a. Monday!
i. Wake
up in time for continental breakfast, then spend a good while updating my
3-years-stale Facebook profile, since several people have made odd inferences
about me given the stale information. Of course, I can’t resist updating my
profile picture and making a cool cover photo collage. That done, the morning
was gone and the last day of lessons began.
ii. Started
off in the main ballroom with a lesson in Collegiate Shag. This is a
hug-dancing style dance (“close embrace” in technical terms). So the teacher
had to keep reminding us all to breathe. It was tricky but fun. You really had
to press up against your partner to
avoid the considerably more awkward “human sandpaper” feeling and to communicate
moves clearly.
iii. Then
off to the Sassafras for a lesson in balboa, the more popular hug-dancing style
that everyone around me had been dancing at the UW. Get to dance a “bro-boa”
round with Ryan, who’s dancing follow. Fun, though I actually think I prefer
shag.
iv. Get lunch with Nicholas, Indigo, Peter, at an
awesome little Italian bistro.
v. After
stopping by at the library, walk back to the Sassafras for one more lesson. We
learn bubble Charleston—a great workout—plus two new partner Charleston moves.
vi. The
goodbye dance! A few songs, then a Q&A panel with the instructors. I’m
expecting crickets—I might have a few specific questions, but nothing worth
asking a panel. But the swingers are serious, and lively discussion on practice
habits and training regimes ensues.
vii. A
few more dances! Last dance with Eleonore and Kayla from the UW, a bunch of
people from Montana and Idaho I’ll never see again including a really nice old
lady named Stacy, and a friendly bioinformatics gal who’s going to grad school
in Chicago next year. (I hope we stay in touch and she sends me interesting
bioinformatics articles—I think she’s doing epidemiology type stuff, but there
are so many interesting subfields that might fall under the bioinfo umbrella J)
viii.
Bid cheerful farewell to everyone whose names I
can remember and head out with George and Daniel. We hit the road, but stop
first for some tasty ice cream in a Mallards-like place. George, inexplicably,
buys an $15 baseball cap.
ix. Drive
for a couple of hours; George and I keep up a lively conversation on his
military aspirations (he was in a high-school version of ROTC).
x. Stop
at a hot springs in a tiny, progress-forsaken town. The water is very warm and
very alkaline—nearly 11.5 by some accounts. I comment on this high alkalinity
and this random old dude jumps in with the claim that pH is a flawed
measurement of causticity—that some bases, when dissolved in water, are more
caustic than others. I am skeptical—a hydroxide ion is a hydroxide ion—but my
curiosity is piqued. The guy proceeds to list a bunch of chemicals, at least
one of which is clearly made-up, but I think I mishear. I ask about his
background and he says he’s a physicist. Then he starts talking about his
prodigal childhood. And THEN he starts talking about philosophy and quantum
mechanics (which is when you know someone is full of partially digested
organics and undigested thoughts). He claims he can extract energy from the
“quantum field” :P
xi. Daniel
joins the conversation. Finally, the fellow walks away—when we ask his name, he
says that we will know soon enough when he presents a TED talk. This is too
much. As soon as the man turns away, I collapse in riotous laughter. George
walks over a few seconds later and asks if I understood everything the guy was
saying. I grinningly nod yes, and tell George I understood it was all complete
horsecakes. George is a bit taken aback, then smiles a bit incredulously.
xii. We
wade awhile in the hot water. I’m a bit meditative as the conversation hops
from Pokemon to military history and back again.
xiii.
As the sun fades over the hills, we get out and
shower. This is when George and I return to the subject of Alex J George has an
understandable, perhaps helpful, but IMHO factually incorrect coping strategy
of tossing aside Alex’s attractive good points as transient and highlighting
her weaknesses.
xiv. The
conversation about Alex continues long into the night on the road. Daniel is
amused. We stop at a gas station in eastern Montana—I get some cheap but
delicious microwaveable burritos and argue with George over the fair price of a
hard-boiled egg. Whereupon, he ironically grabs a handful of ripoff jerky :D
George salutes my innocence and one-facedness—a celebration of my good points
akin to the denigration of those of Alex, but still makes me smile. I feel a
strange sense of unreality. Why am I standing in the lights of a gas station in
Eastern Montana, the circling gnats glowing against the pastel dark town?
Buffeted by George’s emotion whilst leaving the life it resounds with, about to
enter a summer of uncertain purview, yet separated from it by hours and miles
of bizarre, atavistic countryside. A feeling of strange openness, to the
moment, and strange closedness, to the permanent manifestation of it.
xv. We
hop back in the car; I chew my burrito contentedly and gnaw on jerky. The
conversation gradually resumes, and my tale of the relationship is finally
drawn forth. George and Daniel resound in common sentiment that I should have
taken things further, that by hanging back in timidity I squandered the
opportunity. A reasonable argument, again trapped somewhat in the unreality of
the past—I struggle to appreciate the idea whilst not caring. I am shocked to
learn that in the scant few days George courted Alex, he surprised her with a
passionate kiss. Oh, ye shmidbags who pull the strings of the world, where is
yon balance? I breathe into the darkness, left brain laughing like there was no
yesterday, right brain flopping around in the mud like a fish with its head
chopped off.
xvi. Anyway,
that conversation is soon afterwards concluded, and the talk turns to boxing. I
am starting to appreciate the extent to which my social strengths derive from
curiosity and sheer ability to listen. Some of it is pretty fascinating,
reminds me of my fencing days. But at last my energy is exhausted, and I stretch
out in the backseat, my knees bent against the door.
xvii.
Time passes. I nearly drift off and something
wakens me; we play more music and the conversation continues.
xviii.
Pass out in earnest.
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