The Dancing Connection

Saturday night was the night I promised my friend Renzo that we would go out and dance. That being said, it sounds more like my arm was being twisted. Ironically enough, it was a negotiation in the first place. The Clubbing Queen had to make time to go out and dance. The problem was that I was at that moment wading through uncertain waters with my friend Renzo. To say the least we’ve had a long and complicated history, but all of that aside we’ve done our best to remain friends. His only request for the last few weeks had been to hang out and I had always been just too busy.
At last we ended up picking a date with the firm understanding that we would go out dancing together. When it boiled down to it, there was no way I wouldn’t go dancing with him. Dancing was our roots, our foundation. Renzo was the first guy I ever met in a club. For months prior I had been watching both my friends Nicole and Janai dance with guys. Just that once, Renzo walked right through the two of them to ask me to dance. Back then we were great admirers of the other’s talent for dancing (and I couldn’t get over the fact that with a military ID you could slip past the bouncers at twenty years of age).
Since then, one way or another, he’s always popped back into my life and I’ve always been happy to have him there. It was heartbreaking when he deployed to Iraq last year. In the back of my mind I always worried that this would be the one time he wouldn’t reappear in my life. When Renzo did return in March so much in my life had changed that it was hard for me to make time for him. Now here we were with him trying to track me down for once and I had too much going on. But the man that lived for dancing so long ago hadn’t been to a club since before he had deployed. That was something I couldn’t let go on for another minute.
Heading over to his place I was still really nervous about hanging out with him. I wasn’t sure that we’d have a good time. Since his return to the States, we’d been kind of like strangers. I don’t find it cliché at all to say that war does change a person. I know that lesson too well with the people I love. What if he’d really changed so much that we had nothing in common? That would make for a long awkward night. But when he jumped in my car and gave me a hug I just remember thinking how much I had missed him. It felt good to hug him and all my worries about our interactions flew away. One way or another he and I would find away to make a go of the night.
As I drove him to the bank we caught up on the things that had been happening in his life since the last time we’d really talked. Little did either of us know, in the heart of the town was the preparation and closed roads for a street fair type celebration. All the temporary tents and booths were set in place, leaving it impossible to navigate the downtown area. Parking somewhere close to his bank we decided to get out and walk the rest of the way.
As Renzo tackled the ATM that we had been hiking to get to, I started to yawn and he shook a finger at me. This was his first real night out, the last thing he needed was me being all sleepy on him. At the mention of the energy drinks that I hate so much, I unleashed a whole tidal wave of memories, mostly in an accusing tone. I reminded him of the particular night in which he had downed a ton of Red Bull Vodkas only to throw up all over the outside of my passenger side door. This is the basis for my whole aversion to energy drinks that have any sort of relation to Red Bull.
The rest of the ride into the city was laugher surrounding other disastrous outings we had made in the past, all of which were based on WAY too much alcohol. In four years we’d managed to wrack of up some pretty darn interesting stories. Every time we get nostalgic I still have no idea how we haven’t killed ourselves yet, but I’m not one to question. Only be thankful.
For some reason I was half expecting Renzo to pay cover for me when we got to the club. As with the time I thought Dominick would too, I was sorely mistaken. After paying for parking I followed behind him across the street and stood in line. When Renzo paid and headed inside without even a backward glance, I was in for another surprise: the cover was way more than I had expected. I had a ridiculously poor moment as I stood there peeling bills out of my pocket and praying to God that I had enough scraped together to make fifteen dollars. The bouncer just glared at me as I fumbled with cash (practically the whole amount in singles). He looked at my ID for quite some time as if hoping to find a reason to deny me entrance. When he couldn’t find anything there, he was totally a snob about the wad of cash I handed him. Slowly counting and facing the money, the bouncer took his sweet time deciding whether I could come in. At last it was all there, and he nodded somewhat begrudgingly that I could walk through. I hurried through the curtain before the man changed his mind.
Renzo stood in the lobby looking around him and met my look of frustration with his own confused expression. Feeling incredibly stupid, I didn’t want to say a word. I just stood by silently and waited for him to decide which direction he wanted to go. Here I was at Trinity again, figuring it was the best option for Renzo to get his Hip Hop fix and I could dance to my House. Everyone would be happy.
Yet as with every other time I had hoped this would work to my advantage, it never does. The House Room was closed until eleven, so we were left with the Hip Hop Room to be content with in the mean time. This was Renzo’s heart and soul when it came to dancing. By no means was that the only type of music he listened to. In almost a closet fashion he loved House music too, but only for driving. When we were in his little convertible, it was loud and fast Techno. Dancing for him, on the other hand, was all about the Hip Hop beats.
The lobby had been packed yet the Hip Hop Room was still rather sparse. The DJ was the guy that I’m always whining about every time I go to Trinity. This was the first time I had seen him in one of the rooms really. Usually he was the Lobby Monkey spinning for the direct bar crowd. As the two of us stood by watching those that had been brave enough to hit the floor, Renzo and I both came to the same conclusion: this DJ seriously sucked and that he needed a drink. Even after all our story telling of past alcoholic adventures, I wasn’t feeling like drinking that night. He got his Red Bull Vodka and I told him to stay far away from me since I couldn’t stand the smell.
After a little walk around the upstairs, it was back to the dance floor to make catty remarks about what other people were wearing and how badly they were dancing. I had really forgotten how much fun it was to hang out with Renzo. All these things about clubbing that we had done, yet it had been so long. When he finally stepped onto the floor I readily followed him wondering if he would be as rusty as he so greatly feared. The man never had a rusty moment in his life. Just watching him fall back so easily into his groove brought back a flood of memories.
Besides being the first guy I’d ever met in a club, he was also the third ever person that I had felt so connected to on the dance floor. This is a tough concept to explain. Everyone has their own dancing style and I’ve stated before that I can mesh well with some people more easily than others. You can figure out their style and get your own to work around it. Really connecting with someone makes “meshing” look like I’m just forcing a situation to work. When I’m connecting with someone it’s like we have the same style yet it’s existing in two different pathways. He’s still doing his own thing and I’m doing mine, but it goes together flawlessly. I don’t have to be conscious all the time of what his next move will be. I’m not moving around calculating and watching for signs or judging patterns. I just know. Everything is effortless. I move and he moves, and it’s all on the same plain. This is such an incredible feeling.
Dancing with Renzo was like connecting back into that. Honestly I had forgotten the feeling. I have met and have had the great privilege of dancing with really some incredibly talented people. Most of them were random people that I admired from the sidelines and ended up dancing with later that night. Hardly are names exchanged let alone some wish for further association. There’s a general exchange of thanks. Thanks for being talented, and for feeling the music with a similar passion. This has always taught me so much. You learn new moves and new ideas of how to express yourself either through copying or just working around that person in order to keep up.
Connecting with Renzo was more of a form of nostalgia. It felt the same and I was more than glad to be out on the floor dancing with him. I knew we looked good together, and he’s not exactly an unattractive guy. Yet instead of the grand sexual tension that use to hum between us that only added to the connection, now there was a comfortable familiar-ness that I found just as pleasing.
It was going on four years that I had known this guy. Some how we had survived every possible strange bump two people could really go through. Through it all, here we were back on a dance floor. That just made me thankful to the point of getting kind of teary, which I of course turned my head away so that he wouldn’t notice me getting all weepy. Sexual tension or not, I’ll always pride myself as being “one of the guys” or at least a less complicated female.
The rest of the night is nothing really notable. Nothing terribly exciting occurred nor were there any mentionable mishaps. We went back and forth between the two rooms as the club packed in beyond my usual tolerance. All Renzo could remind me was that he had been out of the game for at least a year and he wasn’t tired. I on the other hand was annoyed by how over-heated I was and how crowded both rooms were becoming. I was also tired as hell. While Renzo was still dancing to whatever music he was presented with, I was ready to go to bed.
At one point the club had to post a bouncer at both levels of the Hip Hop Room to regulate crowd movement because it had exceeded the fire capacity. I was just ecstatic to sit down while we waited for people to leave downstairs so that more of us could be let into the room. Clubbing Queen was making a poor show this night. Tired, sweaty, and somewhat done with the situation, I was still sticking it all out for Renzo’s sake. As the clock neared one-thirty he was fresh and bouncing around like a kid on the playground.
When we headed home I remember feeling that awesome and satisfying tiredness that comes from a great workout. I had danced my ass off; mostly willingly, some of it for the sake of being a good sport. Hugging him goodbye for the night, I was glad to be reconnected with Renzo on a friendship level ultimately. I had truly missed him.