Blacklight Dance

Well. Hi. It's...me.

I'm gonna talk about the Blacklight Dance at the end. I'd rather end on that note.


Today, I went to Theater, and I dislike it. The professor is tiny and mousy, albeit nice enough. We have "theater lab" 2 hours a week, a ton of tedious little assignments and regulations to keep track of. As far as I can tell, it's just gonna be a massive, irritating waste of time.


Western Civilization was a little more encouraging. I really like Professor Stanke {isn't that unfortunate?} and it's exactly the kind of course I can enjoy and be good at. It's not heavily focused on historic dates or memorizing facts; it focuses on the WHYs and HOWs of history. Awesome :D The homework--so far--doesn't seem too bad either.


Then I had math, which you all know I was dreading.


It turned out to be very different from what I expected. I think it might be worse. I almost cried in class, but the feeling of dry helplessness was too resigned for tears.


My professor is Chinese. He speaks with a heavy accent, doesn't actually finish half his sentences, and uses tons of math terms interchangably. He goes into detail on really obvious concepts, using tons of examples, and then flits around more confusing aspects of math, explaining things weirdly and not finishing his sentences.


I have no idea what the homework is, and nothing he mentioned in class is in the first chapter of our textbook.


I am going to call my mother as soon as possible and get her advice on what to do about this. There is an easier math class, and if at all possible, I plan to switch to it on Friday.


What a...I just...I can't even explain how I feel about the math class. It makes me feel a little bit better to know that it might not be 100% my fault that I hate the class. Like, I'm not just retarded this time, I have a foreign teacher.


{For the record, I like him a lot as a person. He's funny and nice and very interesting. But I cannot deal with him teaching me a subject I don't understand even when my MOTHER teaches it to me.}


But ANYWAY.


Let's talk about the Blacklight Dance now XD {You can see why I didn't want to end on my academic woes.}

We waited in the long line to get in. I was pretty excited, Rebekah seemed nervous. I get the feeling she cares a little more about what people think than I do. {In a lot of ways, that's probably a good thing. I should care more sometimes.} She kept asking what I thought it would be like, and telling me that if a guy grabbed her, she was clinging to me.

All well and good. However, given the way she behaved with Ryan the Dickbag at the street fair, I did not think being grabbed by guys is as high on her hate list as it is on mine.

We finally got to the door and walked in. The room glowed darkly with ultraviolet light; neon wall and floor decorations smoothly pulsed with light. The bass in the loud music hummed in my chest and made my body come alive.

Dance. Dancing. Dances. They wake me up. They bring me to life.

At first, it was just a crowd of people afraid of to look stupid. I danced minimally, scoping things out and trying to analyze the best way to navigate the situation. Rebekah alternated between batting her eyelashes at tall guys and squeezing my elbow for "moral" support.

But then a guy came up behind her and grabbed her hips. She did not panic. She did not cling to me. She "danced" back on him XD {Quotation marks because I don't think grinding should actually count as dancing. Although if it did, she'd get an award. She's not shy about it. Personally, the whole concept makes the pit of my stomach feel ill. Call me immature, but I think it's just kind of disgusting.}

Unfortunately, I had to make my opinion known at some point, when a guy came up behind me and tried to initiate the same thing.

"Sorry. That's not really my thing," I told him, putting a little distance between us. He walked away upset, and I felt a little bit bad, because I saw his friends give him a hard time.

Rebekah gave me a disparaging look as she grinded on her guy.

"Just do it!" she said. "It's not my thing either!"

"Nope," I said.

The song ended and her grind buddy literally left before she could turn around and see his face. She has to ask me later if he was any cute.

"Why won't you dance?" she asked.

"It's really not my thing?" I told her. "And also Sam?"

She rolled her eyes. "It's not like you're saying 'Date me!' to anyone."

Apparently you have sex with your clothes on first, and dating comes later nowadays.

But then things got better. Two guys came up to us and said they remembered us from a couple of nights ago. {I think they played Mafia with us. Er, I guess we really played with them.} Brenden was tall and sort of a cross between a football player and a surfer dude. Conner was shorter and less good-looking, but more original.

By that point, I had loosened up enough that I was actually having fun and felt like myself. Brenden and Conner seemed nice, and they expressed no desire to grind with us. Brenden danced like a dork on purpose, and kind of pulled it off. That gave me permission to break out many hilariously terrible dance moves of my own, like "Make the Pizza," "Mow the Lawn," and the Monkey.

Guess what?

Brenden and Conner loved that. They thought it was awesome. They started doing the moves too, and eventually the three of us were dancing all kinds of styles, some less stupid than others.

I attempted the robot, which was either somewhat successful, or fascinatingly awful. It must have been one of those, because people watched.

My confidence skyrocketed. No matter what ridiculous thing I did, Brenden, Conner, Seth {new guy} and Rebekah thought it was great.

We tried to get Rebekah to loosen up and dance like a dork, but she just kept saying she couldn't dance.

I had progressively more and more fun and got more and more comfortable with myself.

I went around and learned dances that different people were doing, including some weird hardcore-type thing Connor showed me.

I did this backbend thing where I lean back really far and my head almost touches the ground, then I straighten back up. I hadn't ever thought that was especially cool, but when I did it a little bit, like six people around me were like, "OHHHHHH!" So I did it a couple more times, going back farther each time.

A guy with long blonde hair was like, "Can you touch your head to the ground?" I shrugged. He told me to try, that he wouldn't let me fall over. {Honestly, that's not a problem. I'd go to my knees before I'd actually fall.} So I attempted it. My head did graze the ground, but then I sank to my knees. A gazillion hands helped me up.

Brenden, Rebekah, Connor and I created our own dancing circle. Two black guys and a black girl joined it and taught me the Dougie. Then they tried to do my "Low" dance {it's hard to explain; Cassidy--and maybe Sam--will know what it is} XD It was funny.

Towards the end of the dance, Rebekah and Brenden ended up grinding after all. Connor asked me to do the hardcore-spazzing dance in the middle of the room, where people were showing off their skills. I said sure, so we broke into the cirlce of awesome African-American dancers and went crazy XD They all OHHHH'd and cheered, so I went ahead and did my "Low" dance and the backbend.

People went crazy :3

Guys, I know this has sounded like a whole lot of bragging. But I'm just really shocked and happy to be so incredibly accepted. Not just accepted, but LIKED. Liked a significant amount. I've never had the guts to go all-out before. For some reason, last night I just decided to go for it, and it turned into one of the funnest nights of my life.

Although, so many things reminded me of Sam and Cass, sometimes so much that I was hard for me to breathe and I felt like crying. The palms of my hands are cut up from where my nails dig into them when I try not to be emotional. I wish they were here with me.

Right now, I'm going to tackle some more National Government reading, because it's due tomorrow, and I have a test.

Back to being stressed-out. *sigh*

~Stephanie