Dancing in England

Let's just stand in a circle around our shoes and our pocketbooks and let's just dance. And if any guys come near us we'll tazer them. No guys.

~Dane Cook, "Just Wanna Dance"

There are two separate memories I have of England that come together in my mind as one, likely because they revolve around dancing. Though one experience was much more pleasant than the other, they still run together when I think of time spent in England.

We had many opportunities to go dancing on Friday and Saturday nights, but I missed out on most because I was too busy crying in my dorm room.

Long story short: I had traveled 4,000 miles and was excited to be so close to the Woman (my ex-boyfriend who was stationed in England). We would make plans to see each other on Friday nights, and he spent four weekends breaking them. He was never less than 12 hours late, and his excuses ranged from, “It’s too dark” to “I have laundry to do.” It was in this way, and many others, made clear to me that the Woman did not care for me. He may have at one point, but those feelings were no longer.

But this story isn’t about him.

So there I am on a Friday night, my girlfriends are already sifting through their closets for their nicest clothes, and I think to myself, “Eff it, he’s not coming. I’m going dancing.”

We took the bus as far into downtown as it would take us, and once we got off we were approached by a Scottish man whose accent we spent the next 15 minutes imitating.

Though that was good fun, the rest of my memories of the night proceed accordingly:

No matter what corner I dragged my girlfriends to, I was being followed around the club by a chubby, balding, forty-something fellow, so I left the girls to do their thing and had no other option but to walk two miles back to my dorm in a drizzle.

Along the way I was approached by two tourists from a nearby country—France? I can’t remember if they had accents, but they didn’t know Cambridge or much about England. We were headed the same direction, so they decided to accompany me on my trek, which made me feel better considering I was walking so far in a foreign country at 2AM.

As they escorted me back to my dorm, they offered me a beer—which I tentatively accepted from the incredibly inebriated and lost duo—and told me that I was nothing like how they imagined an American would be. They told me I was much more polite and, simply, I didn’t suck as much as they thought I would. America, you are welcome. I am positively affecting outsiders’ perceptions of us, one drunkard at a time.

We were maybe three quarters of a mile from my dorm when the girl asked if she could come into my room and use my bathroom, and I again became very wary of them. I felt guilty because they’d been nothing but friendly, but I didn’t understand their motives and wasn’t interested in any case. I apologized and told her no, and we parted ways a few blocks from the dorms—after the woman classily relieved herself in some bushes on a well-kept front lawn.

Within a few moments of the buzzed couple stumbling off, I was joined by a girl who, this time I’m sure, was French.

“May I walk beside you? It’s so late at night and it’s freaking me out.”

I told her she was more than welcome, but that I wasn’t going much further and I was very sorry that I couldn’t continue to walk with her. We walked in silence during a moment that would have been awkward if not for the blanket of security associated with traveling on pairs.

We said our goodbyes, and I felt guilty watching her walk alone down the street at almost 3 in the morning.

Back in my dorm room I collapsed into bed, poured the rest of the unfinished beer down the drain (I was actually worried that the couple might have put some sort of drug in it), and I finally was able to shake off my heals that I was constantly tempted to carry home. However, I decided that the pain was much better than walking on a dirty cobblestone sidewalk.

Not all sidewalks looked like this, of course, but some did.

While my adventure may make for an entertaining story, “English Clubs: Take One” was kind of a flop. My second venture to the clubs was bound to be more enjoyable by comparison.

The night started off without a hitch: no creepy stalkers, no drunken couples, no questionable drinks, and no other glaring reasons screaming at me to leave early. In fact, this new club was amazing, completely unlike anything I’d ever seen. Going dancing in England is nothing like going dancing in America because, in England, everyone dances. There’s no dragging your man out onto the dance floor. Men don’t even need to be asked, or have to lose a bet. If you go to a dance club, you go to dance.

It was also much louder than anywhere I’d ever been. The music was in all areas of the club, but there was a bar and a designated dancing area, and directly about that circular space packed with gyrating bodies was a speaker that was so loud it was almost completely distorted.

That night was the first I ever heard “Dynamite” by Taio Cruz. It was the first time in over 15 years that two boys fought for my attention (neither of which did I want to bestow this upon). It was the first time (and likely the last) that I became the victim to a drive-by kiss. A boy walked up, kissed my cheek, called me beautiful, and just walked away. If I was meant to follow him, I failed.

Twenty minutes after the drive-by, I was approached by a boy who had a very peculiar way of demanding attention. Words almost fail me when I attempt to describe how he danced, but it was a cross between miming and some weird back-bending Matrixy sort of puppet-on-a-string dancing. And he wouldn’t speak a single word. I was not the only girl he did this to, of course. Sometimes I still wonder what he gains by approaching girls, dancing like a silly, and then stalking off.

Eventually the puppet wiggled off to work his magic on some other confused victim, and after a brief bought of dancing I was pulled off the floor by a boy who spent three minutes trying to tell me his name. His accent was so thick that it took me three minutes—THREE! That’s ridiculous!—to understand, “Tony.”

While Tony was laying it on thick and giving me absolutely no room to escape and find the friend I had come to the club with, I was trying hard to explain to him that the odds were truly against us pursuing a romance. Not only was I in a relationship, but Tony lived in England and I was 5 hours from boarding a plane and going back to America with its boring clubs where boys don’t dance.

All of this aside, I think I can safely say that the highlight of the night occurred during my final bathroom visit before the long trudge back to the dorms. I entered the stall, jacked up my dress, sat down, and noticed graffiti on the bottom of the stall door:

"Watch out for limbo dancers."

Finding Ways to Feel Better

Food for the body is not enough. There must be food for the soul.
~Dorothy Day

I was at a Chinese buffet a few months ago with the Giant, and for some reason, I chose the three minutes he was up getting second helpings to have a mental breakdown.

A woman behind me was scolding her child, saying, "If you don't sit down in your chair facing forward by the count of three, you won't get any ice cream." The woman reached three. The child didn't budge. The mother promised to fulfill her threat, and the child whined, but to no avail. For a moment I though to myself, "This is a good idea. Give the children incentives, and reward good behavior." But what about when they grow up, and need to be coddled or praised for everything they do? It's a tough game to keep up with. So it's simple: only offer them rewards every once in a while. But then you have to pick and choose what times good behavior is important, and even then can you really trust a child to remember for the next few hours that something important is at stake? From this place, my brain exploded into a thousand different horrible scenarios of raising needy, spiteful children that cry and whine and wail and make embarrassing scenes.

Do you remember when your parents said to you, "You keep crying, and I'll give you something to cry about?" Sitting in my booth at the Chinese restaurant, I suddenly felt very ashamed for my behavior as a 5-year-old. I don't care if I didn't know any better; I feel like I should have. Daddy always told me there was no physical pain worth crying over. I don't think he meant it literally, because sometimes you really can't help yourself, but I think he wanted me to understand that someday the word "pain" would mean something much more significant than falling knees-first into a pile of gravel.

People say that a parent can always feel their child’s pain, but once that child is old enough to understand, it begins to go both ways. Last April, a friend of my mother's died of cancer. Only a year prior she had lost another friend to cancer. The Professor's wife (who shall be henceforth known as the Boss) passed away in January from cancer. Poppa (my grandfather on my mother’s side) died of cancer. It’s an ugly word, and if it wants you, it’ll take you.

My mother told me via text message when she got the news last April when, obviously, she should have called. But she did it as a courtesy, considering it was 8 o'clock on a Saturday morning and I was trying to sleep off a terrible cold. After I woke, it took me a few hours to get a hold of her because she was busy taking care of her heart.

Some people believe in crying. Some believe in talking about it. Some believe in counseling. My mother and I believe in shopping and food.

Four years ago when Freckled told me (before we’d even started dating) that I wasn’t worth taking a risk, my mom threw me in the passenger seat of her car and took me out. She bought me a pair of rhinestone encrusted black flip-flops, and then treated me to the Cheese Cake Factory for lunch. For those three hours, I felt very little sadness. Who needs a dumb boyfriend when there are mothers to keep us company? He was water under my bridge, scum beneath my spoiled little toes.

On the phone with her that afternoon, I was trying to do much the same for her, minus the opportunity to accompany her on her shopping excursion. Thankfully, a phone call was enough to help my mother feel better, even if only slightly.

I've received a fair bit of advice in my life, but no one ever warned me that pain will be mutual between parent and child, no matter whose pain it was originally, and I wasn't prepared. And no matter what, I never will be.

Downtown Cambridge: The Marketplace

While everyone was off gallivanting in the Grafton Shopping Centre, my favorite place to spend my time in Cambridge was downtown in the marketplace. I was less interested in the actual shopping than I wan in immersing myself in British culture. Truth be told, there's nothing spectacularly different about the marketplace fare between Cambridge and, say, a flea market in Darien, but there was something majestic about perusing the various tents in a foreign country. There were statues of Big Ben in place of Lady Liberty, and painted pictures of the Bridge of Sighs in lieu of pictures of the Chicago skyline. One afternoon I bought a pound of fresh strawberries and ate them while searching for a gift for my sister. What I didn't finish I took back to the dorms and later mixed them with blueberries and yogurt for a parfait.

The Bridge of Sighs

If I ever felt that I had done a decent job observing each stall, I would wander into one of the many side streets in search of a nice jewelry shop, a decent place to grab a bite, or just to roam the streets in the sun.

On rare occasions there was sometimes an event taking place in a corner of the marketplace. Once I saw a magician whose tricks I can't remember, but I recall thinking that he was quite spectacular. He was funny, handsome, and the show was free unless you wanted to donate to his cause. I had a couple extra pounds on me, so I handed a coin to the Woman (my boyfriend before Jigsaw), and kept one for myself. We went up together to present our offerings. Somehow, we managed to shake this magician's hand at the same time, my hand in the magician's, the Woman's on top of mine. The magician said it was the first time he'd ever experienced a double handshake, that he was honored, and he would never forget it.

Catching Up

Do you remember in Burying the Past when I told you that I have a very hard time keeping up with my blog when things are going well? That’s half my excuse. The other half is this: In January, our entire site transitioned to new positions within Wells Fargo. Wells was going through some changes as a company, and in January we were preparing for an onslaught of loans to be closed and funded in February. I worked 60+ hours per week for three weeks, which included at least four hours every Saturday. One day I even worked from 7:30AM until 11:15PM. That sucked. I probably could have kept up with my blog, but I made the decision that my Sundays were better spent with the Giant than in front of another computer screen.

Since then, I’ve found that getting back into the swing of things is a bit of a struggle. It’s always daunting to try and pick up where I left off, and the longer you delay, the worse it gets; It’s been 5 months, and there are so many things I want to remember to tell you, but I’m not confident I’ll remember it all. Hopefully this will help me learn not put things on the backburner.

Even including the horrible month of February, life since my last post has been amazing. I still like my job, my boyfriend, and living with my parents. And I’m thrilled to say I’ve actually been doing quite a bit of traveling which I plan to share with you over the next few months.

Keep looking out for my posts. I’ll write soon!