Dancing until the wee hours and then driving 2 hours back to Portland is great, but now I'm all backwards. Home at 5:30 a.m., breakfast, and then to bed. Awake at 10:30 a.m., up at 11:00. And now eating lunch? Ack. Howevah, let's hear it for a body that lets me dance for 5 hours on not quite enough sleep, and then drive home afterwards. Feet are sore, even with gel pads. Toes got mangled a few times; the floor was very crowded.
It was so good to have dinner with A. The thought of having her close by again is very tempting, even though it would mean moving to Berkeley...
On the dancing front: first, holy crap. Body is working so well these days. D. used to tell me I wasn't dancing with my whole heart, like it was some kind of emotional problem. Nope, for me it was physical. Now that my body is working beautifully, I don't have to think about it anymore, and I can put my whole self into experiencing the feel of my partner. Wow. I had some amazing dances last night. I was hoping to have a good set with M., since I felt so good last night, but didn't feel a really strong connection there. I couldn't put my finger on why until he said goodbye at the end of the evening and I realized that, even though he's all smiles and banter, he has a wall up. I'm pretty sure it's a wall of the "let's have a great friendly relationship now that we're not dating, only I don't want to be too open because then you might think I like you more than I do" variety. I can't tell, but that's the feeling I got. Which is too bad, because it means our dances won't ever be really good.
Along with the soul-baring sensually immersive dances, I also had a few where I was wondering whether we were going to actually dance, or whether my partner was just going to clutch me on the floor. Very sketchy. One of those said after our set, "wow, it feels like we've been dancing for years." I replied, "yeah, I think that was a long set." Whoops! What he meant was "it feels like we know each other, because we danced so well together." I was thinking something slightly different. :-)
Side note: is hand-kissing back in style? After the third one last night I was starting to think, "yikes, maybe I should get out the hand salve and take care of these red knuckles, if they're going to be the recipient of so much attention..."