I stay light on my feet and hit 'em with--

Sometimes, you take one day off from work and end up with a delightful unintended vacation. (Two days totally counts as a vacation.) Before I go sashaying down memory lane, however, I want to pin up a couple of links of note here.

First of all, the surviving victim of a brutal attack on a teenage couple in Texas has recuperated enough to leave the hospital, and she's refined her description of her attacker, which has gone into the police sketch, included in this article. While the motivations behind the crime can't be concretely proven, given that it was an execution-style shooting, without any attempt at robbery or the like, by a stranger perpetrated upon a young lesbian couple -- the leap of logic between the lily pads of the circumstances and the probable motivation ain't that large. I feel the need to help to give that nasty bastard's face as much attention as possible until they find them.

Also, there is the Internet Declaration of Freedom. "A group of more than 1,500 organizations, academics, startup founders and tech innovators has come together to produce [it], a set of five principles that put forward a positive vision of the open Internet. Our goal: Get millions of Internet users to sign on to this Declaration. Build political power for Internet users to make sure that we get a seat at the table whenever, and wherever, the future of the Internet is being decided." Unsurprisingly, this is something that I find to be extremely important. My life has been immeasurably enriched by the internet -- the people the I've met, the information (both accurate and not) that I've consumed, the gatherings that I've organized, the cute baby animals that I've watched -- and I believe that it's an ever more vital instrument for the development of our globalized world, where the Big Guys have always bigger and bigger Big Guns.

But in other news: love is in the air!

As I've mentioned, I had a wedding to attend this past weekend, which I hadn't been guaranteed to be able to attend until fairly recently. That might have been the reason that I didn't give it much thought, planning to just casually drive over there on the day of the event, mingle with friends at the reception and cruise on back home that evening. It was just another thing that was happening -- an obligation, though of the most delightful kind. I think that I didn't want to be too disappointed if it turned out that I would have to miss it due to work. Because I know that if I'd known what it ended up being and then had not been able to be there, I would have been heartbroken.

It only occurred to me when I was being asked how I knew the couple -- both are my friends in their own right, though I met the groom through the bride -- and I realized that I'd known the bride for longer than I'd not known her. There are very few people whom I consider actual friend about which I can claim that, and most of them are online friends. Basically, there's the one woman whom I've known since we were in kindergarten together and after that, it's the leap to the crowd who populated this wedding.

1998. That was the summer when we attended the same musical theatre day camp and were in the same project group, putting together our own little original musical. She was also working on another musical that she had written that summer and was being presented by their own little community theatre group, sprung up around that one show, but I ended up not making it to see it. Possibly because I was performing in a show myself with a different community theatre group. What was it that year? Annie?

In any case, that was the last year that I performed with that group, because the next year, I was in her show, making some of the best friends that I have had the privilege to know. It was also the year that we had to do a last-minute replacement because one of our cast members left rehearsal a few days before opening and then was never heard from again and also when we performed to an audience of four in the picnic pavilion of a town park built on top of a former landfill and situated next to a nuclear research facility. Or something. I'm not exactly sure what it was, but I know that the fish that were in the small pond nearby were colors that should not be seen in suburban nature.

That's when I became a member of that local family. And it was also when I met my friend's younger brother, who is actually closer to my age than she is, and the two of us became friends as well -- closer than my bonds with the other members of the group, actually, though that's meant as an emphasis on the two of us being delightful jerks together rather than to diminish my other friendships within the group. It turned out to be very handy as I went through high school. Attending an all-girls school as I did, one was required to hunt down a male escort for formal dances. Going stag was not so much frowned upon as just not even considered to be an option, and it actually never occurred to me to be pissed off about that when I had an easily-accessible victim to drag along with me and provide pleasant company. It was a pretty win-win situation, I think: we would sing showtunes and attempt to top each other in duels of witty banter, he would date other people and I would never have to consider heteronormative social obligations to be a burden when dancing time came.

And we would dance like hell itself was burning down. Not in that it was sexy-hot in any way, but damn, was it enthusiasm-hot (which probably contributed to it not being sexy-hot, because have you seen how sweaty dancers get?) and also goofy as shit. We may not have had any skill whatsoever, but boy, did we have heart!

We'd fallen out of touch over the past years, as we both went off to college and then he moved out to the West Coast -- it was during that time that I sort of fell back in with the rest of the group, and also met the future-groom, with the originating of our local game nights, something that earned me a mention in the couple's posted autobiography of their coupledom -- but the few times our paths crossed, it was so easy to slip back into that camaraderie, as if we'd never been away. Don't get me wrong -- we were never deep. Okay, maybe not "never." I won't swear that there weren't any teenaged AIM conversations that might have involved feelings. But we were very rarely deep. And there's something great about having someone who's company you just enjoy.

And it somehow didn't occur to me that of course he'd be coming in from California for his sister's wedding.

To be honest, I felt a little awkward for the ceremony and the beginning part of the reception, as I was sitting at a table with my mom, my grandparents and some older relatives of the bride. I hadn't seen my grandparents since I was home over Christmas break, so I was quite glad to be able to spend some time with them and also, quite frankly, felt a bit obligated. Also, most of the people with whom I was most interest in speaking had tons of other people clamoring for their attention. No need for me to be yet one more obstacle between them and their plates of brunch. So things were a wee bit awkward for me for a while. The ice began breaking, however, when the dancing started.

It started with the DJ announcing that, to kick off the dancing, there was to be a competition between the tables. The table that boasted the craziest dancers (though no standing on things and no removing of clothing) would be awarded a bottle of champagne with which to toast the newlyweds! The "bottle of champagne" being a bottle of André, but one has to consider the $4 value of that bottle to be at least doubled by the honor of victory. Anyways, a couple of tables got up and began doing crazy group dances, and I was urged out of my seat by my mom, who told me to defect because I was never going to win anything with this group of old people. So up I went, and I semi-joined a group, just so that I could be up and dancing. The first table who had gotten up (not the one with which I had insinuated myself) won the prize, and the regular dancing commenced.

So apparently since we last danced together at age 18, my friend and I have both gotten taller, he's learned swing dancing, I've gotten more athletic, and I've also become less anal-retentive, more shameless and, let's face it, sluttier.

The music being played tended to be in the range of the 1950s to the 1970s, rock & roll to classic rock, hitting disco and funk along the way. Which provided the opportunity for a lot more Broadway-influenced style dancing, giving the two of us a shared strong point. It wasn't long before we were dancing together again, only better than before -- and with me being able to keep it up in three-inch heels the entire time now. And when "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" came on -- we hit a home run.

In fact, as the music ended and we were smiling and wiping the copious sweat from our respective brows, the leader of the table who had won victory in the kick-off competition, walked up to us with bottle in hand.

"Take this," he said. "You are the true victors."

(Those might not have been his exact words. But they're pretty close.)

The happy dancing continued until the late afternoon. (Not as epic as continuing long into the night, but it was a 12:30pm wedding with a brunch reception, so it makes sense.) Some guests began leaving, including my family, but the core group of us remained dancing. My friends invited me to stay the night and just crash with someone so that I could hang out with them, so I was in even less of a hurry to leave than if I hadn't been planning to, well, not leave.

The fact that my family had left was perhaps what allowed me to be just so blasé about mooning about a quarter of the people still present.

I should have been more sensible about it, but we were both caught up in the dancing, so when he asked me if I wanted to do a lift, I was all for it. Up, side, side, center, up, down. Simple enough! And the up, side and side all went swimmingly.

Unfortunately, my dress was such that, when pushed up due to straddling someone around the waist, gravity was not enough to bring it back down again.

Stupid physics.

It sounds perhaps a bit more dire than it actually was. A quick push back down, and I was decent again. And, it being a formal event, I was wearing a pair of what were basically off-brand Spanx, so I actually had dance-pants level coverage -- had I known that I was staying over and brought a bathing suit, people would have seen far more of me. Even when minor in content, however, the factors of the incident being unplanned and unexpected can mean a lot in and of themselves. In the end, he was entirely humiliated while I couldn't quite bring myself to care.

Remember what I said about shamelessness?

Tangentially, it reminds me of the doctor's appointment when I got my first pap smear. (Bear with me here.) I was waiting in the examination room, when in walks the doctor with a young Asian guy, which made me go whoa, because I kind of thought that I was the only Asian person in the county. It turned out that he was a resident or some other medical student-y thing at the adjoining hospital. When we got to the gynecological part of the exam, the doctor asked me if I would be all right with the student staying in the room, telling me that it was perfectly fine to ask him to leave.

I considered it for just a moment. And then I laid back, pumped my fist in the air and declared, "For science!"

I hope that he's grateful, wherever he is now, for the educational opportunity that I granted him.

This also might have something to do with why I'm chronically single.

Anyways, my point is that the wedding was great. And it wasn't all about my dancing exploits, though they were also great. It was just wonderful, to the point of being surreal, to be able to celebrate two of my good friends being so happy with a bunch of my other good friends. To be able to watch them during the ceremony and have it not be defined by overwhelmed tears but, so characteristic of the friend whom I adore, having the bride literally bouncing up and down with excitement at being able to marry her best friend, who was wearing a top hat.

The centerpieces on the table were put together by the couple and their party: piles of books, each topped by a small toy animal that apparently had some significance. Old books, new books -- Harry Potter and books of jokes and Temeraire and Calvin and Hobbes and more others than I can count. An old Charlie Chaplin movie being projected on a screen on one end of the room. A table full of more books and also games with post-its declaring "Bored? Read me!" and "Bored? Play me!" There was at least one game of Boggle going on during the reception. The couple's first dance was to "Beauty and the Beast." After the reception, a gang of us hung out at the pool, then went to dinner -- after which, finally parting ways with the newlyweds, we gathered for a game of Balderdash. And instead of driving home or crashing on a couch, the bride's family all but dragged me into their suite to put the bride's former room to use.

It was an amazing day.

And the weekend was only halfway finished.

Next morning had some delightful lingering over breakfast -- though let it be known that had I been on my own, I would have caused a stink at the restaurant (we were at Jiminy Peak, by the way), where the menu said that they served a good brand of tea, so I ordered a cup of tea and was brought a cup of hot water and a Liptons tea bag, for which I was charged $3 -- and then I hit the road for Williamstown. I wandered a bit before meeting a fellow alum who is in the process of transitioning from a career in neuroscience to a career in stage management. I know, right? But it felt very gratifying to be able to be on the giving end of the whole networking thing.

I was seeing a presentation by the Williams College Theatre Lab that evening, so I still had a number of hours at my disposal. Not having been able to attend my five-year reunion earlier this year due to being in tech, I somehow got in into my head to have my own one-person, one-afternoon reunion, revisiting old haunts and visiting for the first time some things that I'd missed during my time as a student. I sat on a rock and dangled my feet in the Green River, something that had always seemed far too dangerous to the younger me. I stalked every room in which I'd lived. I wandered through the cemetery, by my favorite gravestone: that of an English professor on which is written "If you can read this, you're standing on me."

And then I remembered about how I'd always joke/threaten to walk to Vermont, so I set about doing that.

It turns out that the sidewalk to Vermont runs out about a mile away from the state line, and while I'm willing to risk comfort, dignity and a moderate amount of health for the sake of pride, risking my life by walking alone alongside a rather heavily-used rural highway in the rain didn't seem like a great plan, so I turned back. But I know that I could have made it, which has a little bit of victory in it.

I realized then that I'd been walking for pretty much the past four and a half hours and that I was kind of hungry. I briefly contemplating trying out one of the new places in town, but then laughed. Of course the thing that I needed to do was go to the same place that I'd always gone and order the same thing that I'd always ordered.

That pad thai is still delicious.

The show that night, a presentation that resulted from a workshop with the Bengsons was amazing, and I'm very excited to watch their Hundred Days project be developed into a full production. Even better, I was able to hang out with the Theatre Lab's artistic director (who was the same guy who had been leading it from the beginning), the associate artistic director (a classmate and fellow Theatre Lab alum), a since-retired theatre department professor (from whom I never took any classes but for whom I stage managed a show) and the Bengsons.

Then, finally, I hit the road back home.

It was only two days. But it feels like it was a lifetime -- it had to have been, didn't it, to have contained so many wonderful things?

It's taken a great deal of self-restraint to not go dancing down the streets lately. But I manage, somehow.

And the next dance floor that I do hit had better watch out.

I'm gonna be raising hell.