My SO and I went to a blues festival on Saturday. It might have actually been a beer festival with blues as a backdrop, but either way, it was great fun. I'm not much into brew so we went for the music, although barbecue, ice cream, and a couple of mugs of brewpub ale were on the agenda as well, and as the river breeze cooled the warm, summer afternoon, we felt like dancing.

I haven't danced in...well, a long time. In the sixth grade some popular girl laughed at me and told me I was a bad dancer at the afterschool sock hop, and in the eighth grade I was ridiculed for wearing red knee socks (yes, I was a dork) so I pretty much gave it up.  My later experiences with dancing were a senior prom at a school I didn't attend, with a boy I later married but who was more unpopular at his school than I had been at mine (and he wore a mismatched beige denim jacket and pants to prom...sob), and then a brief foray into meat-market club dancing in the days of cheek-length skirts and leather boots when I was thirty. In each case I was under-dressed, under-rehearsed, under-pretty -- and out of my element.

But Saturday, damn it, I danced!

A couple of beers and a couple of medicinal tokes took the edge off, but what REALLY allowed me to cut loose was the sheer ugliness of the other dancers. Okay, ugly is probably an overstatement, they were perfectly normal people of the type that gather in a small city park in Stevenson Washington to see Too Slim and the Taildraggers.

The dance floor was really a patch of grass in front of the stage which was really the porch/deck of a community center building. It was crammed with a few dozen folks in various stages of inebriation -- some possibly even sober -- and various ages, shapes, and hirsutity (hirsutitude?). Most were barefoot, wearing t-shirts and shorts, and quite a few stank like fresh or not-so-fresh perspiration.

Too Slim was kind of cute in a I-would-never-think-so-if-you-didn't-have-a-guitar- way and the bass player was cute in a put-that-down-and-come-suck-my-dick kind of way (I don't have one, I'm just sayin').  The music was not what I typically listen to by choice, but was awesomely perfect in that time and place. 

There, in front of Too Slim and the busty bassist, I found my element. Okay, these people were NOT really my element, but what they were was a group in which I could feel comfortable dancing. 

There was an "old" guy, probably in his mid-60s, shirtless with crisply curling white chest hair, shoeless, and a dancing fool. He had a woman with him, maybe a wife, younger than him by a few years but not a beauty. He spun around the place, waving his wiry, fit arms and thrusting his hips. He exuded pleasure from every tanned pore and made eye -- and sometimes hip -- contact with everyone as he passed, taking a break here and there to rub groins with his ladyfriend.I loved his love of the evening.

Also among the dancers was an odd family of hippie-esque people that flitted through the crowd, interacting in strange and confusing ways. The man never seemed to speak but gestured like an untrained mime and frequently grabbed hands and waists, including mine. With him was a very petite and slender middle-aged woman with long hair and a loose-filmy dress just covering her deeply-tanned skin, a willowy teenaged girl, and two small girls -- one a big-eyed, flirtatious redhead and the other a shy black girl, both about eight. The five of them behaved more like a troop of fairy folk than a family...

They danced together and apart, luring others into their circle as they could, sharing arcane expressions and gestures. At one point I was pulled in and tossed around briefly before being rejected as too stiff...the redheaded girl later grabbed my SO's hand and danced with him, staring plaintively into his face as she swung his arm. When the music stopped she drifted away but for the entire next song her...dad?...was pointing her toward us, gesturing for her to do something. What? 

There was a stauesque woman, probably over six feet and full-figured, who smelled strongly of the hot day's activities and seemed to be looking for someone or something as she danced. But then, who isn't? Occasionally she would join up with someone, usually another woman, but mainly she danced alone, eyes scanning the grounds.Who was she hoping to find?

There was a  tiny, well-constructed woman-girl with a P!nk haircut and tight clothes who was obviously enjoying the dancing in a most primal way. She gyrated with equal abandon whether she was with men or women, flirting easily with either gender. I was quite captivated by her wide smile and open dance moves until she stood near me, draped over a fellow dancer, and started to talk...illusion shattered.

One couple was quite watchable...a man probably around 40 and a girl in her twenties. They were both fairly attractive in a very sexual way that I found distasteful to contemplate...like dogs or zoo animals. Not that I find dogs or zoo animals sexy but if I DID I would feel the way I felt about this couple. They were dancing in such an obviously foreplay-esque way, she grinding her so round, so tight, so fully-packed ass into his well-differentiated crotch. I had no desire to"get with" either of them but I really wanted to continue the zoo experience and watch the culmination of their mating dance. Call me a freak -- other people have!

There were scores of other interesting folks, none of them dressed up or overly coiffed or snobby. No one insulted my socks or my partner or told me I was dancing wrong. No one  "made" me feel bad...and I allowed myself to feel GOOD. Really good.

Thank you to the ugly bluesters of the Columbia -- now, I think I can dance!