Contra Dancing

Contra dancing. It doesn't involve counterrevolutionaries in fatigues. It's a Frenchified word for a sort of country dance that involves long lines of people. You have partners and it's kinda similar to square dancing. But different. It's less Southern and more re-fined. It can be fun at times, but it's so crowded and fast that you can scarcely socialize while dancing.

The contra dance is held at a small Grange hall around the corner from where I live. It's five dollars at the door, which is typical of dances with live music, but I regret having to pay so much to make a fool of myself. A friend who is very enthusiastic about contra dancing has invited me and another friend to come and experience it for ourselves. I'm not that nervous about dancing; I know practically half of the people there are also as inept as I am, and they go through a quick workshop at the beginning explaining (almost) everything to us. Much of the repertoire is similar to square dancing. There's no proper swinging, though; basically you just spin your partner around and have little or no time to actually socialize. I can barely manage a couple of words to my partner before I have to spin away and dance with someone else or fumble through a confusing figure eight with three other people. And there are so many people in the hall that the temperature quickly rises. It's loud, hot, crowded, and did I mention that I hate crowds? I can't enjoy dancing when I have to move on to dance with someone else every 30 seconds. I meet everyone, but I meet no one.

I dance two or three and go to sit one out, but I'm approached by a girl in a purple dress who asks me to dance. I'm not all that enthusiastic, and I'm sad to say that I don't disguise my lack of enthusiasm for this stinking, sweaty parade of humanity, but she's a pretty girl and I've never been asked to dance by a pretty stranger before so I decide to do it. The caller does a terrible job of explaining things to us and I am completely lost. I exchange scarcely a word with the pretty girl in the purple dress, since I am only with her for roughly five seconds at a time. At one point a man on the sidelines taps me on the shoulder and talks me through the dance as I go. I say thanks but it doesn't do me any good; I'm just as lost afterwards. It's like a metaphor for life. I smile awkwardly at the girl in the purple dress and take my leave when it's over.

I'm so lost and utterly turned off by the press of humanity that I sit the rest of the dances out. I can't enjoy myself twirling and fumbling. My friend and I leave about an hour before the dance ends. I'm tired and she's tired, so we go to Steak 'n Shake.

I might go back to the dance when I'm less tired; it's only about 500 yards from my house. I think I'd enjoy it more if I didn't feel like I was being pressured into dancing, to demonstrate my enjoyment for the benefit of others. The music is good, however, and just sitting and taking in the spectacle is quite fun. It's a unique thing, and I can appreciate its anti-modern pretensions.

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I just remembered that I had a dream last night in which I was being forced to dance in front of people for a class I was taking at school. Fun.

Saturday

Went with three of my friends to the curb market in Greensboro today. This is my second time there, but both times I’ve noticed something about the patrons and vendors. They are of a certain class that I am at great pains to name, but immediately recognize. They are overwhelmingly liberal politically, and a few appear to be disaffected anti-Bush fringe types. At least one group of vendors, who looked like Amish folk, but most certainly not were Amish, were hawking Ron Paul wares and giving away Ron Paul broadsides along with their gentrified, vaguely ideological homespun wares. I say “vaguely ideological” because they are not merely goods, but statements about one’s commitment to a sort of counter-capitalism that eschews Wal-Mart and exalts small business and “sustainability.” The clientele are generally upper middle class women, unadorned, with graying hair and what I like to call “comfortable shoes.” But a significant segment is “crunchy” and/or hipster type college students and professionals. Actually, if you are a single guy between the ages of, say, 21 and 35 (and don’t mind women that are granola types), it’s a pretty good place to meet women. Some of the vendors are actually pretty cute – especially the one Pixie girl that sells knitted goods. One of my friends kept goading me to flirt with the Pixie girl, but I looked like hell this morning, and let’s face it, I’m just too damn conservative.

The curb market made me think of another local market that I think is much more important culturally, and that’s the Buckhorn Jockey Lot in Alamance County. It’s a center of Hispanic culture in North Carolina, and they come from all over the state to buy and sell there. When I was a kid it was much different, largely white folks selling their junk in a sort of permanent flea market. My grandmother went often and I remember going out there to help her load and unload bits of gimcrack, like fake Hummel figurines and pieces of cheap pottery. My parents sold some things there on at least one occasion, but it was a pretty regular thing for us to visit the flea market on the weekends. In the last few years it became increasingly foreign. First there were Caribbean men who spoke Pidgin English and sold knock-off goods from China, but gradually the stalls were taken over by Hispanic men selling cowboy outfits and norteño music like “Los (insert tough sounding word of choice) del Norte” and “Los (insert macho word of choice) de Tijuana/Nayarit.” The market was the subject of a story in the New York Times this summer. I haven’t been since I entered grad school, but I’d like to go back when summer comes around, if only to see the dusty lot and hear the accordions and bajo sexto.

After that my friends insisted on visiting Priscilla’s. Priscilla’s is a sex shop. Nothing really shocks me anymore, really, when it comes to stuff like this. I find sex stores to be banal. What they hold is not in the least bit alluring or sexy – it is not even amusing. We were all carded at the door to this place, which I found to be ridiculous. Do I really look that young with all of the stubble on my face? All of those ridiculous bodies, like something out of Bosch’s Hell, greet us everywhere we look – how is there anything sexy about this dumb, dead dust? I stay close to my female friends to avoid being perceived as some nondescript unshaven pervert, but I feel so self-conscious the whole time I’m there.

This afternoon I watched “Shrek 3” and “The Princess Bride.” The former didn’t really excite me – it seemed a lot more forced than past Shrek flicks. The latter is of course wildly popular and even a cult flick, but I think it’s overrated. It’s funny at times, and imminently quotable (“Anybody want a peanut?”), but it always leaves me feeling dissatisfied. It’s just too contrived to be enjoyable. Robin Wright Penn, the woman that plays Buttercup, is really hot at the beginning of the movie – when she’s still in peasant mode – but when she’s transformed into the princess she loses something. I don’t know what that says about me; maybe I do like “crunchyness” – to an extent.

I’m out.