I'm reading a book a book about a very smart person acting very dumb in front of many academic officers who he's trying to impress to allow him into their institution but he totally flips out for no reason and then he's addicted to herion no sorry marijuana which I don't really understand but I'm reading it and it's a smart read and I like books that are hard to read since I think if I do get through the book I will be smart as well and I want to be smart but right now I'm reading this book and I'm looking at people learning to dance and I want to learn to dance but I don't need to learn what their teaching since I know how to do the basics of this dance but haven't really danced like people dance to have fun since I was at some sort of Shriners convention hall in Parker or some a wheres down state with lots of old people looking at us fresh young faces taking up the back side of the dance floor as the old band played old tunes that had young ideas when they were young but they're old now and the ideas just seemed very confused like I was there cause I sort of wanted to join in the lesson even though I knew the moves but I didn't know the partners and I have to admit I am very shy about dancing with people I don't know and I look around at the dance floor and its perimeter and the dance has started but I'm thinking too much and too much energy is going through me from soda and coffee and being rusty at dances that I just look at the people dancing like it's no big thing and I study their moves and see their smiles and they're happy just jostling to Big Band songs that have absolutely no place in the year 2002 but that's what makes it fun!, I think I dunno, I look at people who aren't dancing and I know I can feel what they're thinking about so I won't ask them to dance unless I know absolutely that they will say yes but this is silly since this is a dance and people come here this day at this place to dance with people like me and they expect me to ask them "Would you care to dance?" cause this question won't seem out of the ordinary, not like if I asked that same question at a library or asked a similar question at this dance, but instead of 'dance' somehow blurted out 'fuck with your hands tied down to the bed and me with a whip on you teasing you until you say your safety word' but that's not something you can just blurt out to total strangers when on a dancefloor, so I see and I look and I wait and feel that I can approach these people that I'm tense and afraid of who I don't know their names but would like to and I think I should just go home and come back here next week when my new partner I started dancing for the first time in a year came to this very place and I was a bit more free to try things cause I was, without a doubt, a better dancer than her, she had never danced and I used to have sex with a ballerena who had special shoes made for her cause her feet were too big and I'm thinking of this, sort of and I look at this one girl, I go up to her and I ask her to dance and she says yes and before she can fully answer with that one syllabyl answer I say that I am rusty and please bear with me - sinking myself to below beginner since the last thing you do in life is put yourself down before any evidence is on the table or floor as it is and I know this but to hell with knowledge cause this girl has a tight waist and nice hips and I've seen her dance before but I never danced with her thinking that she's used to people who listen to Glenn Miller for fun and know moves that I don't and when I ask them what the moves are called (again, I can't remember any names the first time I hear them) they don't just tell me the name, they say first "oh, it's just a (sometimes simple | sometimes just a little | maybe sometimes a variation of [another unknown move) and I think of the subject I know or used to know well and now I don't know exactly what I know but I'm dancing with this young women and I ask her to tell me what the hell I'm doing wrong cause I haven't danced by myself for practice and my previous partner never told me and only got mad and stomped off the dance floor to leave me quizzical and I'm quizzical and cautious about this whole dancing thing and the Charleston seems it should just stay a place in Virginia or the South or North Carolina or I really like Colorado and the square states of the west and the girl I'm dancing tells me I need to square up my arms and keep a frame and remember this and the next girl I ask isn't as good but has very firms breasts that leave me nervous cause she isn't as good and when we turn since the we turn on four, the dance goes 1,2,3 AND 4; 5, 6, 7 and 8 and triple step on 3 AND four and 7 AND 8 or somewhere near that, I'll ask next time cause when we turn in the middle there, her chest brushes against mine because she's eight feet tall it seems but at least much taller and plain and Sarah than any partner I've had since I started doing this definetly at age eighteen and all I have to show is a few spins and steps on toes but I want to get better and each partner it seems to get better and easier and after a while I start asking people to dance when I like the song and more girls come in including this one girl that has a cute face and cropped hair and a radiant smile and I tell myself that I want to dance with this girl before I leave since she feels approachable to me now and wasn't the last hour when she wasn't here and she's even a good dancer and I want to show off my moves that I've accumulated in the last fifteen minutes or so and I think I do ask her, I do and she says yes and I stop thinking of what people may be thinking when I ask them and I stop a conversation she was having and I asked her, reaching for her hand, brought her to the middle of the very desolate and small floor and after six beats go by I get the one beat since the count is eight and we start dancing and I don't tell her I'm rusty until I know I'm about to screw up just a little and she says it's OK and I go see? everytime I didn't lead a move right and I don't think she thought this was bad or I was bad [at dancing]; the dance seemed to have ended very quick like time goes quick when you're concentrating too much on nothing and I spunned her one too many times for the dip but finally dipped her and held her left hand a bit too long and gave her some eye contact, thanked her for the dance and sat down again for a good fifteen minutes as she hussled over there and I bustled over here and I peeped her all through the place but not very well since she caught my eye and I had to feign that I was deep in thoughts of the universe and not in how much warm energy she has flowing through her over the other dancers and her friend that accompanied her, whome which I flirted with myself with the idea that I should dance with her friend that had come with her so she may notice how (ha ha) easy it was for me to dance with anyone I please she was no special but she was I was thinking and I just wanted to make her jealous and it's an old trick to give a warm hello followed by a cold goodbye to hook someone you like and make them think about you until next time, since that's what you say "oh, well, see you later, I guess, next time" cause they know there's going to be a next time if they keep a look out for you who will play it cool until, until the song I hear is a song I think is fast enough not to be clumbsy when danced by me, I ask the best dancer in my opinion to dance and I ask her the same thing, to just give me advice on what I am doing and she is more than happy, this being a very unstressful and helpful setting and not a really big dance where you dress in pressed zoot suits and have pocket watches with gold chains attached to them in your back pocket, this is just on the campus of the school you're not going to but you have no problems with that, you are having problems with this girl and dancing, who seems slippier than everyone that day and you don't know exactly what to do, the beat isn't coming to your mind but the girl doesn't care and she tells you to bend those damn legs and you do, after this dance you think to yourself; "I have done all the dancing I have done today, the next time, I shall dance more and with a greater sense of how" - you read more of your book and walk home where you feel you could have really danced a little more
