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28 June, 1998
Soundtrack:
Boom. Da-boom. Boom. Da-boom. "What's on tap?" I yell to the bartender over the insistent beat. A few moments later he brings me an ice-cold Killian's and a coke for Sabs. Our friend Angel, dressed to the nines in a black silk vest and a lace skirt orders a rum and coke and then we slide over to observe the action on the floor. At the moment, there is a small cluster of couples slow-dancing to a relatively slow song. Sabs remarks that he hopes the beat picks up soon, because if it's like this all night this is not what he had in mind. I shrug and eye the floor nervously. I really want to dance tonight and I don't want the music to bear Sabs out, forcing us to leave. Two minutes later, not even two sips into my beer, the beat shifts, the music roars into life and one of our favorite dance-tunes from the radio fills the air. I abandon my beer on a side-counter and drag Sabs onto the floor. Later Angel slips into a chair at the observation counter right above us and Sabs moves our drinks to within reach. But for now we are busy stomping our feet and shaking our hips and waving our arms in dance-inspired bliss. The lights cast an ambient purply-pink-blue pattern across the floor. It is hard to distinguish features and it's almost easier to close my eyes and just not see, let the music and nothing else, carry my feet. Sabs has to stop several times. He is out of shape and loses his breath easily. Angel takes it easy. I am unstoppable until the frenetic pace of a Spanish flamenco style dance tune steals my breath away and sends fiery fingers of stitch pain shooting up my right side. I lean against the bar catching my breath and then leap back into the fray. I love to dance you see. Like in that disco tune "I love the night life ... I love to boogie ... ". Tonight I know the words to all of the songs except for two. The radio and my year in Geneva have me well-trained. My heart beats fast, my body moves to the rhythm and my mind just about overflows with happiness. As Sabs said to Angel "You see why I took her dancing when she was depressed?". In truth there is little that can cure my blues as effectively as a night on the dance floor. I love to dance and I have missed it far too much. This club is a little bit on the small side but it has just the right mix of songs from my childhood and teen years blended with more recent tunes from my dancing hey day in Geneva (1994/5) to make me happy. The DJ does not over-mix the songs, giving them all the same beat as too often happens in city-clubs that I have been to. The cover is relatively low (only 5 bucks at the door -- hey it's cheaper than a movie!) and there are circulating waiters so that you can sit at a table, order drinks and return to it in between bouts of dancing. They also serve finger foods, which we did not take advantage of. The crowd is mixed, the club is in a hotel, so there are a fair number of young people, but there are older folks too, which helps to keep it from being a total meat-market the way so many clubs which cater to the young professional/college crowd can. There are older business-men, women in their mid-to late twenties and thirties with their attendant male escorts, and then the mixed blend which comes from the multiple wedding parties which are very common at this hotel at this time of year. We came home, sore and vaguely dazed. We stayed on the floor right until the very end. I discovered as we drove home that I had developed a blister on my left big toe, which I hadn't noticed in the adrenaline rush before. Angel had had a fair bit to drink and was being quite silly. At one point, her voice rose up from the back seat of the car:
"Oh no ... my fingers keep getting hooked on my skirt!" We cracked up of course. So I had a great time last night. I am sore and my neck is stiff today and I did not get up until 2 this afternoon. But I am still feeling happy from the night before. I'd forgotten how beneficial dancing was to me, four years ago. Because of the way I dance, pretty much non-stop for X hours, it becomes the equivalent of a an X hours aerobic workout. I sweated off five pounds in an hour and a half last night. Since I used to do this for about 5 hours straight in Switzerland, it's no wonder I lost so much weight and felt so good about myself. Hey Sabs ... can we do this again next week? |
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