You’ll get to know why that phrase is so humorous a subject title soon, I think. You can predict a particularly common but amusing ending when I start a story with “So I met this guy . . .”

My Favorite Restaurant in Vegas

I went to the Paris casino to have dinner at Mon Ami Gabi, my favorite French restaurant in all of Las Vegas. It’s right across the street from Bellagio, and so there are always beautiful water shows to watch. One of them was to a quietly powerful Rachmaninoff piece. To see the movement of the water demonstrating the essence of the work, wow, it was moving.

I also had a very cool waiter, he and his wife are about to have a baby; they’re naming her Parker. Besides waitering, he works days at the oncology center. At which point I asked him if he would like one of my bracelets, maybe to give to someone at work if he liked. He said he’d love to have one and he had a friend there waitering whom he knew would love one too. Next thing you Know I’ve had an amazing French fish for dinner with the perfect white wine, and a divine creme brulee with an after dinner Amaretto neat. Ach, perfect flavors together. When I left, I left a $50 folded in a piece of the paper from the breadstick and wrote on it “For Parker O’Brian. All the best to you and your family.” Or something like that. I hope the guy opened it up and didn’t throw it away! (And I hope that they really are having a baby and I didn’t get conned.)

While at the restaurant I talked a little bit with the couple sitting behind me, commenting on the water shows. They told me they were in town for a rodeo. The conversation inspired me to go back to the RV and get prettied up, sling on my boots and my favorite cowboy hat, and head down to South Point where all the rodeo people were supposed to be staying. Except there was no music, no club, just a bar with TVs. So I went in the bar and ordered an Amaretto-Seven while I considered what to do. Go back to the RV and watch a movie would have been my usual Friday night activity, since dancing is out. But on that mule trip down into the Grand Canyon, I found out that my cowboy boots are just as comfortable as my oversize Nike’s in terms of not pressing on the ball of my foot and if I lift my foot I can get a little space under there when the neuropathy goes ballistic.

Why I now Adore My Cowboy Boots

I was in my cowboy hat and boots, and I wanted to dance. Country dancing can be danced while maintain a LOT of your body weight in your heel, instead of in the ball of your foot like any other kind of dancing (hence the reason I can’t dance anymore, with the balls and toes of my feeling like I’m walking on a carpet of fire if I have to be forward on my foot. So anyway, I wanted to dance, so I entered “Country Bar” in my GPS, and there happened to be a place called Stoney’s Country Bar only a mile away so I went.

I had a great time. They would only play two two-steps at a time, and then a bunch of line dances. Between getting to be off my feet during all the line dances and the fact that you can do a lot heel moves in two-step, my feet held out amazingly well. There were times of neuropathy agony, but I also had fun. I danced with some good dancers and some not-so-good dancers, just a couple great dancers, and some drunks who clearly thought they were great dancers. One of the good dancers was this Greek God of a cowboy, tall, blond, rock-hard muscles but not body-builder size. We had a very enjoyable round, and I hugged him and said thank you afterwards, which I do with everyone. He said he hoped we’d get to dance again, which was nice. Well, I did run into him again later, just in passing or something, and he said he really hoped we would get to dance again. I had actually be thinking about leaving around then, I think it may have been a little past midnight, but he had been fun to dance with and I’d hoped I get one more in with him before the night was over. So I sat and watched a few more line dances, and talked with some guy who bought me a drink and apparently wanted to have a stimulating conversation about the transportation network and where the major crossroads of the United States are. Normally, ok, I might actually get drawn into that conversation, but this guy was so on me, and drunk, he was obviously trying to score and I hate that, so when I saw the tall dancer guy I liked coming off the floor (Shane, though unfortunately I forgot his name when he asked if I remembered it, and I apologized saying I thought it was John? He said “Close in a way, my last name’s Jordan, but I’m Shane.” All night I avoided saying his name because even after that I couldn’t remember if he’d said his name was Shawn or Shane, though now I’ve got it right in my head). I rushed Shane and said “save me!” He looked over my shoulder at the guy drinking and knew exactly what I was talking about, and he immediately took my arm to lead me to the dance floor.

Shane told me he hasn’t really been dancing for very long, and he’s still learning. But he was great for someone just a few months in and if he keeps at it he’s going to be a truly wonderful dancer. So we had a couple of fun two steps, and the crowd was REALLY thinning out and the DJ did a long set of line dances. Shane and I had been talking about some fundamentals of dance that reach beyond two-step, I was complimenting him on his posture and maintaining his position for his partner. It’s the dance teacher in me, to find something complimentary to say to someone who feels they’re too new and maybe not good enough yet. Then it came out that I had been a dance teacher. (Ballroom, not country, and really mostly Argentine Tango” I excused myself for having no idea how to teach country dancing.

The Tango Boots

He asked what that was like, Argentine Tango, he wanted me to show him. So I took him to a corner where we had about 1/4 of the dance floor to ourselves because it was getting so thin out there, and I explained the embrace and the heart connection and then I went all the way into closed embrace. His height was absolutely perfect for my height for Argentine, I could lean my head against his shoulder and even rest my cheek against his upper chest, and we did some walking and little things, just being in the embrace. I didn’t realize it at the time, but dancing like that with me really did something to him.

A two step came on and he said he wished he could look more smooth like the older guys, I don’t know what I said to him as a suggestion, but it worked for him and we started gliding around the floor, in a darn close hold body hold for two-step. But after his little Argentine practice lesson with me, he’d gotten comfortable with how to keep me in the closed tango embrace while still leading two-step. Then there was some dance music (hip hop/rave stuff) and we stayed together, getting into some saucy stuff, and he has a natural tendency for salsa in his feet, so I showed him a little of that, the footwork, and then showing him what the hip motion. Poor guy, it wasn’t until later that I realized how much this really heated him up. Too much, I went too far. But man! Do you have ANY idea how long it’s been? I think you’d have to go back pretty darn far in the Cancer Journal to find anything resembling a story about me finding anyone attractive.

Then there was a slow rap song or something and he wanted to do more of the tango embrace and just move me with him. When the song finished, there were only a couple people in the bar, the music was off, and they were shutting down. It was 3AM. We said goodnight to the staff and walked out hand in hand (or did we have our arms around each other? Maybe that). So now we’re in the parking lot, next to his truck, my Jeep two rows up. And he asks, “where do you want to go?” He wanted to show me a CBR 600 he’s working on. I immediately got on the bike and just savored the moment. He’s a motorcycle mechanic, and he does some superbike racing too, I guess. The body of a Greek god, a passably good country dancer with great potential, and into motorcycles. This guy, on the surface, was looking pretty darn good!

And Then, a Conscious Person to Boot!

We had a good talk over breakfast (well, mostly he talked, I was too tired to be much of a conversationalist) about a wide variety of things, ranging from motorcycles to spirituality, and he’s actually much more conscious and thoughtful than I would have expected from someone ten years younger than me. He’s been through a lot of family shit (sorry to swear, but that is probably the most appropriate application I’ve ever made of that expletive). He’s had it pretty rough the last couple years especially, and it made him mature a lot faster than most, I think. This guy has a lot of potential in his life and I was trying to figure out a way to tell him that because he seemed to be feeling small after his dad died and his step-mom kept everything and threw Shane out of the house. But it was past noon now and we were back at my Jeep. He wanted to give me his number so I could call him the next time I come to Vegas. “But I’ll be here at Stoney’s again tonight, if you want to come out,” he said. I said maybe and goodbye. I was soooooooo tired, and my feet were burning and I had been struggling to cover up all the pain because I didn’t want to explain that I’m on narcotics for the pain, because his mom is addicted to narcotics and her life is pretty messed up now in Florida. Anyway, I had been walking as heel-heavy as possible which actually looks very normal in cowboy boots, and I hardly talked about myself at all. He knew I’d had breast cancer but we didn’t dwell on that.

The Dancer in Me

I took a nap that afternoon, and I did go out to Stoney’s that night. I danced with Shane early on and then did my usual thing of dancing with lots of different people and never spending more than one song with the same partner. That’s the dance teacher in me too. A dance teacher can’t leave people standing at the edge of the dance floor with their feet tapping. Those people belong on the dance floor, and so, being a dance teacher, I ask them to dance, good or not good. But then I got a REALLY great partner, and that was soooooo much fun. The guy came from West Coast Swing, and he could tell from how I responded to his lead that I know how to follow, so he started throwing in spins normally only done in West Coast, and he even switched in and out of country waltz. I love that, when a guy can lead a smooth transition from one style to another to adapt to changes in the music.

Then there was a line dance and I went to sit down. When the next two-step came on, a guy came up to me and said “Would you like to dance? I’m told you’re the best dancer here.” Well, what girl is going to say no to that?!?

After that it was one fabulously good dance partner after another. They had found me and they were taking turns and making sure I always had a great partner because it’s also fun to watch good dancers together, sometimes it’s more fun that dancing yourself.

I saw Shane standing a bit back from the dance floor, but I could never get to him because these great dancers kept asking me to dance and I was having so much fun! But Shane was watching me with a strange look on his face. When I got to dance with him later in the evening, he was frustrated because he knew he was still a beginning. A very, very good beginner, but still nowhere near the level of leaders I’d been dancing with in the last hour. And I think it pushed him away, he didn’t feel comfortable dancing with me after that because he now knew I can do all kinds of spins and tricks with a good leader, and he didn’t know any of that stuff yet. I tried to be encouraging, but it didn’t help much.

So, that was pretty much the end of that. I’ll in Vegas another week, but next weekend I’ll be at CGW (Steve Pavlina’s Conscious Growth Workshop).

One absolutely fantastic thing did come out of that little experience . . .I found out that I can DANCE in my cowboy boots, for a pretty long time even!