Costumes

Today, in America, it feels like shopping for clothes has become aspirational costume-buying. Whatever we want to be--shop at that store, and you can fulfill that image, and project that image to all you know.

Cynical, I know, but also true. I reject it, but I am still caught up in it. I love the Boho look of anthropologie--the hint that I have traveled somewhere cool to get that Hungarian embroidered top, or that India print comforter. So most of the time I am a crazy mish mash of hi-lo. A little bit of Anthropologie, paired up with some thrift store finds my mother picked out. Some sale pieces from a sweet little neighborhood boutique, paired with a cool knitted hat my mother made. I am in my own quiet way, striving to be difficult to categorize. You cannot read me by the catalogue I shop from. That is what I am trying to tell you. I am more.

But every once in awhile I am taken in. I want the costume.

Yesterday I went to my wonderful cardio salsa class at the Y. I LOVE that class--taught by a husband and wife team who work out so hard themselves they have to alternate on songs. The husband looks like Che on the dance floor. The wife is just cool and hot and wears camouflage pants and tank tops and a belt of cowry shells or nuts around her waist. I can't tell from my distant corner.

On the final song of the class something miraculous happened. I was dancing--a gentle post workout salsa step--and suddenly this crazy little step that I have been wanting to do for years just tapped out of my toe. Salsa dancers will know what I am talking about. There is the basic salsa step. But the most feminine, the most Latin, the very best female salsa dancers do this little tap with their right toe before they step that hits a hidden low beat in the music. It drives me wild. But I cannot do it.

I have had my friend Lisa, the salsa goddess, try to teach me. But I cannot do it. Not naturally, not on the beat. Not gracefully like a Latin siren.

But yesterday, I did it. I could not believe it. I looked in the mirror and there it was. Not a freak occurrence, over and over. I was delirious with endorphins and joy. After the class I ran up to the teacher and said: "What is the name of that song?"

"El Toro Y La Luna," he said. "We have the CD."

My beloved teachers had brought Santee Alley to the Y. They had bootleg CDs of all their best dance mixes, including one with El Toro Y La Luna. The song cast a spell on everyone. I mean I was shouting out, "This makes me want to clean my house, to dance around singing at the top of my lungs with a broom." Another woman said it made her want to garden. I asked her, do you listen to music when you garden? No, she said. But that is what it makes me feel like.

I bought the CD. And then I bought the shorts. The gritty street salsa shorts my hot latin dance teacher wears. They were bargain cheap, and totally adorable. This morning I put on my CD, slipped on my sexy camouflage shorts, a black tank top, and sang "El Toro Y La Luna," at the top of my lungs while I salsa-ed around my kitchen cleaning up the breakfast mess.

I am wearing the cool salsa chick costume, which is the furthest thing from who I really am.

But I love this costume. Tomorrow morning I will put it on again. Just to make myself laugh.