Crouching Taylor, Unhidden Dancing

When you go out at night and drink, it's pretty much a given that you're going to wake up in pain. Fun is never free, and after a night of drinking you pay for that fun with a hangover. The painful headache, dry mouth, bloodshot eyes, looming nausea, and unexplainable bruises are always to be expected when you regain consciousness. But then there are the occasional mornings when your legs are throbbing more than your head is; I'm talking about those mornings when you got so drunk the night before that you danced like what you thought was a video girl but probably looked more like an epileptic. It isn't unheard of to wake up with bruises and scratches on your legs from things like falling out of bunk beds and peeing in rose bushes, but there's a specific pain of ones thigh muscles that can only come from grinding. It's that deep pain in your quads and glutes that's enough to tell you wow, I went way too hard last night.

Dancing is a volatile business because when you're sober-dancing it almost always looks awkward, like the first time you grinded with someone at your best friend's bat mitzvah, and when you're drunk-dancing it almost always looks sloppy, like the first time you gave someone a lap dance at your best friend's sweet sixteen. Regardless of the setting, your dance moves always look better in your head than they do in practice. When I was in 7th grade, I was at least a head taller than every boy in my class so at parties I would have to practically squat when I danced with one of them (that is, if they weren't scared away by my braces/acne combo.) Years later and leveling out at just under 6', I still had to crouch when dancing at sweet sixteens, and because I was pants-shittingly drunk at every one I attended this included a great deal of "dropping it low," which in reality probably looked like I was crouching down to drop a deuce. And even to this day as a 19 year old without a 21 year old ID, I have to wear heels with my little black dress to flirt(/slur) my way into the club, which means I'm still taller than the men I dance with and I'm still drunk enough to think it looks cool when I drop it low. But even worse than my height making me a horrible dancer is the fact that my height makes my dancing go unhidden.