Silence is Golden

The past few days have been busy, but while the stuffed peppers are cooking in the oven I decided to do a bit of multi-tasking and do an update. As I mentioned on Friday night I got two of my friends and the girl I’m interested in to go Salsa dancing. The roads were awful but I wasn’t going to let them ruin this for me, and so at 8:30 I slowly started inching my way towards picking everyone up.

We got to the first bar around 9:00. I hadn’t been to this bar before but was surprised to see I had been to that location before. About 6 years ago, my friends and I went out one night with the minivan to a hookah bar. I remembered being astonished that upon entering we weren’t greeted with a faceful of smoke. There were so many vents in the place that the air was just as fresh as it is outside. But all these years later the hookah bar was closed and was replaced with just an ordinary bar. The bar itself is different because it’s essentially a converted house with couches and rooms. When we got there a blues guitarist was still playing so we grabbed a couch and had a sit down. The proprietor was a middle aged lady who was very outgoing and touchy. By that I mean that she had no problem grabbing my legs when she wanted my attention. WAM she was just like that lady who liked your hair when we went out. She informed us that we were at a bar, so just simply getting pop was out of the question. Without bothering with IDs she took our orders, and many more throughout the night. At one point I asked her when the salsa was starting. It was already 10 and the website said it starts at 9. She said she’s going to have to get the website fixed, and assured me the salsa DJ was coming. And sure enough he eventually got there and started the music. The bar had a nice dance floor, but we found us four were the only ones dancing. I taught the girl I’m interested in the basic steps and because she is excellent at following a lead she was able to very quickly grasp the various moves I was trying to perform. But even though I’ve had two semesters worth of classes, because it had been so long I couldn’t recall many of the moves, and the free lessons that were promised on the website weren’t happening we decided to go to the other bar in town that also promised free salsa dancing and lessons. Still the first bar went very well. While the guitarist was performing we had about an hour to sit and talk on the comfy sofa sharing our drinks.

The next place was in the other town, and again driving like a snail we made our way over and went on in. This time the salsa dancing was being run by the same organization that taught my intermediate classes on campus. Either we missed them or they had already finished, but the lessons were not going on and instead we found a good number of people already dancing. This was nice because it gave us something to watch to break up any potential awkward silences in conversation, helped us see some moves in action, and gave us a bunch of additional people to dance with. And sure enough after a few dances a guy came up wanting to dance with my friend. I didn’t mind because I thought it’d be nice to let her dance with someone who knew what he was doing on the floor. They danced for a good while, but eventually he started getting a bit too close for comfort and was trying to get her e-mail. At that point she had to say she needed to get back with the guy she came with and broke away. During that time I had walked away to join my other friends but was still close enough to keep an eye on things in case they got out of hand. Fortunately the guy was understanding and made no protests about her rejoining me.

Sometime after midnight as we were getting ready to leave, she asked if anyone was up for getting chips and salsa. This surprised me because it was no secret we were all exhausted but again if I wasn’t going to let a bit of snow stop me from staying out, I certainly wasn’t going to let a lack of sleep either. We ended up getting a take out pizza, chips, salsa and carrots. The other two got the pizza, and my friend and I went to get the chips and salsa at a nearby grocery store when she made her enthusiasm known that she needed carrots, in a way similar to the way pregnant ladies all of a sudden get a craving for the most random food and need as soon as possible if not earlier. We weren’t gone for more than 10 mintues but found in just that short time the other two had already ordered, received, and demolished the pizza and were ready to get home. But one of the guys was still willing to hang out a bit. Not knowing where to take the food we made back to my old dorm’s caf which never really closes and banged on the doors until someone let us in.

Now if any part of the night didn’t go so hot it was here. Here we had to resort on conversation to keep ourselves entertained and this is where things always get dicey for me. At one point they shared stories of their childhood memories of scandalous behavior. I can’t remember the details of those stories, but thought they were a bit tame. So I decided to share my memory of a senior trip and a video tape. Oh my, for some reason at 2:00 in the morning that seemed like such a good idea. It wasn’t. Relating just how taboo certain topics may be at times sometimes can be very difficult for me. Like there are things that just do not ever be mentioned and this was definitely one of them, but as I mentioned it was late and my mind played a trick on me. From there the conversation starting taking a very depressive route, and at one point we had to exclaim out loud that we were getting back to a positive topic. And for the rest of the night things were fine.

I finally fell into my place at 2:40. So that was about 6 hours in all, and about 5.75 hours of that time was awesome. Now today the Super Bowl is on. I was invited to a party and was told to invite others. I called her up and left a message about the event but haven’t gotten a response yet. I know she was at Mass at the time, so I’m not freaking out about not getting an instant response, but as the day wears on I am curious if I might have done some significant damage at the end of Friday night. I don’t think I did, at least not disastrously so. In any event, regardless of how today goes, I will be seeing her on Tuesday at a debate we’re both attending on campus, and then I will be able to read some body language. Oh well, as Dean would say one boy one girl, some grief some joy memories are made of this.