Stepping Out

Half way through boiling the carrots I realise it is a choice between dinner or dancing but not both – so I slap on some gel and Escada, drag my tightest jeans out the wardrobe and hoof it down to the car. Often I have a resistance to going out by myself to the big city (Arnhem) on a Saturday night– and often it's wise to listen to that – but sometimes I need to fight it. I’d seen a poster this week for worldbeats music – an alcohol and smoke free dance evening. A friend had been to one in Utrecht a week or so before and really enjoyed it. Barefoot freestyle dancing – people from a range of ages dancing to non mainstream music. Just the kind of therapy that I need. The Nigel Slater recipe can wait till Sunday.

The venue is a circus school located in the back streets of Arnhem and I find it surprisingly easy. The music’s good and people are dancing unselfconsciously. Not many big egos here. I feel at ease- within five minutes I’ve slipped my shoes off and am warming up. As soon as I hit the floor I there a plump chick starts making eye contact – persistently – and I remind myself that though I’m on the pull I also have standards – one of which is a BMI that at least allows for visible collarbones. So I gravitate to the other end of the dance floor and start checking the prospects – making eye contact, seeing who smiles back and who averts their eyes. I’m on the prowl, but in a happy-here-I am-way – rather than a hungry-gotta-find-me a woman way. And some of the dancing is truly weird there’s a woman practicing her yoga asanas, and a tall guy who mostly jumps up and down on the spot shaking his arms – and is all the more loveable for its weirdness.

And the music is good – did I say that already – a mixture of world music with a few conventional pop classics thrown in Stevie Wonder, Sting, a salsa remix of a U2 anthem. One point the DJ throws on a high octane hillbilly fiddle number and the whole room is rocking. Matter of fact he doesn’t play a bad record all night. At one point the eye contact I had been making with cute woman becomes more intense and we start dancing together or three or four numbers and it gets a bit intimate for a while and the eye contact is still there and with my male mind I am wondering whether this will go any further and about three minutes later she thanks me for the dance and we move away across the floor (and I realise soon after that she came with a partner). But dancing is good anyway.

The finishing song is Thank You by Alanis –really appropriate because I feel thankful to have found a group of people who love dancing, a DJ who knows how to keep the house moving and grateful to myself for stepping out tonight.

And all too soon its over and when I am getting my shoes back the plump chick comes over and talks to me and I realise she’s not hitting on me but is the organiser, who hadn’t seen me there before. And though we start in Dutch she soon twigs that I am not a native and the conversation turns to English and we find common themes (and the DJ is her boyfriend). She said it must have taken me courage to come here by myself and dance all night and I said much less than having my friends watch me dance. Then two of her friends -who avoided eye contact earlier- attracted by the English come over and say hello (mental note that I should play that language card more often) and while we didn’t swap phone numbers or anything there was a feeling of a process of melting ice and making new friends in a spontaneous way.

Out of the dance hall before 11: the night is still young and so I head back to Wageningen and the OK bar. It is the seediest skuzziest bar in town, the furniture looks like it was retrieved from skips (almost certainly it was) and the regular denizens look like extras from Mad Max. But – and its a big but- it’s the one bar in town that takes its music seriously. One night you can go in and they’re playing hard core dub reggae, anther night the bar maid is a Led Zep fan and on another you can get two hours of Johnny Cash – none of this pre recorded easy listening wallpaper music that the other bars specialise in – (is it the same tape they play in my supermarket?)

Tonight there’s a party there. They are teaming up with another krak (squatters) organisation that does organic veggie catering – who got evicted from their premises some time ago. There’s a band, happy hour prices on their (excellent German) draft beer and a nearly full house. Half of those there would probably even get past security at a conventional night club! But it’s a very different feeling from the dance night – I half expected to meet somebody I know to speak to (as opposed to the few i nod to) but mostly every one there is in little groups or couples. An Afrikaans bore tries to buttonhole me at the bar with a story about his wife leaving him – but I’d already haerd him tell that one in a loud voice to my neighbour so feign an urgent meeting at the end of the bar (which is more like a living room so it was a quite obvious brush off). When I comeback I engage the bar maid in conversation to block off my boorish neighbour and she starts telling me the story of her life or her day at least - how she moved house this morning and her ex boyfriend is in the pub with a new girl and she’s an artist and from one of the new EU member states. And then she realises she’s not doing much work anymore and I start helping her with the glasses and at some point we arrange to carry on this conversation later on in the week – and I’m thinking does that qualify as a date?

When the band come on they’re loud and not very good and while their girlfriends are doing their best to get the crowd dancing the most response they are getting is a bit of “shuffling around handbag” dance movements. Then the band kick into “Is she really going out with him?” that Joe Jackson song with that beautiful lolloping baseline I go and help out with the dancing for five minutes because its such an infectious base line and the band are pretty note perfect, but there’s not the same feeling as earlier.

The band play a short set – they probably don’t know that many songs – and I look around at the audience and remember that Russian adage about no such thing as an ugly woman – just not enough vodka. I decide not to try to artificially enhance the scenery but to make it home with a clear head. Bidding the bar maid goodbye I notice she has a intricate tattoo, a very narrow filigree sort of vine, running up her neck and curling up to just under her ear. “Nice tattoo.” She smiles and touches it somewhat shyly. “Till Wednesday”

Sunday morning I have no hangover – but a bad case of "can't bendover" - I can hardly reach the botom shelf of the fridge to get the milk out of the fridge. When was the last time I danced like that for two hours? I'll need a fitness regime to do that again soon.