Man Must Dance

It can be stressful for me here. From the moment I lift my head off my infant-sized, rock hard Winnie the Pooh pillow, until I throw myself back onto my firm futon-y mattress, there are very few moments when I do not feel uncomfortable in some way. “Estás servido (You’re served),” Abuelita announces through my door every morning. A sloppy bowl of atol (watery warm milk sometimes with mushy rice in it), beans and boiled plantains await me every morning, occasionally with eggs and hot dogs posing as sausages. Plantains down here are about 3 times the size of bananas in the states and boiled plantains, for the record, taste like banana vomit. My other meals are usually much better, but eating beans almost two out of every three meals angers the beans… and they revolt…big time. Walking to class, I find myself short of breath: partially due to the altitude, partially due to the dust and the fumes spewed out by the cars here. If most of these cars went in for inspection in the states, they would be decommissioned and deconstructed on the spot. In Spanish class, it takes all the mental energy I can muster just to understand what is being said to me. After four hours of Spanish, I try to sneak on the internet to send out a few e-mails to family and friends. Electronic communication is a shitty replacement for real person-to-person interaction and this time of the day is always like licking honey on a knife for me: when I get e-mails they make me feel great, but they also remind me how far I am from the people that matter most to me (the honey is worth it, so send me e-mails!). I’m meeting plenty of great people here, but people come and go so quickly that it is tough to get close with anyone. This list could keep going, but I think I’ll stop here.

There has been one thing, however, that has consistently lifted my mood whenever I’ve found myself being bogged down by all the things I whined about in the first paragraph. That one thing is salsa.

I got my first taste of the spicy dance during my first week here, and now I am hooked. It’s so mathematical yet fluid; structured yet free-flowing. Even after my first day when my hips were rigidly locked in place and I was literally walking through the steps, I felt great. Since then I’ve taken a couple more lessons – either free ones at bars or one’s that were privately arranged by a friend – and, I must say, I’ve come a far way from the rhythm-less white-boy who couldn’t follow his freshman roommate, Alex the Cubano, in the basic steps. Now I slowly feel my hips starting to break free, and when they do I feel myself breaking free of whatever is getting me down. When I spastically spin my partner and screw up, there’s no pressure. We laugh, genuinely, fully, and without a care, and we try it again. For a lot of my life, I was always the guy watching on the side of the dance floor – and I guess I mean that metaphorically, as well as literally – but here and now, I have no shame showing off the very limited arsenal of moves at my disposal in public. After all, we all just have to dance sometimes.

A friend (thanks Davíd!) recently reminded me that, while it’s important to worry about the big picture, if you can’t find things in life to enjoy you will go insane. Like my Aussie buddy Andy once said, “Friday night is the only reason why capitalism hasn’t collapsed yet. ‘I hate my goddamn job… oh wait, it’s Friday night! Let’s get pissed (drunk)!’” And it’s true, how miserable would my trip be if I only focused on the things I’m missing here? How miserable would life be if we didn’t find some time to just let go and dance?