Wednesday, October 07, 2015

Dancing and Working Out

Workout:  Sunday morning I managed to get to the gym.  Mark calls it "The Old Folks Gym," and he's kind of right.  This was my first time in on a Sunday morning, and the folks there weren't necessarily old, but they did have a kind of focused earnestness about them that folks who are there for their health (as opposed to being there to look good naked) have.  I quite freely admit that I'm there so I can look good naked.

200 calories on the elliptical in about 20 minutes.  100 calories in 9 minutes on the rowing machine.  10X3 assisted dips and chin-ups on the 13 level.  Downstairs I only did 12X3 at 40 lbs pec flies, 12X3 lat pull-downs, and 12X3 35 lb barbells.  I would have done some more, but I had to get back home in time for us to go on an excursion to pick up The Child.




Saturday afternoon Mark and I had an impromptu early dinner at a sushi restaurant located in the old Savoré space.  I haven't been in the place for about nine years, and my memory of the old layout kept intruding on the current one (I suppose that I should just lay the reminiscences aside ...  J'ai déjà passé un bon moment autrefois).  Mark ordered bento, which he liked, and I ordered a yummy crunchy sushi roll.  The musac was very soulful saxophone, but otherwise the restaurant was very nice.


We went home, took a disco nap, and then went dancing at the new local queer bar, The Wayward Lamb.  The front area is open to the street, and had some charming hinged windows for airing the place out during the summer.  The bar is more generic and less raunchy than Club Arena was; Club Arena played a lot more disco and had gay male porn clips playing on the video screens.  The Lamb is new and clean, with a kind of clean Scandinavian Design feel to it.  The single flat screen TV over the bar was showing a football game.  It felt more energetic and brighter than the old Neighbor's bar, which always felt like a run-down high school cafeteria.

Since it's downtown and on the same city block as Titan Court, a student housing complex, the crowd there felt young.  I joked that Mark and I probably doubled the average age of the room when we walked in.  The clientele felt fifty-fifty split between the genders; I couldn't guess the breakdown of orientations, but it seemed like the whole spectrum was represented. 

The music didn't start until about 10:30.  When we were dancing, they played a lot of very distorted rhythms--the latest style seems to be mashing together 90 second long song clips of eclectic styles: I'd just be getting into something with a good dance beat when suddenly something funky-hip-hoppy or something would jar me out of the rhythm ("The reason you can't dance to this," Mark said, "is because you're white.").  Mark thought the (concrete) dance floor was about the same size as Club Arena's, but with less club table space.  We thought it was a converted kitchen, because there seemed to be grease-trap covers set into the floor (insert obligatory "on the manhole" joke here).  


I had fun dancing (when I could).  [Edit- Oddly enough, music hasn't really changed in twenty years... Although I couldn't understand what was being sung over the distortion. Our dance moves became "Little Bunny FruFru" and "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider" when ever the music devolved into the musician using a synthesizer key as a percussion instrument.] Mark and I haven't gone out in an age, and my favorite part of the night was dancing with my head on Marks shoulder, my left hand on his back, and my right hand on his heart; I closed my eyes and felt us moving together as we danced.

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