Not always, but often Part 1

This blog is called Glimpses Of Dave. I provide glimpses of my life. Snippets of conversations. Some experiences of mine are easier to relate than others. If I meet a girl, take her home, fuck her, and never see her again, that's an easy story to tell. But if I only wrote those stories, this would probably become a pretty mundane blog. And I don't want to do that, so without further ado, let's meet Amanda.

Dancing is a cliché that's often used in movies to show two people falling in love. I'm fully aware that there is a culture of people that go out to clubs for the express purpose of dancing. In fact, I've done it before, but it's not a habit of mine. This story does not start at a dance club.

Instead it begins at a hotel. Funny, that's often where they finish, but this one starts there. I wish it were an extravagant hotel. Or maybe a super-modern one. But this hotel was none of these things. It was in a suburb, on a road with a lot of big name hotel chains. The parking lot needed paving. The location wasn't particularly convenient. The hotel was chosen due to its cheap price.

Your circle of friends may have different ways of gathering, but I'm in one that enjoys getting together for a long weekend at a hotel every now and then. It's an excuse to drink, act recklessly, reminisce, fuck, and drink some more. I don't often go to these weekend excursions, as I find them to be a little tired, they're enjoyable every once in awhile.

However, the catch to this one was that I was sick. Sicker than I had been in awhile. Sick enough that I seriously considered not attending at all. Uncomfortably sick. But seeing as I had already booked the hotel room, and convinced myself that I really wanted to go, off I went. Against better judgment. And I'm glad I did, because I met Amanda.

Friday night at the hotel was forgettable. I think I took a lot of Tylenol, went to a crappy Mexican chain restaurant that had an inexplicable wait, and experimented with how the drugs I was on would react to tequila. Unsurprisingly, they caused me to pass out on the ten minute trip back to the hotel. Time to call it a night despite people's urging me to stay up.

Sleep helped though, and despite looking like warmed over hell, I felt okay on Saturday. Good enough where I could join everybody at a different crappy Mexican restaurant. Amanda was at that lunch, and we talked briefly. She was a student that lived in the city that was adjacent to the suburb we were in. We only spoke briefly as I didn't know her and there were a lot of other people around, but I noticed a few things about her. First of all, she was smart as a whip. I consider myself to be fairly smart (though incredibly stupid at times, I am a male of course) but I don't think I could hold a candle to Amanda. This struck me as very sexy. Second of all, she was rather shy. It also didn't help that she was a friend of a friend, and didn't really know anybody. It's tough to fit in with a boisterous crowd if you don't know anybody.

Lunch ends unspectacularly. I managed not to get sick, which was a plus. And back to the hotel everybody went. One of the interesting aspects of these hotel getaway weekends is that they're very event-based. Sure there's always plenty of hanging out and drinking in hotel rooms, but everybody knows that at 1 PM they have to be at such and such place. And at 7 PM, this other thing starts, so you'd better be ready. But the time between is when you learn what somebody is really like. There are those who wanted to run in the hotel gym. Others played video games. And others still continued on their three-day bender.

Me, I took a nap.

I figured I needed my energy for that evening. The big event was a dance, which struck me as strange, as most of the people in attendance don't like dancing... However I'm a pretty decent dancer, and I've found that being one of the few guys in a large group who can dance well usually helps in the getting laid department. So when the music started, I began looking for dance partners.

Being a bit of a dance veteran, I knew it to be similar to going to a bar. Don't make your move too early. Bide your time until things heat up a bit. I take my own advice and dance with a random skinny girl with long brown hair that I'm slightly friendly with. She's... not the best dancer, and quickly scurries off after the song ends.

Time passes. I dance a little bit here and there, but mostly talk with friends. It almost feels like a junior high spring formal, where people are all doing their own thing, and the vibe is slightly awkward. One of the main differences though is that most junior high kids don't smuggle booze into the school gymnasium, and this hotel had a bar. Using my experience from last night, I get what would normally be a fairly weak cocktail by my standards, and drink it slowly. This proves to be the right strategy, and in very little time, I get a slight buzz on, make a mental note that I should take medication more often, and amble over to a few of my friends hanging out at the end of the bar.

Then Amanda enters the room.

She still looks shy and a little bit awkward, but there's one difference between now and this afternoon. Before she was wearing a baggy t-shirt and jeans. Now she was wearing a floor-length black scoop neck dress. She looked amazing. Long flowing brown hair, an incredible rack, and a smile that could pacify a charging bear. The needle on the record in my mind skipped and went haywire. My wait was over. I knew I had to pounce or somebody else would, and that couldn't happen.

"Hey again."

"Hi."

"Your dress looks great."

"Thanks."

"Can I have the next dance?"

"Yes."

Her one word answers led me to believe that she was still awfully shy, but at least this time there was something to do other than eat stale nachos. The song that was playing ended, and the next MP3 is up, and I immediately recognize it. Luck Be A Lady by Frank Sinatra. I immediately realize that there's no screwing around here. This is a trial by fire. No warm up, no training wheels, it's do or die. I take Amanda's hand, and we're off.

I'm pleased with the song selection as it starts slowly, which is good for getting a feel for each other. And it's clear that she's experienced as well. She stays with the beat, knows how to follow, and is light on her feet. I start with the basics, but it's clear that we're both of the level that we can do more. So we do.

I read once that the man's job while dancing is to make his partner look good. In this case I knew I wouldn't need any help, she was doing a fine job on her own, but I was banking on Amanda wanting to feel good as well. In the entire ballroom, she knew maybe a half-dozen people. From what I can tell nobody really talked to her much at lunch, so this was her first impression. And while I didn't ask anybody, they had to have been impressed.

She twirled, she dipped, she glided effortlessly in and out of my arms. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers never had it so good. While previously I thought the large dance floor looked a bit silly while mostly empty, it did the trick perfectly. While song ended a lot sooner than I would have liked, we didn't care. When the next one began we kept it up. I had barely spoke a dozen sentences to this girl, but our bodies were becoming very well acquainted, and not in the way my body usually learns somebody. This time I learned tempo, pacing and not to linger.

People would later tell us that we danced beautifully. I didn't really care how I looked, but I felt great. And I could tell from her smiling that Amanda did as well.

We danced for about an hour until Amanda told me that she needed to get a ride so she could catch the last train back to the city. Part of me was thinking, "You have a hotel room about five hundred feet away." but the other part was thinking, "Let her go." And for whatever reason I let her go. While there were definite sexual undertones to our dancing, the vibe wasn't right. I did want her. Badly. But this was not the night. I just hoped that the right night would happen. Somehow.