11.06.00

Saturday night we went out to dance. I always love to watch people having so much fun together, waving their arms around in the dark. I wondered about how A is in settings like that. I wish, sometimes, that he and I could meet all over again.

When I go out I mostly dance alone. I find my way onto the middle of the floor, surround myself on all sides with a throng of strangers, and raise my arms in the air. What I enjoy is the way my dancing feels intensely private, in spite of all those people.

Rachel and Emily were both swept away by guys. Actually, swept does not at all describe what they did?their strategy, which is very common amongst twenty-something men (I?m sure even A has friends that do it, although they may not admit it) is to kind of creep up on your butt. By no means do dancing men ever focus on your face or your body as a whole. If they are in front of you, they attack the breasts; behind, they always approach the ass. And their plan seems to be (as far as we can tell), to pretend that they are not dancing with you, but rather, just dancing near your ass. They approach, closer and closer, doing this strange, thrusting thing with their hips, as if there is a magnet in their groin, drawing them straight into your behind.

For the woman, the appropriate response is to pretend not to notice them. You continue to dance while your friends watch over your shoulders, telling you with their eyes how close or far away your perpetrator?s pelvis is from your backside. When they finally make contact, you are never supposed to be surprised, and the women who are true champions of this particular sport never miss a beat. Undaunted by the fact that they have not yet even clearly seen the face of the guy who is thrusting himself into their behind, they act as if nothing has even happened?as if they had spent their entire life with a strange man rubbing his khakis into their ass. It?s truly odd and never ceases to make me flash on the picture of the evolutionary process where you see man emerging from ape.