I danced away the weekend. I danced eight or nine hours on Saturday, and then the same on Sunday. I'll write down a couple of lessons learned and understandings.
Yesterday I was dancing next to a Gen X couple and their daughter. The parents must have been mid-fifties, the daughter late twenties. The daughter, who was tall, slim and pretty kept on eyeing me, we would make eye contact and smile. Finally I mustered the courage to place myself in front of her and I said let's dance. But she looked upward, pretending I didn't exist. I said let's dance again, same thing. I shrugged though I was more embarrassed than I would like to admit.
I kept on dancing next to them as if nothing had happened (because, really nothing had happened) and I tried to shake off the rejection but it kept on nagging me. This dialogue in my mind, which I know to be radio ego was telling me: if at least she had said no thanks with a smile it would be fine, but pretending I didn't exist? Yadda yadda. The dialogue eventually quieted down and I could be more present.
The family went away. Hours later I was dancing when I turned to the side there she was again, but this time with her boyfriend, a tall broad-shoulder handsome man of around her age. They were affectionate towards each other and clearly in love.
It all clicked together, and understood that, what was a rejection for me, was loyalty for her. This gave me unreasonable joy, for them and for myself. We experience rejection as inadequacy, as if we weren't enough for the other person. We may know that the feeling of "not being enough" is illusory, but the illusion feels damn real.
This experience will help me navigate rejection in the future. When a person doesn't want to dance with you, it's not about you.
I was dancing intensely when a group of friends positioned themselves in front of me. One of them was a couple. The girl in the couple was hesitant but sort of positioned herself right in front of me, and said something to her boyfriend. They both eyed me. Something was going on. I intensified dance, she intensified dance. They said something to each other again. We then danced sensually for a while while her boyfriend danced to the side.
Music changed and they went dancing with each other. I think she was curious but afraid about perrear and her boyfriend encouraged her to try it out with me, he would take care of things if I overstepped unspoken boundaries. After this she would come back to dance with me briefly now and then. By the way she was making out with her boyfriend after we danced, I understood all three of us were happy with the arrangement.
On Saturday, the closing party for Les Francos was pretty empty, at least early in the night. The DJ was playing and only a handful of people were on the dance floor. I was as sober as a rock, yet I danced a little bit before feeling pointless and sat down on a ledge to pull out my phone.
Almost immediately a man in a metal t-shirt who reminded me of Santiago Segura on El día de la besia came saying "no no no" and then some things in french which I didn't understand, but it wasn't necessary, I understood: you can't sit down to check your phone man. I laughed and thanked him for the reminder, got up to dance again.
This time I got into the groove, and danced on the almost empty dance floor. It would eventually fill up and be like any other night, but what was special about this simple anecdote is that I'm not dependent on the energy of the crowd to dance, I can bring my own energy. It is nicer to dance in a crowd though.
This dancing thing comes bundled up with many other things that I have to unpack. I would call them the Dionysian arts: seduction, sensuality, rapture, fusing into the whole, earthly and bodily sensations and actions.
All this is very uncomfortable for me but it also holds an allure I hadn't felt in decades perhaps. When we explore the extreme of a duality intensely, we end up coming out from the other side. This dancing frenzy is the result of years of a monastic-like life. The person who spends years in a dancing frenzy will eventually come to discover meditation and be able to sit still for hours. His dancing will have an effect on his sitting practice, just as my sitting practice has had an effect on my dancing (helping me in my self-consciousness).
I have a lot of work to do, so the next few days I hope to evade dancing. If all goes well, I'll write about how I'm selling the furniture in the apartment. So exciting. Yawn.