to the guy himself. It was good when it was good. The song itself was already bracing us for letting go, even when the stars in our eyes were occluding the inevitable.