P: Salsa Dancing at MIT-- an oxymoron?

Hey Annie,
I'm really glad to hear you're starting to echo some of the same concerns that I had, and it's uncanny that we both started to feel like, well, why couldn't we live in our respective cities for longer than a year? You make a good point--I've got to keep my eyes on the prize, if by "prize" I mean forcing myself into an awkward and new situation where my grammar and vocab needs work and I'm like a foot taller than my fellow kinswomen....

Last night I ended up at MIT's student center for a salsa dancing lesson. I swear, it felt like a high school dance--awkward! There were boys of various small-shoulder, slender, pale compositions that were lined up on one side, staring shyly at their shoes. Some of these kids just looked plain WEIRD, like they belonged to the Swarthmore Warders of Imaginary Literature (coke-bottle glasses, long frizzy hair, capes and wands optional). Some of the girls looked tarted up in little salsa-esque dresses, though most wore jeans and Converses. There was this one girl who looked like she could be a close cousin of Carrie's. As in, Stephen King's Carrie, not Carrie Bradshaw. She looked about 12 years old (although I'm sure she was closer in age to me), she had long mousy brown hair that fell flat on either side of her face, and she wore a prim red velvet dress, white stockings, white socks, and black patent shoes. And not even in a hipster-Victorian kind of way. Who WAS this freak? How did I end up in a room full of 400 sweaty people shuffling arhythmically from one side to the other?

It was actually pretty hilarious, and to feel appreciate the moment, I really wish one of you guys were there. Don't get me wrong--there were actually some people who were really into it, and who were doing amazing twists and turns on the dance floor. I was there with a handful of people from my running club, and we were all at varying levels of gracelessness. I guess 5.5 min mile runners do not necessarily translate into skillful dancers.

It reminded me of the time I ended up in a barn in Greenfield, MA for a Saturday night contra dance (a mix between a square dance and a Jane Austen-esque country dance), and I thought I stumbled into a Star Trek convention. The concentrated smell of body odor hit you the moment you opened the door (and mind you, this was a cold winter night), and I was a little scared--I was the only non-white person in the room. THen some 45yo guy (who may have been a silver fox in his own right, if I were into men 20years my senior) asking me for my hand in a dance, greeted me with "Konichiwa!" My Swarthmore friends were doubled over in laughter.

Anyway, I managed to have more than a fair share of fun with salsa at MIT. It kind of made me lament that people in NY--at least not the hipster set--believe in organized dancing. Afterwards my running club mates were heading to a bar in Central Sq, but it was already 11:30 and I didn't want to have to take a cab home from Cambridge after the T stopped running at 12:30. Also, my shirt was soaked through with sweat and even though I went to the bathroom, patted myself dry with toilet paper, took off my shirt and fanned it in the air, it was still wet, and I felt like a dork. ALSO, I was so exhausted from a late night the night before, the morning run (where I told myself not to let the beers come back up the other way), followed by an unproductive day at the library. So I parted with them, waited for the #1 bus that took me to Newbury St and Mass Ave, then jumped on the Green line C line from Hynes Convention Center home.

I decided to do drop=off laundry service for the first time (there are no machines in my building, which means I have to trek all of my stuff across a slushy parking lot to the laundromat. They're charging me TWENTY SEVEN DOLLARS and fifty cents! Highway robbery! That being said, I did somehow generate 22lbs of laundry in the past 2 weeks, but that's besides the point. How much do they charge in NY? I guess I thought it was like 60 cents a pound. Here it's 1.25. Sheesh.