alright

okay, i get it. i get it. after many moons of not getting it, saturday night i finally i got it.

salsa is fun. and, i'm never wearing high heels again.

about salsa: i've always been a proponent of shaking my booty, to most any manner of music. i heart dancing and i heart watching other people dance. lucky for me, i spend most my time with C, AS, Y, and G, all people who can manipulate their bodies uniquely and kinda magnificently. but even chumps who can't tell their feet from their ass look a little beautiful when they get that blissed-out smile that comes from connecting your body and your head to music. still, i've resisted salsa, even as everybody and their mother seems to get more addicted. maybe because there are actual steps to learn? because there are actual names of steps? or maybe because i need a partner to do it and i know how amazing that kind of physical connection can be and it just seemed like a terrible idea to pick up an addiction that requires a man and i know B is taking classes and that's just weird?

um. okay yeah i just said that.

anyways.

saturday night's journey, which culminated in a 1 a.m. trip to copacabana, actually began early in the week, when G began the hard sell on salsa lessons & drinks at his place before the late night trip to copa. i am usually all for lessons & liquor of any sort, but G lives in that funny haunted building which makes my whole body twist and churn (see "why moving to brooklyn was the best idea ever reason #1"), and i am a weenie, so i was scared.

his pitch promised:
1) fun
2) friends
3) a B-free safe zone, which he went to great lengths to create
4) homemade soup
5) a newly rearranged apartment

a day later i got the sell from AS. her pitch promised:
1) fun
2) friends
3) discount cover price
4) a beatdown should B somehow appear despite G's promise of a B-free safe zone

then Y, always the closer, chimed in. her pitch promised:
1) fun
2) friends
3) protective services entering and exiting the haunted building
2) snarky jokes about "street" salsa

and C, i can't forget C. because being the perfect national guardsman, she provided me yet another safe zone outside the world of salsa. her pitch:
1) fun
2) friends
3) dinner and a 10pm viewing of tsotsi at the angelica, my favorite movie theater

anyways. i succumbed to the sales. saturday night, with much hesitation, i showered and met Y to make the journey into the heart of darkness, armored in skinny jeans, a piece of shiny black fabric that posed as a shirt, and a pair of heels to make men cry.

and make me cry, too. despite all my fears and worries and anxieties about going to the haunted apartment building and my first night out tearing it up as a single girl, my shoes ended up being the one painful thing about my night. my only regret after an evening of lots of sweaty glorious dancing, wine, bad prosecco, bean soup, marc anthony, hilarious lessons, being grabbed by lots of short latin men and stared down by girls with a whole lot of jelly on display, were the goddamn peep-toe burnt-copper 4-inch heels. the pros? they're hot. they make me feel crazy tall and powerful and sexy and make me the only girl that can stand up to G on the dance floor. the cons? they hurt. the poor little pinky toes! the poor arches! the poor balls of my feet that have to sustain all my weight for hours and hours!

so, i'm retiring the shoes. i am weaning my addiction to painfully impractical high heels with a methadone-like substance called salsa. wish me luck.