Dildos, disappointment, and dancing

I've had a hell of a couple of weeks. I do plan to write it all down, if only as a kind of exorcism, but for now some thoughts about today, which has been a rum old mix...

Lunch was farewell pizza from my English students. I took on the class - mostly middle-aged female secretaries whose names I still haven't quite got straightened out, because I was too shy to ask - because there was no-one else to do it, and it's taken much, much more time and effort than its two lunchtime hours a week. They gave me a card and a gift and I felt like even more of a fraud than usual, partly because I haven't really left work yet but largely because I never had any idea what I was doing.

I've never really managed proper teacherly assertiveness and today I was reluctant even to ask them to speak in English. If I'm honest I secretly like to have the chance to show that I can speak Spanish too. It's interesting though that the ones who I think of as quiet and timid and less able than the rest aren't necessarily the same at all in their own language.

After that it was an over-expensive taxi to one of the universities on the other side of town where my one non-work friend is a student. He had asked me to come and speak to his English class; apparently they always want guest native speakers. I didn't really want to - the idea of being up in front of 30 or so people gave me the horrors - but I couldn't say no. He'd stressed that I had to be on time, and all the way there I was balancing the passing minutes against the passing landmarks. In the end it would have been fine, only the campus is huge and I went the wrong way.

A fraught phone call - although my almost-inaudible speaker makes most calls pretty fraught - and we establish that I am lost. Out of a chained-up gate in a chainlink fence. In through a high-tech turnstile that seems in a weird no-man's land, but hurrah the building I'm looking for is in sight. My friend isn't. Another phone call and he arrives out of breath - he's been looking for me by the main entrance. I'm red-faced and flustered - maybe only 10 or 15 minutes late, but hardly the best beginning. The classroom door eases open upon a terrifying circle of attentive students. The teacher commands my attention: we're introduced in low voices, and she explains that, since I said I would be late (I didn't exactly, but still) there's been a slight change of plan - they're having some kind of information session now but it will be done soon.

It takes a little while for me to calm down and process my surroundings. A boy student is wearing a kind of folding sandwich-board display, mostly of condoms, in shiny packets in a multitude of colours and designs. A girl student is gesticulating with a realistically-moulded pink plastic dildo, which I extrapolate that she has just been putting a condom on; now she's demonstrating a female condom.

"How do you say that in English?" whispers my friend. I am nonplussed, wondering which of many thats he might be referring to.

A poster is pinned to the whiteboard, with a slogan along the lines of "don't be a dick, use a condom" - more literally, and more amusingly "don't be a penis".

I listen to them explaining the different methods of birth control, matter-of-factly but with humour and I have nothing but admiration for them. What they are doing is incredibly valuable and important, and I think it takes guts and strength of character. But, I am struggling not to giggle. Not so much at the subject matter but at the bizarreness of it all. Sometimes my life seems possessed of perfect comedy, and now is one of those times.

They round up by giving out condoms and talking about them again; I am distracted by the teacher murmering in my ear. When I look back they are pulling a condom off the dildo in a kind of tug-of-war: it is s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g. I am not sure if this is a deliberate humourous demonstration of how not to do it, or an accidental one.

I talk about myself ad lib for a couple of minutes but can't think what to say and sound like an idiot. Then they get to ask me questions - and the teacher's marking them all for "participation". They're things like what I do in my spare time, what I think about Mexico, the differences between Mexico and the UK and so on. I wonder if this has any educational benefit. I'm hardly at my most eloquent, fumbling for answers, and my audience seems a bit glazed-over - I'm not sure if they're not really following or just find the whole exercise terribly dull, though they're sweet enough. Two questions have me blushing and not knowing what to say: what do I think about my friend, and do I have a boyfriend. I'm sure this gives the wrong impression.

In my office, preparing to take some shots, I read a bit online about how to take good portraits. I realise how I could have been taking some much better pictures and the irritation with myself sticks in me almost like anxiety, although I know I should simply learn it and get better.

At the end of the afternoon I brave a group of visiting American students in order to snare two or three to interview. In the bearpit of announcements made over the gathering of papers someone mentions that they want a volleyball, and I offer mine. We'll meet by the net. When the interviews are done I skip out of the office with joyful heart, even though I ought to stay and do more work. By a miracle, it isn't raining this afternoon, the sky is blue, the sun is shining and I am going to play volleyball for the first time in ages.

No-one is there. It transpires that the boys have gone to play basketball, and the girls have gone to Zumba in the gym. I really need to learn that other people are not like me, and do not see saying they'll do something as a binding promise. I know that I set myself up for disappointment.

But I hate these fucking students. And their cheerful vapid confidence. And their stupid accents.

I take a picture of long-dead wings on the path, looking as if their body has just gone somehow:


On the plus side, no volleyball did mean that I had time to go and get my hair cut. Suddenly it had turned itself into hateful rats tails and I couldn't stand it any more. I sat and waited and read about Mexican politics and economics in the 70s and 80s. I tried to make cause and effect add up in my head, but I wonder how much logic there is to history, and what are the real causes of how things turn out and what is just happenstance. It's frustrating not to be able to pin it down.

My hairdresser was Julieta, but I felt like it ought to be Violeta because she had purple bits in her hair (and blonde bits too). Unlike the previous one I had she didn't feel slightly creepy and inappropriate, like she was chatting me up, and neither did she blowdry my hair to make me look like a refugee from the 90s in the mould of early Scully, which was good. On the other hand she used a squirty bottle rather than washing it, so I was ashamed whenever she touched my unwashed locks, i.e. all the time. She did decide to give me my first and quite possibly last ever zigzag parting and put wax in it, which is the last thing it needs, but she got the length right, which is the important thing. I was thinking how flattering the lighting was, and how canny it is of salons to have such lighting, but then I realised I looked nice because I didn't have my glasses on and was thus a smooth blur.

When I stepped outside it was the kind of sunset to blast away discontent. A sky like this and I can't help but be lifted.


When I get home I go straight up to the roof and the sky is watercolour blue over the rooftops and the lights on the distant hills are like stars. I don't think I've mentioned the roof but it is like a secret because no-one else seems to go up there, and it is wonderful.


As I'm turning to go, I notice that one of the volcanoes, my familiar faraway volcanoes - Popo or Izta, Popo I think - is standing out deep blue and snowcapped and perfectly clear.


In the evening I get distracted from what I told myself I'd do by youtube videos from the US TV program "So You Think You Can Dance". I am cross with myself, but it does make me think about how much I really love good dance. There are lots of things that I could never really list as my interests, even though I enjoy them - films for example, or theatre. But in the future I want to make efforts to go and see dance.

I am also pleased that I seem to be able to discriminate, and when the dancing's not so hot I don't enjoy it as much, even though I can appreciate bits of great choreography.

The clip that got me hooked was this, Mark and Chelsie's hip hop routine:



It's here with better sound quality, though with the intro clip and judging bits from the TV show. I also really like their contemporary routine. I love Mark's outlandish clownishness - like an intelligent, French, mime-artist sort of clown but with huge physical energy, and strangely reminiscent of my friend Nathan's crazy dancefloor antics - and Chelsie is tremendously lovable and they both seem to embody a character when they dance.

My other favourite couple is Katee and Joshua, also both very likable, especially their hip hop and samba routines. And this from Jamie and Rayven is hugely endearing, her chutzpah and the way she couldn't suppress her big ballerina smile.

Of course I'd kill to have a quarter of any of their dancing abilities (or gorgeousness), but all the same I am inspired to dance around my house like a daft thing.