church street. b-town, vt. 2am. let me set the scene. Red Square, live band followed by what the girl came for, the hip hop. and this girl lookin around at all the fly girls with all their perfect everything, & me in my t-shirt, jeans and flip flops who was jus headed out to the grocery store. but said to myself. YOU ARE GOING DANCING, GIRL. and so i sat at the bar for a little while, the dj was crankin out some good stuff, i had a cape cod, the dance floor was still empty so i was waiting. waiting. fill up. come on. i said to the girl next to me, do people get out and dance? she laughed and said "oh yeah!" so i was waitin, heard "life is like a jungle sometimes..." and thought damn i would like to dance to this one. it was just a riff to another thing though. uh, you cannot mess with "life is like a jungle" and come out on top. old schoolers know the original. (life is like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how i keep from goin under ha ha ha ha ha ha.... don't push me cuz i'm close to the edge, i'm tryin not to lose my head.) you gotta hear to appreciate it's flyness.
oh, so this guy to my right says "are those your friends?" about the girls to my left and i said "no" and he established my status as pick-upable and damn if that fly sweet boy from San Francisco didn't buy me another cape cod. weren't that sweet for your dear old fka sittin at a bar, thinkin what the other girls know that i don't know. so i said to tom my new acquaintance "i don't really go out too much,all the girls are so fancy!" he said they looked "desperate." uh uh. not ol' fka. anyway we had a nice talk about how nice the east coast is, he was tellin me how harsh the dating scene is in sf. (yeah i'ma get to the dancing in the streets, just hold on). then tom's buddy (for whom tom kept apologizing) bought us BOTH drinks. ain't that sweet. so there i am, two and half cape cods down and take tom to the dance floor. he was reel sweet. too bad he's stuck on sf n i'm stuck on the horse farm.
so that was reel cool, a couple pills, three hits off a bowl, and two and a half cape cods and a boy named tom from san francisco later, i'm just groovin to what the dj is laying down, wishing he would and finally does put something crunked down on and i truly, looking around me, did feel, that some of those fly girls should slow it down, like fka, cuz i was right down with it.
and tom, he was so sweet, he had to go off to pee a couple times but he kept coming back. and you know, it was just all harmless. mmm hmm. alas his wedding party (not his wedding, his friend jason's) was leaving and although he and his friend beseeched me i told him i was going to stay and dance. so he slipped his phone number in my back pocket, along with his hand.
then it was just a crowd of people and me dancing. okay. so i don't wanna drag this out. rafael stepped in, etc. 2am. the music ends, i'm happy and two sheets to the wind, as Elaine would say. so we walked out onto church street, and he said, "check it out, they're breakdancing!" ha HA! an every body out on the street happy! all gathered round to the very few, very talented, young men dancing in that particular style, and there were flips with no hands, and urban free flow/parkour style maneuvers in which several folks leaned over to provide their backs and one guy ina pink shirt with a hotel towel wrapped around his head ran and front flipped over all of them using their backs to roll on, see. then they started into their capoeira. in the streets. defying gravity with those extended kicks etc. ah man. i can't even tell you, i was juiced just to be there. okay. what the hell was i looking at? maybe at rafael, then what is happening when i look back is two boys in black short-sleeved uniforms, you know, the "cops", are grabbing this cute little five foot five girl, she was probably five foot four, all sweet and innocent with her ponytail, dragging her off! and i was going to get in there and unarrest her! but i wanted to ascertain the situation, so i was yelling at the cops "WHAT DID SHE DO?! WHAT DID SHE DO?!" and one of them told me to "shut up" so i turned around and i was yelling at everybody else "What did she do?! she's tiny! why are they taking her?" i got no answer. and the people were dispersing, and i was saying to them stuff i don't really recall, which i can ask rafael later, about how the people had a right to dance in the streets, and the pigs can't come down and tell the people not to dance in the streets! The People are dancing! well, you know, rafael's all like trying to keep me back when i'm going after the girl to unarrest her, etc. turns out he is a campus cop (but another fly boy, this one from manhattan).
but this one female cop, she came up next to me and rafael while i was still goin on about the dancing in the streets. but she was cool, she was saying "i don't why they broke up the dancing, but it's not my call, he's the sergeant." so that was cool.
okay. so then of course rafael got the story. cause he was saying how when people react to police like that they have had some, well i don't know what word he used. some like run-ins or whatever. which isn't even factually accurate. i just said to him, "yeah kind of," and i said "if you get to know me, you will understand why." but yeah we got to talkin'. and damn if ginger and an anarchist friend of mine have not gotten all into me so i was really tellin it to him about like "what gives you the authority to arrest -" and he kept haftin to interrupt me to say it was "detain", not "arrest", that we were talking about with that girl and the cops, and whatever examples he was giving me about the college kids he "detains", not arrests, but i am saying, "but who gives you the authority to detain that person?" -- we were talking about if someone is walking down the street, stumbling around like they are drunk, and the cops think they can "detain" this drunk person -- and he said "the Governer of VT", and i said "who gives HIM the authority?".
so yeah, i told him about the Institution. it wasn't heavy because i was two sheets to the wind. but i did think that might think i was talking crazy, so i told him how to find it on the internet.
but he was cool. he traded me his mobb deep cd for my nappy roots n we're exchanging them back next time we go out to the hip hop scene. yeah.
so the next time you see the people dancing in the streets, keep an eye out for the very long tight grip of the Law comin down. and just remember. there is power in numbers. and yes you can so unarrest somebody. keep dancing. keep everybody dancing. everybody keep dancing.
and yeah, girl got it goin on.
