Poetry and motion

Two separate stories for you today.

The first I have been meaning to tell on here for a quite a while, and Molly Laufer, this one goes out to you again because I hope it will make you laugh long enough to get you through the VERY FEW DAYS you have left before you return home!!

So I have started taking this dance class at the gym on Sunday afternoons. I can't remember if I've mentioned this class before or not, but it is amazing. Seriously it's me and a bunch of 60+ yr old women shaking our booties to "Oh hot damn, this is my jam" (which, coincidentally, IS my jam). So anyway a few weeks ago we were dancing to "Single Ladies" and I got super excited...I have been seriously considering freeze-framing the video for months in order to learn the dance. There's really no reason for me to be learning this dance, other than the potential fulfillment of my lifelong dream that someday my life will become a musical. Anyway, the dance was slightly modified from the video, and there was one part where we do (this is all very technical, please try to keep up) - spin spin clap right, spin spin clap left, stripper booty drop, shoulder shoulder shoulder. So I was so into this dance and thinking I was so awesome that instead of the above, I did spin spin clap right, spin spin clap left, spin spin clap right, ohgodnooneelseisspinningilooklikeanidiot.

While everyone else was stripper booty dropping, I was still spinning around the middle of the room. By myself. Luckily none of the ladies my mom's age are too judgemental...no one laughed (audibly, at least).

The second is - I'm not sure how many of you know this - but I write poetry frequently. This past summer I got up the courage to go downtown to an open mic poetry reading and read some of my poetry. It's usually in a park but the weather wasn't the best so it was moved into a local dive bar, and the two readers that night were myself and a Vietnam vet. My friend Meghan and her boyfriend Cam came to support me. I drank some of our shared pitcher of beer and went up to the mic and read my two poems - both about the same guy, one written at the beginning of our relationship, one at the end. After the reading was over, I went up to the bar to settle up my tab, and the bartender - this big, burly dude with huge muscles and a shaved head - said "I liked your poems. They were real good," with the most earnest, sincere expression on his face.

It made my day.