This week my boyfriend and I decided to go see Eddie Santiago playing at a night club in San Francisco. It was Valentine’s Day and Santiago sings romantic salsa songs, so on Saturday night we were in the city nicely dressed and waited for our friends—until they decided not to go. I couldn’t say no to my boyfriend this time, so we didn’t let that bother us.
I called the nightclub to make table reservations, because I knew how packed it would be, but they gracefully said there were no reservations left that day. A friend of my boyfriend’s called and said he had two extra reservations, so after stopping for food at three different places (all packed), we finally left for our salsa night. Getting there, we didn’t spend less than an hour looking for parking. Even the paid ones were all taken. After losing every bit of patience we had left, we found a spot four blocks away. I was wearing a dress and very high heels, so the walk and the freezing air didn’t do much to help. The line, needless to say, was enormous, and the friend had left his spot in line to go pick up something, which meant we had to go all the way to the back. When the friend finally arrived, he had ticket reservations, not table ones.
We finally got to enter the club and the warm (not to say suffocating) atmosphere convinced us to pay the $2 to hang our jackets. Then again, everyone seemed to have had the same idea, and the closet was already full—yay for carrying the jackets around the whole night. Ordering drinks took us longer than waiting for the closet line, and they did not have the drink that I wanted. Santiago wasn’t there yet, so we had these other guys playing to hundreds of people that obviously did not fit into that space.
My boyfriend and I tried to dance, ignoring the lack of space, the heat, and the smell of sweat. We were definitely not going to let anything ruin the night. When Santiago finally appeared, the dance floor (which was already packed beyond explanation) got much worse, and we had to squeeze ourselves back a little. It was not the night we had planned, there seemed to be a conspiracy against us, and we were nowhere near the dance floor (or near the steps we had rehearsed so much), but then I turned around a hugged him, and our bodies started moving in slow motion, dancing to something that wasn’t at all salsa: it was our own rhythm.
Suddenly, all of the other factors seemed s
mall, and it was just the two of us standing there, dancing to a very romantic song that was being played very far away, like the first time we danced. Then it occurred to me: we loved each other, and we had survived the conspiracy. For the rest of the night, that seemed to be enough; we danced to the songs of love.
I called the nightclub to make table reservations, because I knew how packed it would be, but they gracefully said there were no reservations left that day. A friend of my boyfriend’s called and said he had two extra reservations, so after stopping for food at three different places (all packed), we finally left for our salsa night. Getting there, we didn’t spend less than an hour looking for parking. Even the paid ones were all taken. After losing every bit of patience we had left, we found a spot four blocks away. I was wearing a dress and very high heels, so the walk and the freezing air didn’t do much to help. The line, needless to say, was enormous, and the friend had left his spot in line to go pick up something, which meant we had to go all the way to the back. When the friend finally arrived, he had ticket reservations, not table ones.
We finally got to enter the club and the warm (not to say suffocating) atmosphere convinced us to pay the $2 to hang our jackets. Then again, everyone seemed to have had the same idea, and the closet was already full—yay for carrying the jackets around the whole night. Ordering drinks took us longer than waiting for the closet line, and they did not have the drink that I wanted. Santiago wasn’t there yet, so we had these other guys playing to hundreds of people that obviously did not fit into that space.
My boyfriend and I tried to dance, ignoring the lack of space, the heat, and the smell of sweat. We were definitely not going to let anything ruin the night. When Santiago finally appeared, the dance floor (which was already packed beyond explanation) got much worse, and we had to squeeze ourselves back a little. It was not the night we had planned, there seemed to be a conspiracy against us, and we were nowhere near the dance floor (or near the steps we had rehearsed so much), but then I turned around a hugged him, and our bodies started moving in slow motion, dancing to something that wasn’t at all salsa: it was our own rhythm.
Suddenly, all of the other factors seemed s
mall, and it was just the two of us standing there, dancing to a very romantic song that was being played very far away, like the first time we danced. Then it occurred to me: we loved each other, and we had survived the conspiracy. For the rest of the night, that seemed to be enough; we danced to the songs of love.February 2010
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