i hope you dance:
lessons on life, love, pain, and prison—or how robbing a bank can transform your life

Dedicated to the one and only Bruce Thomas—this piece is the result of the time we spent together that first day we met, and all the times since.

You weren’t a fighter, but you damn sure had to learn.

It’s a crisp February day.

The skies are blue and the trees are bare, and I’m sitting at a window table inside Weaver Street Market in Carrboro, North Carolina.

I’ve got the usual essentials: a soy latte with a dash of cinnamon, a chocolate croissant, and my laptop.

To me, Weaver Street is a refuge—a place where I can come to hang out, be productive, or just get a cold beer and chill.

It seems others feel the same way.

When you live in suburbia, it’s easy to assign generalizations to places around town. Whole Foods, for example, is the mecca of Chapel Hill wives: Go there on any given afternoon and you’re guaranteed to see at least five well-groomed blonde moms who just came from an aerobics class (after dropping off their kids at tennis practice in a Lexus SUV).

Open Eye Cafe is the hipster joint: Stop by for amazing cold brews, discussions on Kerouac and Keats, and mingling in dim lighting.

Merritt’s Store and Grill is your one-stop shop for the best BLTs and people watching in town (think thick, juicy cuts of bacon, old Southern men, and Nike shorts-wearing sorority girls).

As for Weaver Street Market? Impossible to generalize.

Admittedly, it has all the elements one would generally assume appeal to hippie types. There’s ample outdoor seating among the trees, tons of people walking barefoot, exotic produce options—we’re talking, like, durian fruits in central North Carolina—and tons of kombucha.

But stop by on any sunny afternoon and its diversity will be instantly visible, undeniably apparent. Wander through the store, the indoor seating areas, and the grassy lawn, and you’ll see everything from college students, artists, businessmen, and young moms, to high schoolers, professors, lovers, and everything in-between—all merged together in one harmonious hum of typing, laughter, and garbled chatter.

There is one thing about Weaver Street, though, that doesn’t blend in and, in my ten years of coming here, never has.

Some call him crazy, some call him the “tree man” and some call him “that guy,” but really, he is none of those things—or maybe he is all of them.

Today, I’m not here to study or socialize. I’m here to find him.

I creep on a quiet cashier whose name tag reads “Emily” and ask her if the “the guy who is always dancing is around.”

“You know who I’m talking about, right?” I say. “The guy who does, like, Tai Chi out on the lawn? He’s always here.”

She hands someone their receipt and turns to me with a knowing smile.

“Oh, Bruce? Bruce Thomas,” she responds, peering out the window. “I don’t know where he is… But he should be coming around soon.” 

Bingo.

I sit back down at my table and promptly fall asleep. Croissant carbs will do that to you.

I’m awoken from my peaceful slumber some minutes later by snarky laughter at the table behind me. I casually stretch and look to see where the noise is coming from.

“What is he even taking pictures of?” the guy behind me says to his friend. “There’s literally nothing there.”

I follow his gaze. And there Bruce is, standing by a tree, smiling and taking pictures of the sky.

______________________________________________________________________

I should start off by clarifying that Bruce Thomas is a hard man to miss.

For one, his appearance is quite distinctive: He’s a tall and thin black man, with grayish-white hair that he wears in two signature buns, one on top of the other. He has a thick white beard that extends a few inches below his chin. He wears gold rings on his fingers, pearl earrings, and lots of rich primary colors—burgundies, reds, and oranges are regulars in his wardrobe, along with loose, vividly-patterned pants. Sometimes, when it’s sunny out, he wears these dope rectangular black sunglasses that make him look a little like Snoop Dogg.

It’s not just his looks that make him stand out. (After all, we know from attractive people with horrendous personalities that while looks alone can draw attention, looks alone cannot sustain it.) What really makes Bruce stand out is the way he carries himself, the way he lives his life: unabashedly and free from the constraints of insecurities—free from the fears we all seem to share about being judged.

It’s a rare way to live, and it is both intriguing and infectious.

Come to Weaver Street Market on any given day and you will see him.

If you’re not a regular, you may not notice him at first. You’ll type away at your emails, you’ll sip your coffee, and you’ll talk to your friends. He’ll be there all the while, but like profound life lessons, he’ll only appear to you when you are ready—when you finally lift your gaze from your own life and really look out into the world around you. And when you do, you will see him.

He might be slowly wandering around the lawn, singing to himself, so light on his feet it looks like he’s floating. He might be sitting down on the ground, eyes closed in silent meditation. He might be drinking wine and playing the flute. He might be touching a tree or laughing at the wind. Or he might be staring solemnly into the distance, as still as stone.

But most likely, he will be dancing—moving his body to a melody that only he can hear, twirling, stepping, and stretching his body with such energy and focus it seems like he forgets he’s on a public lawn surrounded by people. He’ll be dancing with such passion it’s like his life depends on it, like God is looking down on him deciding whether or not his movements can buy him another day on Earth. He’ll be dancing with such vulnerability and openness that you might even feel uncomfortable, like you’re witnessing a deeply personal moment you shouldn’t be—a moment that should be reserved for no one but a man and his own soul.

He’ll be dancing like no one is watching.

————————————————————————————————————

I walk up to him, and he looks up from his camera. I ask him if he is Bruce Thomas. He laughs and says yes, yes he is, and takes off his sunglasses, revealing warm, sparkling eyes. I introduce myself and he takes my hand in both of his, bowing deeply.

I tell him that I’ve been coming to Weaver Street for years and have always seen him, but have never gotten to know him—that I know who he is but not who he is. He throws his head back and cackles loudly. I want to write a story on him, I say, and I’d be honored if he’d answer some questions. He says he has many stories written on him already. I cheekily say I will write a story that is better than them all—one that will blow all those other white writers out of the water. He thinks this is hysterical and whoops loudly.

“Oh, girl,” he says with a deep, hearty laugh. “You are a HOOT!”

Two minutes later, we’re seated at a picnic table. He’s got a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon and I’ve got my iPhone voice recorder running. We’re ready.

Right before we start talking, I look into his eyes and catch a glint of mischievousness.

And in that moment, I knew that this was the start of something more than just an interview—that Bruce would become a part of my life in one way or another.

Two-and-a-half hours later, I had a new best friend.

This piece is the result of the time we spent together that day, and all the times since.

————————————————————————————————————

For someone who never really had much of an education and who spent 17 years of his adult life in prison, Bruce Thomas is incredibly wise, incredibly gentle, and incredibly optimistic.

He was arrested in Florida on Nov. 28, 1980, after robbing a bank with a fellow gang member of the New World Nation of Islam, a violent and racist group that seeks to harm white people. He was sentenced to 90 years in prison with a 2069 parole date. He was 18 years old.

The day he robbed the bank—it was estimated that over $30,000 was stolen—Bruce said he heard the voice of God warning him not to go through with it.

As he opened the passenger-side car door handle, he heard God say, “Don’t do it… Don’t do it… Don’t do it… If you do it, you’re not coming back.”

But it was just like in the movies, he said, where there’s an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other.

“I heard God tell me not to,” Bruce recalled, nodding almost imperceptibly. “But then the voice of the Devil said, ‘If you don’t do it, what will your [gang] brothers think? They’re gonna think you cowered out.’”

So he went through with it, slipping a mask over his face right before he entered the bank. He was the gunman pointing it at everyone necessary; the other guy stuffed the money into bags. Then they took off in a customer’s car, pulled over, and ran in opposite directions. They were both caught within the hour.

I told him he needed to watch “The Town” (that bank-robbing movie that Ben Affleck starred in) because what he did sounded straight out of a Hollywood film.

He laughed and agreed, but then got serious.

“I was misguided,” he said, his eyes hardening, his head shaking with emphasis. “I’m not proud of it. I’m not proud of the fear I caused for all them people in the bank, because having a gun pointed at you is not fun. I would know.”

He was born and grew up in North New Jersey—a “fucking jungle”—a place where if you didn’t know how to defend yourself, you got “whooped, beaten, or even killed.” He wasn’t a fighter, but he damn sure had to learn.

He looked at me, raising his voice for the first time, speaking fervently.

“I want the youth to know that crime doesn’t pay. It’s no fun being locked up in prison, okay? So those of us that think it’s cool, and that you become a man doing that stuff, that’s a bunch of bullshit. And I mean it. Don’t waste your life trying to prove something to somebody else, because no matter how bad—how badass—you may be, there’s always going to be someone worse.”

I asked Bruce to describe his experience in prison in a few words. I could tell that this was difficult for him, an uncomfortable emotional trigger. He would think about it quietly for a while, then get distracted; just when I thought he’d answer, he’d say hello to a toddler walking by, or he’d get up and go to the bathroom. There was a lot of silence before the answer. And then it came.

“It was very dark… frightening… uncertain… and liberating,” he said, stating each word so carefully, enunciating each one so deliberately, that I knew he was speaking from the heart.

Liberating? I thought. How could being in prison be liberating?

He seemed to read my mind.

“Because even in dark places you can find light,” he said, his voice softening, his eyes scanning the lawn where parents were playing with their kids. “Even though it was a dungeon, and even though a lot of evil things happen in prison, I was able to find light. It was the place where I woke up and realized the truth.”

Naturally, I then asked him if he had seen “Shawshank Redemption”—a powerful film that depicts the disturbing brutalities of prison.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Mmm-hmm.”

“Is it really like that?” I blurted out, the no-filter, seven-year-old inside me emerging. “Like all the intense stuff they show happens to the prisoners?”

He nodded, and made a pshhhh sound that seemed to say, “You better believe it.”

“I’ve seen guys get raped, I’ve seen guys get stabbed; I’ve seen guys get hit in the head with a mop wringer, even commit suicide… I’ve seen it all,” he said, shaking his head. He talked about how important self-defense was in prison, how whenever the bus bringing new prisoners arrived, guys that had been there for “who knows how long” stood there, waiting to claim new prisoners and make them “their bitch—excuse the expression.”

Despite, or perhaps because of, the awful things Bruce witnessed during his 17 years in Florida’s Union Correctional Institution, the experience changed his life—for the better.

Going to prison, he says, was like being “sent away to an ashram or a monastery.”

“I’m a lover, not a fighter,” he said. “But I have fought. I have fought the greatest battle, the greatest fight, which is within. When we win the battle within, we have won all battles.”

————————————————————————————————————

During one of our conversations, I asked Bruce what he thought about change.

“It’s everywhere,” he said.

So can people really change? Truly?

“Just like the seasons,” he began to sing, in a slow and beautiful melody. “Just like the seasons, you can chaaaaaaange, change all that you were.”

A family walked by and waved to Bruce. “Hi, Bruce!” the father called out. Bruce waved back, singing all the while. “Helloooo to all three—all fourrrrrrrrr—of youuuuuuuu,” he crescendoed, after spotting the family dog. He turned back to me.

“The day turns to niiiiiiight, the night turns to day… And the seasons come, and they gooooo, and you chaaaaaange,” he concluded.

I clapped. He’s really got a great voice.

“But you have to desire change, even when it’s painful,” he added. “Today is a new day—what we didn’t do yesterday, we can do today. Every moment, every breath, is new, if we let it be.”

I nodded in agreement. I know from experience that consciously changing—at least for the better—can be really difficult, despite good intentions, particularly because of the past and all the memories it holds. There’s a lot of hurt being carried around in this world, a lot of scars, regrets, and emotional damage. There’s a lot of pain that keeps people from becoming who they want to be, that keeps them from finding true happiness. 

I pointed this out.

After all, I said, isn’t pain the reason why so many people drink, why so many people do drugs, why so many people constantly surround and distract themselves with anything to keep them from facing their truths and inner demons?

I can see this with millennials. Feel sad or lonely? Smoke a blunt. Feel insecure and unworthy? Get wasted. Of course, not nearly everyone drinking and smoking is doing it for those reasons—not even close—but I certainly know people who do. I think we all know people who will do anything to avoid facing themselves. I get it. I’ve been there. It’s painful as hell.

“One of the hardest things to do in life is to forgive, to forgive others and to forgive yourself,” Bruce said. “It’s not easy and it never is. But if you can’t embrace pain, you can’t face it. In order to rise above it, you have to become one with it.”

“What if you ignore it?” I asked. “Do you think it just goes away after a while?” (Wishful thinking—my oldest friend.)

“Oh, sure, you can ignore it,” he chuckled. “I’ve tried that.”

He looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

“But that’s like sweeping trash under the rug. It’s still there, it’s just buried for now.”

If that isn’t wisdom, I don’t know what is.

————————————————————————————————————-

Something important to understand about Bruce is that he didn’t always dance. He wasn’t always Weaver Street’s “Footloose Bruce.”

No, when he first arrived in North Carolina after getting out of prison, he didn’t dance at all. Yes, he spent time at Weaver Street—he actually worked as a baker there for three years—but he did not dance.

“I didn’t think I was a dancer,” he states simply, shrugging. “You would see me sitting down, talking, doing yoga, reading… If someone were to have said to me years ago that today I was going to be this well-known dancer in Carrboro, I would have said, ‘You got the wrong guy.’”

That changed one summer evening in 2001 when he says God spoke to him again.

It was around 6:30 pm, and Bruce was sitting at a Weaver Street table with a friend. He saw some kids dancing around a tree and couldn’t help but notice how free they felt. Bruce wanted to feel that free, too. And so he said to God, “I wanna dance with the kids.” And God said, “Well, get out there and dance with the kids!”

Bruce hesitated. After all, there was a lot of people sitting outside—and so he told God he wasn’t going to get up in front of all those people. He didn’t want to embarrass himself. 

God responded with three words: “Face your fears.”

“So I took a deep breath, and walked out [onto the lawn]. I stood next to the tree, and I just started listening. And my body just started moving,” he recalled, his eyes lighting up with the memory.

“And that,” he grinned, “is how I started dancing.”

Another thing to know about Bruce: Unlike most people, he doesn’t need music to dance—at least not what most of us think of as music. He dances to a different tune.

“There’s inner music and there’s outer music,” he explained to me patiently one afternoon. “Everything is music because everything has a vibration. Even this bench. If we drop the judgment, the labels, and learn how to embrace sound,” he said, motioning to the rumble of a passing car, “then we will always be in a space of music, because all sound makes music.”

Gotcha. But what’s inner music again?

He smiled.

“Inner music is the melody of your heart, the music of your soul that is always playing,” he said. “We all have a melody, a song that vibrates within us, but we’ve forgotten how to hear it. We’ve forgotten how to listen.”

I hate the feeling of not understanding, and I was starting to get that feeling—hard. I needed to figure this out. I asked him how I could hear my inner music, how I could learn to listen to it. I demanded he break it down for me. Because what I heard was silence (from the bench) and a damaged exhaust pipe (from the passing car).

He responded, “If you walk through a garden and you hear music playing, and the music is coming from the palace in the garden, what would you do?”

I’d… go to the palace. Right?

“Okay, and what would you do once you got there?”

I’d go inside.

“Exactly,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “It’s the same thing with your inner being.”

————————————————————————————————————-

Bruce is a meditator. He does it when he wakes up, before he goes to sleep (even though he doesn’t sleep much), and regularly throughout the day. He says his whole life is meditation, that diving into the ocean of his own eternal bliss provides him with energy more powerful than the sun.

I was a little jealous of this, and I told him as much. I shared that I’ve never been able to successfully meditate, because when I sit still for too long, all the thoughts that I don’t want to have fill my brain.

“Every thought only has as much power as you give it,” he reminded me gently. “You and you alone give it the fuel that it needs to stay alive. You have the power to give it light or to let it die out. A thought is only as strong as the energy you feed it.”

Yes, okay, I get that. But what do you do if a thought creeps in? You can’t exactly ignore it, right?

“You confront it,” he said. “You look at it and say NO! No more! I am going to be free from this. You have done all that you have done, and it’s over. Peace. Begone. And then you let it go.”

Then, no joke, he guided me through a 15-minute meditation session right there at our table. At first, I was self-conscious, peeking out my eyes every so often to see if anyone was watching. They were. Bruce demanded I stop peeking. I did.

And over the course of our guided meditation, I really did begin to feel something magical. I began to feel a lightness, a happiness, a sense of ease, calmness, and self-acceptance that I hadn’t felt before (actually, I think I felt something similar the last time I did hot yoga, but I could have just been hallucinating from dehydration).

When I finally opened my eyes, I felt like I was floating. I almost didn’t care that people were watching from inside, laughing, curious, and confused as to why this young Asian girl and this old black man were palm-to-palm, humming, and bowing their heads to each other. Almost.

————————————————————————————————————

As you can imagine, most people love Bruce.

Caroline Stanton, a longtime Chapel Hill resident, puts it simply: “He is fantastic. I once saw him do a backflip out of a tree.”

Emily, the aforementioned cashier at Weaver Street, agrees.

“I really like him. He’s a good person. I appreciate when people go against the grain like that. It takes a lot of bravery,” she mused one Saturday morning.

But not everyone feels the same way.

“Some people don’t know how to take him,” she added. “He goes against the grain of society, and especially because he’s black he really stands out.”

Just last month, a guy apparently threatened Bruce, telling him he had a death wish. The man was white.

“He kept kicking a stick at me, and kept making a bunch of evil faces,” Bruce recalled. “When he said that I said, ‘What you say?’ and he repeated it.”

The guy eventually left Bruce alone, but it hasn’t always been that simple.

During the summer of 2006, Bruce was banned from dancing on the Weaver Street lawn due to an alleged complaint, spurring a local movement called “Let Bruce Dance.” Nathan Milian, the manager of Carr Mill Mall (where Weaver Street is located), apparently denied that the ban had racial implications. Even today, Bruce doesn’t buy it.

When I asked him if he thought he was singled out for being black, he said matter-of-factly, “Yeah. Oh yeah.”

I was surprised, telling him that typically Carrboro is thought of as an accepting, liberal town—a left-wing haven in a right-wing state. He told me that Milian, who is still the manager, is not from Carrboro, and that when the dancing controversy was going on, Bruce, Milian, and the owner of the property all met in the Mayor’s office to try to resolve things. (Long story short, Bruce is now allowed to dance again.)

“This was the first time of me meeting Nathan,” he recalled, “and I was like ‘Oh my God.’ When I walked in and saw them, I said to myself, ‘Okay, now it’s clear [why I can’t dance].’”

You could tell they were racist?

Bruce nodded.

Nathan still works here, you said?

Another nod.

I paused, unsure of how to approach the topic. I could tell that it still hurt Bruce.

“Do you ever see him around?” I asked.

“Mhmm,” he said.

“Do you guys, like, make eye contact?” I prodded further.

“Mhmm,” he said. He could tell I was unsatisfied by this response. “He don’t bother me no more, though,” he elaborated. “It’s good now.”

I asked if he was mad at Nathan, if he resented him at all.

He shook his head no.

“Beneath the spider webs of our minds, we are all wonderful beings,” he said. “You can’t hate the world for the way various people are.”

I nodded in agreement, and we sat in silence for a little, watching the world go by.

———————————————————————————————————

I was sitting down at a table with Bruce and his longtime friend, Kevin, who works for UNC-Chapel Hill’s utility department. Bruce got up and disappeared for a few minutes. (He does this every so often during conversation, calmly saying, “I’ll be right back,” which only adds to his mysteriousness. I am 90% sure he’s visiting another dimension during these times, because seriously, I watch him walk away, then I blink and he’s gone.)

He returned with a envelope filled with photos that he took. He began going through them, showing me certain ones—some of them were absolutely gorgeous nature shots—and giving me some to take home.

There’s one photo he gave me that’s particularly memorable. It’s a picture of a tree and the sky and the sun.

But there’s also something else in it—a puzzling, inexplicable red circle outlining the picture. He showed me others where this same circle outline appeared, differing in size, but always there, brightly surrounding whatever the object of the photograph was. 

“That’s my aura,” Bruce said, pointing at the various pictures. “See how it’s always a complete circle? That’s an aura. I channel that energy when I’m taking pictures.”

I looked at Kevin, and he nodded in affirmation.

“You can learn a lot about Bruce by looking at his pictures,” Kevin said. “You can see through them how Bruce sees the world. Hey—Bruce—did you show her the one of the sky you took the other day?”

I am looking at the picture now as I write this, and I cannot explain what the circle is, nor why it was on so many photographs. There’s an enchanting, captivating quality about the vibrancy of its color. And while I am unsure of where the circle came from, something tells me that it might be exactly what Bruce says it is.

After all, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from Bruce, it’s that those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.

————————————————————————————————————

Bruce is a complex man, and spending time with him is never boring. He speaks loudly, he speaks quietly, he speaks deeply, he sings, he goes on tangents, he laughs, he cries. His mood can go from subdued and introspective to lively and excited within seconds.

He says hi to children every chance he gets. No, seriously, in the middle of an intense conversation, he will stop and laugh and wave excitedly at whatever child is looking at him— and many do.

He loves children, and when he talks to them he engages with them fully. Children love him—he can make even the most stone-faced toddler burst into gleeful laughter, or at the very least, make him crack a smile and wave shyly.

“Bye-bye!” Bruce will sing as the child walks away, causing the child to look back and laugh, then look away again only to further the game they have somehow established. “Come back soon! Oh! You’re back! You’re leaving! Oh, no! Bye-bye again!”

Bruce thinks that children are beautifully innocent, born knowing the purest truth. They live life right, because society hasn’t taught them yet how to act, how to distinguish between people. All they know is good energy and bad energy. They don’t discriminate between skin colors.

If Bruce could change one thing about the world, it would be to “end the separation between humanity. No more hatred, no more skin color crap… We say there are five races of humanity, but there are no different races. There’s only one race—the human race. There are many different types of trees, but they’re all trees, aren’t they?”

“Did you always think like this?” I asked him.

“Hell no,” he responded. “Because I wasn’t taught how to. It starts with the children.”

The sun was setting, ending another February afternoon.

“When I was a little boy, when family members asked me what I wanted to do in this world, do you know what my response was?” he asked me.

“To be happy?” I guessed.

“No,” he responded. “To make other people happy.” 

————————————————————————————————————

People often tell Bruce that they wish they could be like him, that they wish they could do what he does and live with the same amount of freedom and bliss.

“I tell them they can! Just do it! It’s only as hard as you make it, just like everything else,” he said. “It all starts with you. The letter ‘I’ comes before ‘U’ in the alphabet, meaning that we have to start with ourselves first. How can you go out into the world and spread peace, love, and joy if you don’t have that same peace, love and joy within yourself?”

Though Bruce is a complex man, in some ways he is very simple.

His favorite thing to do is dance, his favorite thing to drink is water, his favorite season is spring, and his favorite color is red.

And his favorite word is love.

When he was in prison, he worked at the hospital and one of his jobs was to clean up after suicides. He remembers one day, he had to cut down an inmate who had hung himself. As he was preparing the body for the body bag, he started crying over it and saying prayers.

The prisoner helping him said, “Bruce, you ain’t crying are you? What you crying for, you ain’t even know the guy!”

Bruce looked at him with tears in his eyes, and said, “I know he was a human being. And that’s all I need to know.”

He looked down at his hands after finishing the story and shook his head in disgust.

“Yeah,” Bruce murmured, recomposing himself. “Knucklehead.”

————————————————————————————————————-

The last time I hung out with Bruce, we had a great time. We talked about everything from Jet Li movies (“Jet Li ain’t nothin’ but the truth!”) to our affinity for salmon.

At one point when we were hanging out, he asked me why I was writing an article on him, what the point of it all was.

“I want to let the world know who Bruce Thomas is,” I said, casually checking my phone.

“What?” he whispered.

“I want to let the world know who you are,” I repeated, looking up.

“Seriously?” he said, his voice cracking.

“Yeah,” I nodded.

He was speechless.

“That’s so… Ohhh… Wow.”

He bowed his head down for several moments as I sat silently, unsure of what to do. When he looked up, he had tears in his eyes.

“I always tell people, always be kind, always be sweet, always be compassionate to others, because you never know whose life you might bring happiness to. That’s the nicest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said softly.

Before I left that day, Bruce played his flutes for me. It’s easy to lose track of the hours when you’re with Bruce, because he doesn’t live by time—he lives by moments.

After he finished playing, I looked down at my phone and realized I was late to a meeting.

“Wait!” Bruce exclaimed. “We must dance!”

“I don’t really know how to,” I said, trying to avoid embarrassing myself in front of the crowd. “Like, I literally don’t even know where to start.”

“Just follow my lead,” Bruce said, getting up and showing me the moves.

And so I did. I started off awkward and slow, praying that no one was looking. But slowly, I got more and more into it and a few minutes later I was having the time of my life, laughing, stepping, twirling, and spinning freely. I couldn’t stop smiling. It was so wonderfully absurd that I forgot about feeling dorky and enjoyed every moment.

This time, I didn’t care that people were watching from inside and outside, laughing, curious and confused as to why this young Asian girl and this old black man were palm-to-palm, dancing to a tune that no one could hear. I didn’t care because to me, they weren’t there.

I was dancing like no one was watching.