I made myself dance last night. At the main lindy hop night.  I’ve been pretty busy, so it’s been challenging to get there anyways to get there. But, to be honest, I’ve been hesitant to go due to some challenges that I face. So it means I’ve been doing a lot of blues, balboa and travelling to Seattle. But little dancing in Vancouver on Saturday nights. But I decided that I needed to go last night, because if I didn’t, then eventually it would become impossible to go back.
I was pleading with God that last night would be a great night. That I would leave the dance smiling. I was hoping against hope that I wouldn’t have a stressful night like the weekend in Portland was stressful.  And it wasn’t.  A brief moment perhaps, but a look stopped the stress and I had a great night overall so it’s pretty easy to leave that behind and focus on the rest of the evening.
I had great dances, fun dances, humorous moments with friends. One ‘friend’, okay, more of an acquaintance, but he’s the best friend of a friend, was there. We had a very awkward dance. This dancer thinks he’s much better than he is, and unfortunately it’s not the ‘beginner who can be developed’ awkward. It’s the social kind. This acquaintance needed a place to crash, so borrowed my sofa. After the awkward dance (very awkward, in the hard wood should only be for the floor sense), I was not comfortable with this.  But I knew he was safe as he’s the best friend of a friend of mine, but I still didn’t want to be alone with him. Fortunately, a close girl friend needed a place to crash too so it wasn’t just me staying at my place.
The rest of the night was filled with awesome dances. There was a steal dance — those are always fun, when I’m the one being stolen I feel very much ‘wanted’ — and I ended up making a wise crack to the lead from whom I was stolen (he didn’t really fight back) ‘thanks for fighting for me’.  In the end we finished the song together (a follow had jumped in to dance with him — she didn’t understand the dynamic of what was going on that it had become a 3 person dance — they did a double steal to switch back to the original), with the lead saying ‘sorry it took so long to get back’. Heh. It was fun.  Another birthday dance was fun because a girl came in to the circle to steal the lead from me (it was the lead’s birthday — so that was normal), and her fiance came in too to grab me away from the lead. Quite funny.
There was one dance with a lead. I always love dancing with him.   We had, an awesome dance. It was fabulous. We finished the song and he gave me a hug and said ‘that was simply beautiful’. It was. It was a beautiful dance. Fabulous.  Beautiful.
So my night was both Beautiful and Weird. But I left smiling. My plead was answered. I had a night that yes, was both Beautiful and Weird. I needed that.