To Dance

I dance a lot when I am here. The crazy wild kind of dancing where I warn whoever my partner is “keep your back straight and don’t let go” and our bodies and our arms are flung all over the place in wild abandon. It is hot here so you sweat a lot and if I’m not careful my partner’s hand can slip out of mine and she goes flying across the three foot high wall that surround Papagayo’s.

This has only happened to me once. I flung her away from me, sweat got in the way, and while I stood there in perfect form with one outstretched arm she sailed over to the wall and tumbled right over it. I held my poise wondering what to do when she decided if she jumped up as quickly as possible and made her way back to me no one would notice that anything happened.

It may have worked if the sand that she fell in didn’t stick to her sweaty body.

One morning I was standing on the beach when another one of the guest here approached me.

“Do you know that you danced with 17 different women last night?” he asked.

“Really? No I did not,” I reply.

“Is your wife here,” he continued.

“Yes.”

“Did you dance with her last night?”

“I think so,” I answer.

He walks away shaking his head. That night we did it again shagging and twirling and rocking the night away in the tropical head. The following morning I was talking to my friend Hania on the beach when he approached me again.

“Is this your wife?” he asked.

“No,” I tell him the truth.

He again walks away shaking his head.

And last night we did it again. Multiple dance partners just happen as people grab one another depending on the song or the mood. Towards the end of the evening the wait staff join in with the guests and people just accept people in joyful expressions of creativity.

There are two types of dancers; those that learned proper steps and rules and then those of us who make it up as we go. Obviously I belong to the later category. There is a creativity that I appreciate when two or more different people can bring rhythm and graceful movement without following predetermined steps or rules.

It is hard to be sad when I dance like this. So twirling around last night I gave thought to new dances bound on new love. And at one point last night in the middle of a song I just stopped. Everyone around me kept dancing of course but I just looked out at the night time sky and I blew her a kiss … inviting her to dance.