The "Dark" Side

I love music. I love dancing. I love salsa. There's little (besides Jesus) that can make me as exhilarated as being able to flawlessly follow someone who is a "great lead". The steps, the turns, the spins, the tricks, the styling, the shines, the footwork, and of course my favorite, the dips, make salsa dancing not only a fantastic workout, but also a thrilling passion that I'm planning to enjoy my whole life :) For the first couple of years I've tended to brush off salsa as "just a hobby", but in this past year, I've really come to love and appreciate it as much more than that... All the wonderful friendships I've made there have really transformed "the scene" into a community that has been teaching me concepts beyond the basic steps and techniques of dancing. What started out as a selfish enjoyment has outgrown the box I tried to put it in and developed a life of its own :P.

All that being said, I've progressed a lot in salsa in the last few months! Got 3 more pairs of shoes, started taking lessons, placed 3rd in my first competition and finally made it to my first congress! The Seattle Salsa Congress was absolutely awesome... Not only was it the best workout of my life, but I seriously think it was the best I've ever danced. Yet ;) So yea, I had a great time dancing 'till 4 am with the hottest superstars, both visiting and local, and am now officially hooked :P I must say it was a pretty sweet experience...

Bittersweet actually. The bitterness came from seeing a dark side of salsa that I knew existed before, but was never so harshly exposed until this weekend. And all the events leading up to it... I know I've already written about how some guys pick up girls at salsa and about how some girls pick up guys at salsa, so I won't go there again. Where I will go though, is how the last 2 months or so (last weekend being the grand finale) have brought me back to my days of being a young (and stupid) club hopping college student. As embarrassed as I am to admit it, those were the days of me "pre-gaming" in my friends' dorm rooms, going down to the club where the bouncer, bartender and DJ knew me by name, and making it my mission for the night to get the hottest guy with the best dance moves on floor to buy me a drink/ask for my number/hook up with me. Unfortunately, I usually succeeded in at least 2 out of the 3. I knew what it took to succeed: dress scandalously, flirt shamelessly, dance dramatically. Back then, I was naive enough to think that they actually liked me, but now I know that were driven purely by testosterone. And alcohol (as was I). There's always that element of "alcohol enhanced" behavior... Brad Paisley even wrote a song about it. It just makes you do things in the afterhours of the night that you would never dream about doing in broad daylight (for the most part, with good reason). Why? Because when you're drunk, or even buzzed, you just don't care. You're so focused on "feeling good" that any thought of any consequences just seems so foreign and removed that well... things happen.

Anyway, the way all of this ties in with the "dark" side of salsa is that over the last couple of months, I've been seeing more and more of that "college club type" behavior on and off the dance floor. Or maybe it's always been there and I just haven't noticed because I've never been involved and it has never touched me. Up until now... I've been "saved" from that lifestyle for over 4 years now (thank You, Jesus!) and have vowed never to go back. Still, in my heart I'm a dancer, and have found salsa to be "an alternative" of the sort. It just seemed more "grown up", more sophisticated, more structured, more in "good taste" and overall "cleaner". And so I embraced it fully. For the most part, salsa dancers don't really drink - the dance demands too much focus and attention to be staggering around drunk. However, there are always exceptions. Special events such as festivals and congresses, especially ones that involve travel and overnight stays in hotels just beg for trouble and promiscuity... I mean, come on, here you are, away from home and your significant other (if you have one), on a "vacation" so to speak, surrounded by all these "sexy" people, who are all "single" (or at least acting like they are), the dance floor is heating up and guess what? The dark privacy of your (or their) hotel room is just a short elevator ride away...

For my first salsa congress, this has been an interesting experience starting from the pre-congress party. It was quite amusing actually, all these hot shots trying to get a "feel" on me, telling me how "sexy" I am and how I should "afterparty" with them. They're "all that" and they know it, and there's nothing worse... I, personally, don't consider "sexy" to be a compliment. Because it has the word "sex" in it, it denotes that you see me as nothing more than a sex object, which is quite degrading, really. So yea... the dance floor was quite a sight these last 4 nights... You could literally see the line being drawn between "the light" and "the dark"... On one side, people having pure, clean, innocent fun just enjoying the dance and each other's company, and on the other, consumption of drinks after drinks, showing off, getting "down and dirty" and "evaluating" whose room to spend the night in. So much pretense, so much superficiality, so much "performance"... Which made me a bit sad in a way, because it has cast a shadow over something which I dearly love and enjoy. Yes, I thought these guys were amazing dancers and yes, I totally wanted to dance with them, talk to them, get to know them and hang out with them... But... BTW, I'm only referring to like 3% of the guys there, everyone else I met were actually super cool :).

And so I'm grateful for the Seattle salsa scene... I might have had a few run ins with some "players", but for the most part, the scene is small enough to force everyone to "keep it real." At least on the home turf...

Moral of the story: I know I can't speak for everyone, but generally, girls don't like to be "objectified" as sex objects based on how we look, dance or even speak. Nobody wants to be a fling, a one night stand, a mistake, and/or an "out of town" hook up. Sure, it's all fun and games at first, but how good will you really feel about yourself the next day knowing that you just "prostituted" your body in exchange for that momentary emotional and physiological high... Girls, you're worth way more than that... Don't let some hot shot guy use his powers of dance, touch and whispered sweet nothings (which literally mean nothing) in your ear melt your heart and cause you to surrender your body. Don't cross over to "the dark side"! :P