Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow... This is the only thing one is easily capable of thinking about whilst one's calf muscle clenches, twists, and throbs with intense pain. Well, okay, that, and a long string of obscenities... which I won't repeat here.

Needless to say, I should've remembered to stretch after dancing for 3 hours straight... but alas, I did not, and now I am paying the consequences by walking around my apartment with a gimpy leg that has decided to retain some of the pain from the Charlie Horse in the form of soreness. Damn, I haven't had one of those in a long time! (Thankfully!) I usually remember to stretch...

BUT, it was a blast - I had a great time at the dance (though, I didn't know that it would cost $5) with Ricardo. This time, it was much easier to let loose and get creative with my moves, now that I'm more comfortable around Ricardo, and more familiar with his style of dancing. Once we got going, me and Ricardo were easily one of the most extreme, free-moving dancers on the dance floor. We both like to MOVE when we dance, so we had to go to the back of the dance floor, where there was sufficient space to do so without knocking into someone, or punching them with a flying fist. At first, the dance was slow - as usual, the party took a while to get started. "Sammy" the Slug was there (a guy in a slug costume - the mascot), hilariously grinding with all the girls who would let him. Ricardo even joked (warning: not a PG joke), saying "I know this is kind of a crude question to ask... but I wonder: what does Sammy's dick feel like?" I told him, I wouldn't know, and I hope I never find out.

Then Tatiana and some of Ricardo's other friend's arrived, and we danced with them for a while, Tatiana laughing at me and Ricardo's more out-there moves. Eventually there people got lost in the dance floor, and me and Ricardo retreated to the back to find some space. It was then that the music switched from the usual popular hip-hop/r&b to a rather refreshing set of funky dance, rock, jazz, and disco music. I loved the disco-esque music the most, for it allowed for the funnest moves. I tried to remember this "grapevine" stepping move from one of my summer camps eons ago, which led to a whole sequence of steps that me and Ricardo kept inventing. One song, the main lyrics were "now push... and pull...", so I followed the lyrics, and started pushing my body back with my hands, and then pulling myself forward to the music. Ricardo caught onto this and tried to syncronize himself with my motions so that we were pushing and pulling each other. When the music switched over to more of an electronic dance, there was one song where we both stuck our hands up in the air in front of us, and tried to mirror one another's hand movements, without touching - that was fun! And then the intense electronic dance had us both jumping and moving so widely and erratically that we took up a large portion of the dance floor. After two hours of this, we eventually tired out, and went to get water. We went out a door onto this outdoor little aclove, and stood out there relaxing and chatting for a while before realizing that it smelled like puke - and then hurrying back inside before we stepped in it.

After our break, things mellowed out a little bit. The music remained at a strange electronic rave-type genre, which was odd, but dance-able. I guess Ricardo was tired, though, because he wasn't dancing... he stood in the middle and watched people instead, occasionally throwing in a few small moves when the mood struck him. I kind of stood there swaying for a while before setting off on my own to dance some more at the edge of the platform. It was there that some girl approached me and danced with me for a minute before saying: "You should come up and dance in the front, on the stage!" I take this as a compliment, that she thought my dancing was that good, but I declined, telling her that I preferred the back - more space. She nodded and left - supposedly back to the front stage - and I continued dancing. It's true that I wanted more space to dance, but also, I didn't want to dance in the front because that's were a fairly large number of couples were all bunched together in a cluster, for all appearances (except for the fact that they were wearing clothes) having sex while dancing. In fact, it was really bizarre music, and the group of people having dance-sex were the only people there, and eventually me and Ricardo noticed this oddity and went to sit down. Finally we just left - there was only half an hour left anyway - and caught a bus back. On the bus was a group of people who must've been drunk or something because they were saying and doing the most ridiculous things ever. Then someone starts the "Oakes" cat-call (you say it really loud, deep in your throat, starting low, and then kind of bending it up at the end: O-o-o-a-k-es), and then everyone was doing it... and Ricardo, probably the only person actually from Oakes, just hung his head in his hands and gave me an exasperated look, which I returned. (Someone from Porter made up the "Oakes" call as a joke making fun of Oakes, and now everyone does it, apparently, at their leisure, for entertainment. If you ride any type of semi-full bus on campus, there is a good chance that you will hear the Oakes call.) I got off the bus at Kresge, wishing Ricardo luck with the drunk people - "I'll teach them the correct way to say 'Oakes'", he said - and warning him against the "Oakes" assault that would probably result from him saying something to the drunk people.

... When I got home, Imani and our friend Amy were in the living room watching "Higher Learning", an intense movie that touches on so many issues of racism, sexism, etc, that afterwards we all sat there on the couch for over an hour just having a discussion about the issues raised in the movie.

Kind of awkward: I later heard them having sex.

But anyway, getting late... it's 4am already, and I am ready to SLEEP! I can sleep in as much as I want tomorrow (today, hehe), so it doesn't matter that I'm up at such an hour. It was totally worth staying up to go dancing and to watch that movie and to have that deep discussion like I always do when Imani's around... totally worth waiting up for. I can't wait for next time...

Goodnight!