dancing with cuba
i’m a busy guy. i like to think so. if i’m hurtling through the day, the last thing i need is some unexpected distraction or person obliterating my bullet head get-out-of-my-way schedule. i slither out of most of them with a big laugh or a joke at my expense, but sometimes i can’t get away with it. the onslaught is too persistent, or too cute to say no to. it’s a good thing too, because those are the times it’s a good idea for me to fend off the ticker tape, the static in my head and face the unpredictable. about a week ago i dropped downstairs to La Casa del Regalos where my landlady, the irrepressible Aida Lopez holds court and keeps my mail for me. (i lost the key to our mailbox a few months back). so Aida retrieves it from the mailman, straps on a rubber band to hold what is mostly junk in place and points it out to me with her big Cuban smile, hands held together in front of her waist. last week she had her blaster blasting serious Cha Cha music. she twirled up at me, grabbed my wrists and made me dance with her. laughing it up in her high soprano, musical laugh. dip, spin, twirl, laugh, Cha Cha Cha. it was crazy. i was completely caught up in it and i hate to dance. i’m the sour pus at the wedding when all the drunks are up on the floor shimmying and grinding and i feel like an idiot, checking my watch like the elder Bush debating Clinton. i can’t wait t get outa there. last time i actually got off on dancing was on a hit of ecstacy at a gay bar with a Very Cute ‘Straight’ kid. we were not appreciated. too many big gestures that didn’t go with the territory. it took a pill to get me out of myself enough to not think about every little dumb move i was making and that was on one rare night. dancing with Aida was another. i think the two events are at least 15 years apart, but maybe, had i lived in Cuba…
This is an excerpt from my book, The Paragraphs — Cutlass Press
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