Road Trip Diaries Interrupted: Coping with loss from 3,000 miles away

     This is my friend Joe. If you know me, I guarantee you either know him, have heard stories of him, or have seen me do impressions of him dancing with himself. When I would describe him to people who weren't quite sure who he was, I would say, "the guy who dances like this!" and then strike a sexy pose with the look he was so famous for. It worked every time- nobody who saw him forgot him.
    My world stopped for a bit the other day because of him. Those of you who follow my blog know I've been on a three week road trip across the country, living it up and writing it down. I was out to dinner with friends in New York City, living the stories that make it into these blogs. And a quick check of Facebook revealed an invitation to a group called Memorial for Joe long.
     Memorial?
     I've been living with the notion that people as charismatic as Joe cannot possibly die. For God's sake, he didn't even notice when he fractured his neck playing soccer. That was always a popular after-dance story. Whenever I would complain that I was tired or sore or for some other reason leaving a dance venue early, he would just tell me to dance through the pain. And if I didn't show up to a dance, I'd be roused from my early slumber by a phone call- no hellos or "Hey this is Joe"- he would launch straight into a serenade, singing whatever was on the radio or on his mind. Someone willing to sing into a phone like that surely can't be mortal. The most memorable was that darn Discovery Channel song. You know, the kind of dirty one involving mammals. He and Clark sang that to me once to chastise me for staying home on a dance night. I usually responded to such things with an exasperated sigh and a cocked eyebrow, perhaps some sort of grumble.  Much of my friendship with Joe consisted of me being mildly appalled and (not so) secretly amused.
     He knew it, too. Whenever I would get that mildly appalled look on my face he ended up just grabbing and hugging and kissing me anyway. Incorrigible man, that one. (I say that with the fondest of smiles). And a man I really did not think would die on any but his own terms. It seems to me as though people like him would be exempt from things as stupid as a stray bullet fired on the streets of downtown Sacramento. I'm still surprised he didn't just talk it out of hitting him. If anybody could do that it would have been him. But no. We are all equally mortal, I guess.
    Ugh, this blog is becoming too much of a downer. He would have none of this! So, I'm going to remember that I'm wearing one of my sexy shirts (Joe helped me pick it out), and tell some stories. Kind of like when we crammed two dozen people into a hot tub, and took turns assigning each other story topics. He had some of the best ones.

     I met Joe the very first time I went out dancing, 5 years ago now. I was a new college freshman, and despite being super shy and not having ANY dancing friends, I set out salsa dancing at Sac State all on my own. Joe would have scared the crap out of me had I not been convinced he was flamboyantly gay (I learned later on he was just flamboyantly Joe). It was the scarf, definitely the scarf. We were dancing outside, and he loaned it to me because he thought I was cold.
     My most vivid memory of that night is him saying, "Well, you know how to move your hips, that's a start." Of course, he could move way better than me back in those days, but he was good at encouraging people to find their inner sexy beast. It wasn't long before I earned some notoriety for my fabulous hip action ;-) Thanks man!
    I think he is one of the main reasons I kept dancing after that first night. Later on I would make fun of how he found all the new girls and made sure to dance and flirt with them to keep them coming back. But hey, it worked on me and even though I am still sometimes mildly appalled I am glad it did. My very first perfect cha-cha was with him. Oh, the feeling of keeping the step for an entire dance!!! I was so delighted.
     It wasn't long before I fell in with the dance crowd. Post-salsa Denny's trips on Wednesdays, late nights in Lyons on Fridays, the Ballroom on Saturdays. Plus grilled cheese and Gears of War or some other video game I didn't understand at one of the guys' houses some nights, a little group of us. Sometimes we would watch zombie movies, and I'm terrified of zombies so Joe was there when I needed to cuddle with somebody who could save me from them. Or at least he physically restrained me from running to the other room out of sheer terror.
    I felt so adventurous those first few years of college. Like I was getting into just enough almost-trouble, but the wholesome kind of trouble that involves waltzing and nachos and playing Contact. We even stayed out all night and through the sunrise once- a new concept for me up until I started Lindy and Blues exchanges. Ha, those almost always go through until the dawn, but it was so grown-up and crazy for me at the time! Once, Joe, Samuel, Ben and I went out to Lyons after dancing, and talked for 12 straight hours- all the way through the night and into breakfast time. Mostly about crazy stories that made me blushingly aware of my own inexperience.

     I know my stories with Joe are just little bitty ones compared to the body of epic stories out there- and oh, there are some great ones! But he and the Sacramento dance scene have forever shaped my life. I can forgive him now for that time he dropped me in the middle of a Midtown Stomp birthday jam because he and I did not agree on that decision to flip me; or the photo that cropped up on Facebook of him kissing me on the cheek that I felt super awkward about because I was just starting up my relationship with my first boyfriend, and didn't want to look like I was fooling around with somebody else. But honestly, I was never truly mad. It was just a game I played with him, and he was privy to it even before I was. Me being mildly appalled, and him being tickled to death with himself because he knew that deep down I liked whatever mischief he was always up to.
     I am so glad to have known and danced with Joe. He encouraged me to branch out, to be confident, to own my personality and wear it proudly. And he taught me how to enjoy and appreciate other people- because what's the point of being fantastic and outgoing and sexy when you can't share it with people?!? Life is best lived with dance partners. Or an audience, audiences are nice too.

    Now that Joe is gone I feel that I under-appreciated him in the latter years of our friendship. That's the worst feeling in the world- to have had somebody and not appreciated them enough. I turned away from some of those kisses on the cheek, and I got embarrassed about some of his full-blown dance floor dramatics. Where is the part of me that was not at all ashamed to use one of those tables in the Davis Grad as a dance prop? (Boy that was a good dance!) Since when did I get so hesitant to be a crazy sexy goofball in front of everybody in a jam circle?  (That was a good one too). It's amazing that I can remember so many specific moments from dances I had with Joe, even years after they happened. That's saying something about him. I've been taking myself too seriously these days. Dancing too seriously. Remembering him has reminded me how much fun it was to not care- to dance in a way that made me feel I was waking up parts of myself that had been sleeping. To have unabashed fun and welcome people staring. Joe, I wish you were still alive so I could dance with you like that again.
     It turns out this blog is as much about me as it is about Joe. It's like he knew the outgoing and fun person I wanted to be, and helped me get over whatever fears and inhibitions were preventing me from attaining that. Anybody who knew Joe knows that inhibitions didn't last very well around him. Heck, it'a probably because of him I have the guts to take a three week road trip in the first place.
     I wish so badly that I could be in Sacramento right now, though, dancing with the community that Joe was such an integral part of. I heard news of his death while I was thousands of miles in to my own adventures, helplessly far away. And now, tonight, I am in Chicago, writing this because it is the next best thing I can do while everybody in Sacramento is at Fire House 5- a place that Joe introduced me to when it first opened. My God, if he had never taken me there my life would be so different.
   Thanks to the Internet, I love keeping up with the stories and pictures people are sharing on Facebook. The memorial page never fails to make me smile and laugh and cry and remember great moments. But I can't handle the news articles. Those are rough. They use words like "victim". I can't picture Joe as a victim- as a body in an ambulance, as a casualty of a crime. I want to hear him tell his story- I want to sit at the Lyons that doesn't even exist any more, and ask him what this crazy tale was like- just one more to add to his list. Ah, he would tell it with such gusto too, I know it. What happened, Joe, really? Tell us about that time you got shot! Any smartly delivered lines, refreshingly lucid honest thoughts? Epic actions, stoic attempts to keep on going when you shouldn't have? How manly and sexy were you, carrying on with a bullet in your chest? I want to stay up late again and laugh as he milks this tale for all it is worth. It's not going to happen though. Even the best among us die. Any one of us could have ended up that anonymous victim in the news article.
     I'm thinking now of an Ingrid Michaelson song.
     We are all just breakable, breakable, breakable girls and boys.
     Even Joe was breakable, though I don't want to admit it.
But boy he went out with style. I have to say, I admire his dramatic flair, even as I'm more than mildly appalled at it. Of course he would die no less epically than the way he did. And I'll bet he was dressed to the nines.