Emotional Valance
I went out dancing after work a couple of weeks ago. Apparently I am a person who does that now. I try not to think about it too hard. This is my strategy for pretty much anything that involves the Eccentric.
The club our group descended upon does salsa and bachata. Bachata is notorious for making boyfriends angry. This is because it often looks like this. It doesn't have to, but you do get pretty close. A lot of the directionality and rhythm from the lead actually comes through your right knee, so you pretty much have to be in each other's pockets the whole time.
Properly executed, bachata combines two of the Eccentric's favorite things in the whole wide world: Showing off, and being used as a giant teddy bear. He is very cuddly. His friend-radius is about five inches, give or take. At one point about two weeks into our acquaintance, he was telling me all about how I'd get a chance to meet his wife when she came to the show that night, while standing practically on my feet with his arm laid across the railing behind my back. I had one of those out-of-body moments where I noted that and went, "Huh. I wonder why that's suddenly okay." I decided to figure it out later.
We get very close in bachata. I've determined experimentally that it's not possible to keep my hair out of his face. I resorted once to staking it all to the back of my head in one big knot, like I do for flamenco. He just got closer. The reason the 5" friend-radius is perfectly fine is that he'd sooner gnaw his own arms off than do anything that would make me regret letting him in there. His favored-dance-partner radius is just about zero, and I've decided he gets to do that, too.
Other people see me dance with the Eccentric, ask for bachata, and get very disappointed that I don't want to snuggle up. They also have a rather inflated idea of how much I know what I'm doing. I don't know bachata, I know how to go along with whatever the Eccentric asks for. He is an unusual lead; he doesn't so much signal as he just changes the direction of gravity. A lot of what he likes to do simply would not work if I didn't cooperate and let myself fall in whatever direction seemed like down. He has a lot of respect for the fact that that's a decision I make every single time.
This has an emotional valance I did not expect. I knew I didn't like strangers getting their paws on me, nor do I like not knowing where I'm going before I'm moved there. I was hoping to get over that well enough to do exhibition. I expected it to be fun, eventually, in the way that looking cool on stage is always fun. I did not expect it to be so frustrating when I couldn't get it to work. It brings up all those times when I was a teenager, hanging out with the Goth and drama club kids, watching them all pile onto the sofa and smash up against each other. I wanted to be able to do that so badly it hurt -- but not with those specific people. It was not a dilemma I was well-equipped to deal with at the time. I mainly felt I was being unreasonably picky, and possibly that I was just broken.
I was also not prepared for quite the kind of thing it is when it does work. It is, or at least it can be, emotionally intimate in a way that I gather most people do not think is appropriate to accept from a platonic relationship. It's within my comfort zone, but I've spent most of my life stomping on the urge to ask for it, because it makes other people mad. I don't have any problems while we're actually dancing; the Eccentric is a charismatic space alien who clearly thinks that this is fine. But it's really hard to get rid of the nagging feeling that I'm going to have to defend my behavior at some point, and that I'm going to lose that fight regardless of what I want, or what I say about it.
The club our group descended upon does salsa and bachata. Bachata is notorious for making boyfriends angry. This is because it often looks like this. It doesn't have to, but you do get pretty close. A lot of the directionality and rhythm from the lead actually comes through your right knee, so you pretty much have to be in each other's pockets the whole time.
Properly executed, bachata combines two of the Eccentric's favorite things in the whole wide world: Showing off, and being used as a giant teddy bear. He is very cuddly. His friend-radius is about five inches, give or take. At one point about two weeks into our acquaintance, he was telling me all about how I'd get a chance to meet his wife when she came to the show that night, while standing practically on my feet with his arm laid across the railing behind my back. I had one of those out-of-body moments where I noted that and went, "Huh. I wonder why that's suddenly okay." I decided to figure it out later.
We get very close in bachata. I've determined experimentally that it's not possible to keep my hair out of his face. I resorted once to staking it all to the back of my head in one big knot, like I do for flamenco. He just got closer. The reason the 5" friend-radius is perfectly fine is that he'd sooner gnaw his own arms off than do anything that would make me regret letting him in there. His favored-dance-partner radius is just about zero, and I've decided he gets to do that, too.
Other people see me dance with the Eccentric, ask for bachata, and get very disappointed that I don't want to snuggle up. They also have a rather inflated idea of how much I know what I'm doing. I don't know bachata, I know how to go along with whatever the Eccentric asks for. He is an unusual lead; he doesn't so much signal as he just changes the direction of gravity. A lot of what he likes to do simply would not work if I didn't cooperate and let myself fall in whatever direction seemed like down. He has a lot of respect for the fact that that's a decision I make every single time.
This has an emotional valance I did not expect. I knew I didn't like strangers getting their paws on me, nor do I like not knowing where I'm going before I'm moved there. I was hoping to get over that well enough to do exhibition. I expected it to be fun, eventually, in the way that looking cool on stage is always fun. I did not expect it to be so frustrating when I couldn't get it to work. It brings up all those times when I was a teenager, hanging out with the Goth and drama club kids, watching them all pile onto the sofa and smash up against each other. I wanted to be able to do that so badly it hurt -- but not with those specific people. It was not a dilemma I was well-equipped to deal with at the time. I mainly felt I was being unreasonably picky, and possibly that I was just broken.
I was also not prepared for quite the kind of thing it is when it does work. It is, or at least it can be, emotionally intimate in a way that I gather most people do not think is appropriate to accept from a platonic relationship. It's within my comfort zone, but I've spent most of my life stomping on the urge to ask for it, because it makes other people mad. I don't have any problems while we're actually dancing; the Eccentric is a charismatic space alien who clearly thinks that this is fine. But it's really hard to get rid of the nagging feeling that I'm going to have to defend my behavior at some point, and that I'm going to lose that fight regardless of what I want, or what I say about it.
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