Celebrating V-Day 2015
It’s 2:53 a.m. It’s a hot night and a coyote outside is having an orgasm. Body parts I didn’t know I had are hurting. I went in over my head again.
A sex councilor named Kat showed me a few pelvic exercises and I went to an Ecstatic Dance Friday night to try it with music. I found a Capoeira Samba there instead. A female body in a red feather bikini, followed by five others convinced me to stay. A woman in the band sold me a $25 ticket for the annual San Diego Brazil Carnival the following evening, V – Day.
After coffee the next morning, I called the club. A guy with a Portuguese accent told me to let people at the door know if I want to be in the samba contest for a free trip to Rio. It was like Jesus spoke to me.
I drove down the hill to the costume store where a woman that looks like my aunt, the one with a dirty secret, hands me an indigo sequin shirt. I find a headdress with a silver and gold sequine cap, beads hanging down. Black and white feathers form a big circle above my head like the sun.
Only feathered thing I could find for below the waist was a short black skirt trimmed with a purple boa. A wide leather sash went around my waist, with gold chains hanging in front that swing in and out with my hips. Black Bally jazz shoes, and purple faux pearl beads on my ankles. I’m ready to samba.
Other contestants are twelve mostly luscious females in elegant feathers, glitter makeup. Waiting in the wings, my limbic system was over-stimulated. In the context these ladies created, my strange outfit seems strangely reasonable. The women are stars of samba schools. The event manager gives me a chance to gracefully back out; says I didn’t pre-register for the contest. After the experience at Poly Palooza, I wasn’t about to be stopped by technicalities. I’m doing this. I dance or I get $75 for the costume rental.
She put me at the end of the bill so I can watch each dancer perform, see how they work with the bateria (or not) and the audience. They had an asset I lacked, their bodies. I needed a plan. For two seconds after my name was called, I wonder what the f—k I’m doing. The insistent rhythm of tamborims, caixa and surdos clarifies it.
Finding myself climbing the stairs to the stage, let ’em wait for it; picking up the rhythm, slowly moving across the stage facing the bateria, with my back to the audience, rotating my hips in the tight spiral Kat showed me, left, then right, making eye contact with each percussionist, brief eyeball to eyeball conversations with each one, there’s an accelerating crescendo as they synch up and my spiral gets wider, exaggerated. A break then a down beat and I’m thinking what the hell, jump turn and face the audience as if we’d rehearsed. It worked.
Audience got it and we had f–ing crazy fun. At times, I admit, I wondered if I was going to die up there. I had open heart surgery in ’97. What a way to go! Decided to keep my heart rate down by settling into a crescent hip to hip movement, low energy. The the caixas come out again, take control. I’m off the floor, flying. The crowd goes wild. The girls come onstage and we rocked for a few minutes, when I noticed Acacia, a dancer from Oakland.
After the intro, we’re off stage. Several women in the audience ask me for pictures and autographs. Everyone is dancing, samba schools performing, Capoeira guys flying around like hippy gymasts and now contestants are called back onstage. I’m expecting an award speech. Instead, one by one dancers drift offstage leaving me and Acacia.
Photo courtesy of Acacia Hurricane Samba
We danced together maybe 10 minutes, audience screaming, copping moves like Gene and Ginger. Acacia’s compact, fiery, energetic, “I got that, what you doin’ with this?” She dances to tamborims, while I ride the shakera then switch or pair up, accelerating tempo while giving dirty dancing a new name. I’m back to the crescent, slow the heart down, breathe, bateria gives me some space. Acacia takes my attention again. I pick up and we hit it together on the beat.
Afterwards some contestants congratulate me. More photo ops. A dance hall hero in V heaven on V-day! Thank you, Jesus!
I’m going to Samba school.
