I gained the usual changes by going through puberty. most of them obvious, like the ability to have sex, a manly voice, hair on my face and chest, broader shoulders, and i finally achieved a height just a fraction of an inch shy of 6 feet tall. it was a relief when it happened somewhat late in high school because i had fallen behind in development, compared to most of the guys in my grade. I was one of the shorter kids in my class for a bunch of years. Being short for a guy is probably the biggest game killer known to man. even more so then being a complete asshole and a wife beater. tall wife beating assholes to do just fine in life, but ask a short guy how women treat him in general, and barring the super rich, you will get a sad answer. woman like to think that they are above men when it comes to being base about how they select a mate. like men lean entirely too much on boobs, and looks while they care more about men's personalities. but hang out with a short guy for one night at a bar or club and you will see the world of hurt they go through just to meet a woman.
Anyways. puberty got me a lot of these necessary aspects and some extra bonus ones, but at the same time it robbed me of some other, less known qualities that i had before i turned 15. like the ability to breakdance, and specifically to do the "worm". a maneuver that uses the same "technology" as the wave, but applies it to the body as a whole. at one point in my pre-pubescent life i could do it so well that my feet would be above my head as the worm started, plus i could do it down the block and turn a corner. It was my signature move. that and a really good electric boogie got me into a performing group that actually did some pretty big performances in and around 1985.
Now fast forward a bunch of years to about 1993. i was living for a year in Barcelona Spain, and a combination of factors led me to try the move again in front of an audience at a club near Las Ramblas. it was called Jamboree and it was a big place below an ancient municipal building in a Plaza Reial. you went down worn stone steps and entered an underground vaulted catacomb. flying buttress arches and a cold hard stone floor had been converted into a really hip dance club. and in Barcelona that meant the place was bananas from midnight until well after the sun was up. the Dj's spun American and french hip hop and all sorts of music i was very fond of, PLUS, the people treated dancing as an art form. there were bar tables and gogo stages meant for anybody to jump up on and take over. to my surprise, i encountered a practice there that i hadn't witnessed since Koch was the mayor of NYC. the dance circle. somebody would start breakdancing and a circle would clear on the floor to give them room. when they were finished they had to either point at somebody or somebody had to jump in otherwise the circle was wasted and would close on itself.
this picture was taken recently, but when i was there it was an old stone floor. they probably fixed it because so many breakdancers broke themselves on it :)Naturally, when i first saw this, i had to do it. the fact that my balls had dropped since the last time i had attempted it didn't even occur to me. the fact that i was wearing Jesus style scandals i had bought in Santorini Greece for 500 Drachma (2 bucks) also seemed to have slipped my mind. I guess after drinking several Estrella Damm beers and witnessing Spaniards try to clone what i had grown up doing a decade earlier, i just couldn't have resisted the temptation. well, needless to say, i FUCKING SHOULD HAVE.
So, i believe the song was Dr Dre Stranded on Death Row and a Spaniard who thought he could do the windmill had just failed miserably, possibly because the ancient stones he was spinning on were far from slippery and had never been shellacked or varnished or whatever it would have taken to make the surface break-spin friendly. there was a pause and everybody was looking around for the next performer. I had already opened my big mouth about my breaking ability to a girl i was trying to impress with my broken Spanglish and my NYC background. it seemed to work, except she looked at me expectantly, like "OK Americano, whatchugot?!"
I had to do it. my "rep" and possibly more was on the "ligna". I jumped out and started my old choreography. I had managed to get good enough back in the day that i didn't just jump out and blow my load on the worm, i worked up to it. using a combo of the electric boogie and some pretty tight leg work, i had people cheering and clapping. it was all going to plan thus far. i could see that she was smiling and elbowing her friends to watch, and i could see the Spanish guys nodding in approval. i was rocking out like i used to. it wasn't a battle so there wasn't anybody i needed to focus on or anything like that so i was all over the place. finally, when i had exhausted my preliminary maneuvers and it would have been repetitive to do anything else besides "El Wormo" i dove right in. literally. i always dove in to start. so it would look like i was about to land on my head. but instead, i caught myself in a handstand, and then rolled my body down, first my chin, then my chest, stomach, pelvis...and then my balls. only i had never used my balls before. because they had never really been there before. so the new body part really surprised me as much as i surprised it (or them). it was basically tantamount to getting them smashed in a vice. only it was 500 year old stone. there was no give, or mercy to the stone. through the centuries, it hadn't given sway to the sieges of cannon balls hurled by the French Empire or the Moors, so why would it yield to my delicate American huevos? lets just say the pain was excruciating. but that wasn't all the stone floor had for me. when my legs alleviated the intense pressure off of the sacred family jewels, they transferred the final part of the wave to my toes, which were completely bare except for the thin Greek leather under them. so i smashed all ten toes against the stalwart floor as well.
But that wasn't enough. i had to man up and complete the worm so as not to let anybody know my intense internal melt down. there could be no failure now that i had committed. so i braved through at least 6-7 more waves o' pain. it was like having somebody repeatedly kick me in the groin and then drop a cinder block on my bare feet. roll, smash, roll, smash, roll, smash... by the time i was done doing a number on my extremities and manhood i was near the other side of the circle. i managed to do the final wave and kick it high enough to land back on my feet like i used to. the mechanics of the move were still within my physical ability, but the pain was a whole new bag of chips. I pointed at one of the guys on the edge of the circle who i knew was waiting to go and moonwalked the fuck out of there.
I got a good amount of applause, i noticed the girl was one of the cheerers, but at that point i could care less. i just wanted to crawl into a hole in the wall and disappear while the waves of excruciating pain washed over me. i couldn't have spoken because my voice was all twisted up in knots and my stomach was inside out. i had to back out of the circle because my smashed toes weren't going to allow me to walk forward without an obvious limp.
i think i managed to retreat in such a way that it looked like i had done my dance, and was going to leave the audience thirsty for more. but between you, me and the ancient stones, i just wanted to die right there on the spot. I don't remember what happened with the girl, or if i managed to stay any longer. but i do have a memory of limping home that night with only a bag of Churros to console me and my smashed cahones.
this is an example of the worm as performed by a KID.
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