I’m probably going to delete this. It’s a particular brand of catharsis that I quite enjoy: taking the time and energy to create something, only to be the one who obliterates it, making it evaporate from your clenched-and-loosening grip.

I like reading her, because she has this wonderful way of conveying all that manic and glorious energy that comes from being in love. It makes me want to write about my own. But maybe for another time.

I lip-synched, hard, to Outkast and the Jackson 5, and Ella Fitzgerald, on the train ride to the salsa club last night; enough to garner looks and a few bemused and thinly-veiled whispers. Partly to pump myself up for a night of dancing, partly because I had enough pent-up stress that I could’ve filled up, no, packed a singing room, with the sound and belting and all the whooping and hollering I had swelling up inside of my lungs.

It was a wonderful time. There was the man, who kind of looks like Mr. Incredible, who, seeing my surrious face, gently scolded me: “Salsa is fun. Smile!” Later on, he happened to be standing near, took one look at me and said, “Let’s practice,” grabbing my hand and taking me to the dance floor. He would do these turns and very deliberately say, “Good,” and there was even a “Good!” every now and then. After that song, he took it upon himself to hand me over to another experienced dancer.

There’s the guy who, to be honest, kind of looks like a monkey, but is an incredible! dancer, with hips and shoulders that move like rubber. He saw that I was practicing stepping on two, and, with an air about him that seemed to say, okay that’s enough, whisked me away for two, very very close, bachata numbers.

There were others. The guy with the ninja turtle-green t-shirt, a beginner who looks like he’s going to pick it up very quickly; the tall slightly older man, a mix between Won Bin and Tony Leung, we didn’t dance but we shared a few smiles; the wide-faced shorter man who likes to make funny faces as he whipped you back and forth; the guy my brother and I nicknamed “the tinman,” who I finally declined to dance with; and more, and more.

But the most important one was the shorter man, the one who almost always wears a plaid shirt, who seems very unassuming and dances in that same quiet, even manner. But, I must’ve danced with him at least a half-dozen times by now, and last night was the first I noticed that he had on zebra print shoes(!), and the first time I ever danced so close with him, and he doesn’t dance close with everyone, and of the three or four times we danced it was I who came to him at least twice, but he did come to me, and when we danced bachata it was that kind of magical dancing that makes you close your eyes and forget who and where and why you are, for a moment.

I’m glad I went. I’m going to go again.