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There are bound to be countless parallels, metaphors, witty essays and insightful observations about how writing is like ___________ (fill in the blank). Salsa addicts (or fill-in-the-blank addicts) will compare their interest to everything under the sun, too, to rationalize why it is they are doing what they do: it’s  a live-saver, a spiritual fulfillment, a chance to meet people, a reason not to pull the trigger… Art and expression play different roles for each of us who welcome it into our lives (and who perhaps later damn that we ever gave it an invitation).

So here’s my corny bit about why writing and salsa compliment each other, but you can fill in the blanks for your hobbies, dreams or interests: salsa is a very good training camp for writers getting their toes wet in the world of marketing and publication. Salsa humbles you because, you will be humiliated. Probably harsh a term, but at first it’ll feel like that. You will look awkward, you will be judged, you might not get offers… Honestly, if you need a boot-camp for tougher skin (or an accelerator for a nervous breakdown) then take salsa on-2. Then write, and try to publish your book.  Writing itself sounds romantic. You do it solo, you paint worlds with words with cerebral coolness, and in the end, if you stuck it out, you might have a short story or novel. Practicing shines by yourself in front of a mirror is like that too. But if you want to partner your work with the rest of the world…. well, there are layers of odysseys that await you. Want to use my capital to share your story? Want to spend three minutes of my time in front of a crowd holding my hand and twisting me into a pretzel?  Some zip through it, others chug along, never getting past their basic.

The great thing about social dancing salsa that makes it very different from the experience of writing novel-length literary fiction? It is in the NOW. There, in that moment is your expression. It goes by quick, it doesn’t linger like a sentence, page or chapter that constantly needs revision. It moves on, though you might create a memory (or salsa character) out of it. Opportunities seem endless. You scripted your own dance, you shared it with an audience in a proper format, and then you look to do another. A story and its expression in 3 minutes! How great is that? Probably best of all? It aint fiction.

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You can go to a serious salsa website for some solid advice- but here are two things that they might not tell you: There is a science to finding the little red shoes that’ll take you to… ok, not Kansas…let’s say take you through a pleasant salsa odyssey. For us girls, doing it right means fighting the little X chromosome demon that would have us select a shoe based solely on its beauty. Yes, salseras, like most things in life, you need to go a little bit deeper and the first word of caution is don’t go for stilts. Remember what your goal is here first-most: to dance. Salsa heel heights should be approached in intervals. At the same time, it’s salsa. You gotta look good. So don’t go for Dutch clogs. Salsa is also a lesson in sexing up your image (and movements off the dance floor).

Gripping: Balancing while doing  grated steps and elegant triple turns means you need to glide and stick. Make sure you regularly scrape the alchemical dust off the bottom of your shoe once and awhile or you just might wind up setting the place on salsa fire, because apparently the floors are coated with fairy dust. Oh, they also say to go for a snug size…

IMAGE and BALANCE… Dorothy will have nothing on you.

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The Faucet (idea submitted by Zorro): Let’s face it. All true salseros and salseras are this character to some degree. The Faucet is that dancer that drowns you with their sweat throughout the entire three-minute entanglement. They are easy to spot: their skin is shiny; some of them (being self-aware of who they are) will have a towel knotted around their belt-loop; they are slippery to the touch; some may come with a slight odor (though dance sweat does not have to be this way). And if all these signals fail to present themselves to you, then the absolute telling way to know you have just danced with a faucet is… are you wet? Do you feel like you’ve just passed through Niagra Falls? For you prudes, here is how you get over a Faucet: embrace that what you are doing is a having a somatic conversation with another human being. You are tapping into another way of dialogue. It can be disgusting, it can mean nothing, or it can be like hot sex. Take your pick. The only way to beat being a Faucet is bringing a towel and change of shirt. Or offering a towel to one who hasn’t been enlightened as to what salsa character they are. If you could care less about your partner, then guys, consider this:  being a Faucet can be a gateway drug into becoming…

Butterfingers: It’s as if these guys took a bath in oil before going out to dance purposely so that you can never lock hands. See a girl suddenly fly across the room without a partner crashing into the wall after taking out another couple? Look carefully for the single guy staring, without guilt,  alone… chances are he’s a Butterfingers who sent this salsera into orbit. Even if you are a Wolverine or Wolfsbane who locks his or her claws into him, aint nothing gonna make you stick. Much like dancing with an Other Dimension, it’s like these guys have a magnetic field around them that repels you violently when you approach. Sometimes it is a temporary status from being a Faucet, and a good towel-down can liberate you from the follies of being this salsa character.

The Con Idea submitted by Bianca: They come in both sexes. Let’s start with the salsero. Much like his cousin, The Fan, the con-man gives airs that he is an orisha’s gift to salsa. He’ll have an on-2 shirt, or perhaps a Don Juan suit (or the mystery-man hat that adds swagger to his his 2-stomps). He’ll boast shirts from every single salsa congress that passed his way or he journeyed to.  But when it comes down to dancing, this guy turns out to be selling snake oil. Can’t find his ones or twos, never mind the three, five, six, seven. Sigh… why, why, why did you trick me you charlatan! Perhaps he means well, he really does love salsa… he’d just do the salsa universe well by remaining a Fan. How to spot a Con-Woman… well we usually look like hot-little things oozing salsa-exuality… Until you try dancing with us. Tsk, tsk to those who have been conned.  Who told you to fall into Latin stereotypes?

The Crab: Side-step, side-step, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle… These are all the steps you need to know for that salsero who leads you horizontally back and forth across the dance floor for a full three minutes (Lord help you if it’s an elongated remix).  This happens mostly with (what’s now called) Street Salsa. If only the Crab could merge with a Treadmill, his salsa would be a symphony.

The Treadmill: The treadmill is the salsero who blandly, boringly, tortuously, and agonizingly leads you through a dance doing nothing but a basic step. Three minutes becomes three hours. Dancing becomes hand-holding as you shuffle back and forth. Ladies, make the most of it! Burn those calories and tone those muscles as you would on a treadmill. Pointless stepping that gets you nowhere and nothing. Your only tool against this villain is to squeeze some ladies styling in between the numbers, and unless he has a lock on you, liberate yourself from this metronome and break out in shines.

Robin Hood: I am guilty of being this character at times… A Robin Hood goes around the dance floor offering charity dances to the Shy-But-Whys and sometimes (undeservedly) to Have No Rhythm, Don’t Count, Don’t Care’s. Robin Hoods do this for a number of reasons: they are on the clock (aka, salsa teachers), they feel bad for people, they believe everyone deserves a good time, they like to sample anything that walks the earth, or they really can’t stand seeing…

Wallpaper: Sigh… my heart goes out to these salseros. You’ve probably never, ever noticed them, because, well, they’re wallpaper. They perpetually stand on the periphery of the dance floor and are either: too cool to dance, are so f*cking afraid to ask a girl or guy to dance, or can read but can’t write (meaning they can do a class pattern with no problem but can’t bring those skills to spontaneously dance at a social). These guys have superhuman powers of camouflage- it doesn’t matter which social they bring themselves to, they will assume the exact coloration of the walls and be ignored by every passing salsera. If you mourn that you are such a character, pray, Wallpaper, that a Robin Hood spots you.

Wolverine: Have scratch marks all over your arms, hands and torso? You’ve just danced with a Wolverine or Wolfsbane. Get these dancers a nail filer and nail clipper before they do any more damage. Nails may work for strumming your guitar or looking cute, but they don’t work on the dance floor.

Mr. Fantastic: That’s from the Fantastic Four, you non-nerds, and this salsero does such amazing things with his arms. He can stretch them (and you) into a pretzel, and successfully twirl you out of it. These guys are usually Fred Astaires and if you’ve only had him only once, a Zorro. Their unbelievable turn patterns that defy human logic and physics are tell-tale signs you’re with a Mr. Fantastic, which is not to be confused with…

Doctor Octopus: Brother of the Predator and the bad cousin of Mr. Fantastic, these guys are all arms that do nothing but annoy you. They flap them like chickens, grope you left and right, smack you around… none of it materializing into a turn pattern. A self-help tip: make lemonade from lemons and find a Mr. Fantastic to help you nurture your arm talents into something useful.

Ok, I better stop. So much for writing today…

If you’ve never read salsa characters before… oh, there’s more. Click here for ghosts of past.

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I suppose the comic book stores have went the way of all small mom and pop shops, the predecessors of the plight of independent bookstores… No, don’t comfort me with the selection at Barnes and Nobles or Borders… I don’t even care for the comic book store near Union Square (if it’s still there) not because I have anything against it… it’s just not my hood.

Ode to the comic book store! A recently rejected-by-a-literary-agent- nerd-girl’s strip club, drug den, and escapist paradise.

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If the link doesn’t work, click http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaHb8grTIUk

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This is not a new book, just something I picked up with interest as someone who has lived in Athens for a few years as part of an Urban Odyssey. Publishing the book might have been a rush job trying to capture the market of the 2004 Athens Olympics when Modern Greece suddenly was on people’s minds (anticipated failure, complaints, etc, like most media here seems to be about Greece). Consider this book the anti-romantic portrait of modern Greece. If you loved Greece before you read it, you might hate it after you finish reading 142 easy-reading pages of this book. Written by a native Greek who left when he was 10 years old, who paid yearly visits there growing up and spent 3 months living there in part as a personal journey, in part to write this  book… it basically puts a magnifying glass on all of the flaws of the modern Greek state, its people and, it seems (it can be that dark) their souls. Take all the bad, post it on pages like a collage, provide minimal analysis and you’ve got this book. This is not to say what the author speaks about is not true… indeed the most depressing aspect of this book, as a once-ago resident who lived in and with many of the groups the author describes, is that what he talks about is real. In falling in love, did I ignore the monster? I don’t think so but the book shakes you up, even though it is a tad bit unfair, it is so very superficial in some ways (but not in that it presents a glimpse into the “native” life that tourists might not ever see). It is harsh. Maybe it has to be. I know there is more to Greece than this, but then again… Sigh… if only life were as simple as Ode to Frappes and a sun-filled life…

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Bianca and Nova have been in a bit of a salsa rut this past month. Not so much in sucking, but low in the spirit that beckons you to the dance floor and takes over your body with a partner.  Which reminds me of Star Trek, The Next Generation Episode  166 when Doctor Crusher was regularly visited by an alien ghost that entered her body, and well, did delightful things to her from the inside out. But I digress slightly off topic.

The Holy Salsa Spirit had left us and I was prepared to lodge a complaint in the lost and found department of salsa dancing or go to a salsa church, consult the salsa priest, or perhaps consider giving up some of it (to an addict that means trimming down from three classes to one, plus going out once a week instead of maybe three), and whine here on this blog.

BUT THE HOLY SALSA SPIRIT HATH RETURNED.

Nova experienced one of those moments-and you know those moments-when you realize you are inhabiting what will become a fond memory, when you are realizing some sort of dream… You barely inhabit the now, time becomes all fuzzy- you become some sort of witness to yourself in a certain place and you sort of become one with it. Sounds all funny but this is what happened dancing street salsa with an old-timer PR in the pouring rain, drenched with a live band playing in el barrio. I just had my pasteles fix from a toothless old man selling them out of a water cooler that was sitting inside a “borrowed” supermarket shopping cart, and was pretty content with that until the rain came down and I was dancing.

It just was one of those moments that make you want to cry because life seems, well alive. In that moment you are filled with some type of timeless euphoria.

No, I assure you it was just pasteles I bought from the water cooler. But enough of this for now. I have to save something for a chapter.

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“I have a dream. It is called love, anarchy, freedom. It is called being idle.”

-Tom Hodgkinson

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