Consumerism

Just bought these on my lunch break:



They should arrive next week. Now, to buy some more dress pants.

Dancing

Is this once a week? Biweekly? Who knows. . .

I went salsa dancing last night. Well, I went to a salsa class last night. I think most of my 'fun money' next month is going to go to salsa dancing. Monday night, Thursday night, maybe Saturday evening / nights, too.

We'll see.

I went with a young woman who messaged me on a personal's site and we got along quite well. We ate dinner in a park and I had horrendous gas, due to having drank (drunk?) some coffee earlier in the day, and having eaten Indian food the night before.

I'm hoping my flatulence has blown itself out by this evening, when I have a card(s) tournament. ( We shall see, eh?)

Back to the park bench, the chatting, mostly about food and politics, which is fine for a first date. The walk to the dance hall was pleasant enough, discussing the difference between L.A. (mostly gang related) and Detroit (desperation) violence.

The salsa classes were, in point of fact, not salsa classes at all, but instead Ruida, which is functionally Latino square dancing in a circle. It's not line dancing though, there's everything right with line dancing too, just less touching than Ruida/Salsa.

Anyhow, That was an hour and a half or so of salsa, then maybe another half hour of free dancing; we stayed and watched the level 4, 5, and 6 classes, which were interesting, but not particularly hard looking, either. That said, I need to learn hand transitions like woa.

It's not even funny how little I actually know. I'm a high (haha, no) beginner. So, Thursdays is an intermediate lesson at the firefly club. Fortunately, I dropped my Thursday night class, and will now be salsa'ing instead -Much better for my soul.

So, we watch the upper level cats for a while, then walk back to her bike, and spend a fair few minutes saying good bye and good night and this that and the other.

She calls me as I'm on my way home, "So. I have your chocolate."

"Oh! Well, share it with your housemates."

"All of it?"

"Sure."

"You don't want any? I'd feel bad," She says. "I mean. I think I should bring it to you tomorrow."

I smile in the dark. I say: "Sure." We discuss secret agent handoffs, before I tell her where my office is, and she agrees to give me a call, to check that I'm in my office when she plans on dropping it off.

"Not all of it, though, just half. The other half you should share with your housemates." I make her count the pieces and there're eight, "So bring me four," I tell her.

"Yeah?"

"Yes, please!"

We laugh and I tell her where I work. We say our goodnights again and I laugh all round the round-about.

Great and Terrible Secrets: I

I.
She laughed, turned away and he smiled into her hair his hands on her hips, fingers finding belt loops.

Pulse, umph, umph umph, pulse.

(((My lips are bleeding, cracked from the cold evening, having them licked under a mostly waned out moon.

In England, when you're stumbling drunk, wasted on whatever kamikaze chemical cocktail you downed --do you know what they call that? "Detroit'ed." They call it Detroit'ed. )))

He says to the man, "I'm . . ." He looses the word, replaces it (((quick, quick))) with another, "Tipsy."

"Can I buy you a beer?"

"Cranberry Vodka Beer?"

"Cranberry Vodka, got it!" And he's away from the boy, who hot foots impishly in place for a moment then follows, the crowd parting for him (((like it always does.)))

Chapter Names

Previously: Summer Sex.

Currently: Great and Terrible Secrets.

"Emily Dear" or "This one's for you" or "Saturday"

The first poem I performed was written by a woman, a friend. She asked me to read it, then moved a thousand miles away. It dealt with love. It dealt with loss. It was a good poem, right? (Right.) I read it wearing eye-liner. My long hair. My young boy goatee.

The MC for the poetry contest tried inviting me back to his place; failed. He invited me to another poetry group. "For teens like you!" he said.

The MC read a poem about cold spunk splashing onto hot skin in a orange Louisiana night.

All in all, it was a good first poetry reading to go to.


I don't write poetry any more. I can't get the rhythms down.

Swimming, though: I can swim for miles, just my arms; just my legs, whatever, really.

Right now I'm practicing swimming freestyle with my arms, and not smashing my head into the water when I breathe. I know when I'm doing it right, because when I do it wrong my ego crumples against the water and it feels like I've stopped up short.


I have a cane because of swimming. Ironic, because I love boobs so much, right(? Right...) that the breast stroke is what's doing my knees in. All sorts of pulling things in the wrong direction. All sorts of bad torque.

So I have this cane: clear plastic-looks-like-glass and sometimes, for fancy dress parties or bars in Flint where strangers give me drugs for free and then I laugh and smile and forget their name; sometimes I take my cane with me, even on good knee nights like this. So it's me in a light pinstripe suit, with my cane, and a disposable eye patch with a big red X sharpie'd on, with people asking me what I did. "It's not nearly as hard core as you'd think," I tell them. Or I tell them I sneezed while putting in a contact lens. I always laugh: my eyes are thus far mostly fine.


Before that bar, I contemplated staying in, finishing one of the Narnia books. Or finishing "The Invisibles" volume six. Having a quiet beer and some loud food.