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Last night I reintroduced myself to the seductive rhythm of the Salsa beat after a long 10-month separation.

I was once an avid Salsa dancer– perfecting my turns and shines once or twice a week. And, that’s not all. I can not only salsa, but I can dance the cha-cha-cha, the merengue, the bachata, and the cumbia too. (Yeah, they’re all about the same…) I also like to brag that I won a Salsa competition once. (I really did. I won’t, however, comment on the number of contestants or the bias of the judges.) More than that, I played a salsa-dancing bird in a local production of Suessical, the Musical. (For children…) So, I like to pretend that I could easily take the gold on Dancing with the Stars. (Right, if I was a star…) But, yesterday, when I pulled my jazz shoes out of the closet, they were covered in what could have been a decade’s worth of dust.

I pouted a bit. Walked around in tattered sweat pants and a spit-up stained shirt claiming that I might shave my head so that I wouldn’t have to wash my hair anymore, when my husband chimed in.

My husband, who manages, without jealousy or provocation, to accept and support all of my passionate and creative endeavors– even when they include shaking all my womanly bits and pieces in the sweat-drenched arms of other men– encouraged me to get my ass back on the dance floor. (Some guy, eh?!?)

So, he held down the fort while I was out– Lord, forgive me– until 2-friggin’-AM!

(Yes, I’m still suffering…)

If you’ve never been Salsa dancing, I trust that the image you conjure up in your wild mind– stiletto-heeled women who can go bra-less and often do, exposing leg, hip bone, and midriff while graciously attempting to free the cleavage from their blouses, pulsing and twirling to a primeval beat in the arms of well-beyond-swanky olive-skinned men with button down shirts that are mostly unbuttoned– is very close to accurate. The Salsa scene, like so many scenes, fits its well-earned stereotypes.

So, now that you’ve got that image in your mind, picture me.

I can only fit into two pairs of my pants– three if you count the pair of maternity jeans I held on to– and I don’t own a decent bra. Honestly, it would take little effort– graciously or no– to free my cleavage, or many other choice parts of my plus-size frame, from any manner of librarian-esque ensembles. No, I’m not that salsa stereotype.

So, what the hell was I thinking?

Still, I got out there and did what my husband so lovingly encouraged me to do. After practically trying to mummify myself in layers of lingerie designed to squish the fat rolls back into my body, I showed those no-bras how it was done! Yeah, baby.

Float like a butterfly. Sting like a bee. I was like lava on that dance floor. I even resisted the urge to douse my thighs in seltzer water when, during the meringue, I realized that they were ON FIRE!

(I’d been breathless before, but my post-partum hips, much like that long stagnant Tin Man, proved to need a little oiling.)

Regardless, I was almost able to enter that mindless, transcendent space. That space that monks and yogis boast about. That space I’ve accessed while dancing before. Almost. But, I couldn’t shake Silas out of my mind.

I’m glad for that.

Also, this time around, I couldn’t quite remove myself from the shallowness of it all. The lipsticked lips. The push-up bras. The glitter that I applied a might too heavily on my arms and chest in an attempt to look youthful and “with it”. At 30. With a canvas of stretch marks like jaguar scratches in patterns on my now gelatinous belly.

Yeah, it’s hard to feel sexy when you’re also feeling your milk let down.

And, it’s hard to transcend time and space when you’re worried about looking sexy. (In this midst of a complicated set of turns I actually remember thinking about how mama dogs are often characterized by their sagging and elongated teats. Some enlightenment, eh?)

The thing is, I’m generally not that worried. Not about my body that is.

What I’m worried about is my son growing up in a culture that doesn’t respect the body of a woman that has given birth.

So, I’m canning the Salsa. At least temporarily.

I’m going to go swing dancing instead!

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 9th, 2008 at 4:04 am and is filed under Favorite Posts, Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.