Dancing With Myself

The editorial poobah of a recent business acquisition and I have become vested homies. She's smart and competitive and just an outright delightful person. She works out of a home office in Denver so she refers to herself as a cowboy (and she does in a way to suggest she's uncouth to the ways of corporate business). When she was lured into the corporate sphere, she did so with some trepidation. I immediately reassured her, "Don't worry, honey. We're all cowboys here. Welcome to the rodeo." As it should be.

Our first bonding trip took place when she came into New York a few months ago for a business trip. She had scheduled a meeting with other editors in our Connecticut office for the next day. I agreed to pick her up in some locale on the Upper West Side and we'd ride into Connecticut together. I looked forward to the trip; I wanted the chance to get to know her better. When I found her on the corner of 81st and Broadway, she clutched a Venti bold black from Starbucks for me. I knew we were going to be friends.

In her modest retelling of her history on that ride in, I was impressed with her many accomplishments, her obvious intelligence and her dogged commitment to maintaining a life/work balance. The final bonding tie? She had given her only son the name I would have given to a son if I had one: Max.

On that same ride in, she noticed my GPS monitor was posting the songs playing on my radio (turned to mute in respect of having company in the car). Upon observing the title of a Ne-Yo song, she sounded out the first verse, involuntarily, out loud. Damn, the girl was hip hop savvy too.

A further story expounded on that ride to Darien. I explained that while I personally enjoyed hip-hop on my commute, I had a sick compulsion to turn the volume up loudly the minute I drove onto the main drag of this conservative white community. I noticed that the thumping of the bass of my stereo emanating from the car scared the locals and I rather enjoyed the shocked look on their faces to see that it was in fact an innocuous blond and not 50 Cent invading their turf. She loved that.

Recently, my new BFF sent me a home burned CD. In a note embellished with her son Max' artwork she apologized for not providing me further misogynistic musical rants of the hip hop genre but rather a selection that might still scare the locals. It was a funk compilation. And it was beyond perfect. Al Green, Earth, Wind & Fire, The Commodores, Stevie...I totally dug it.

I'm on vacation this week but I went to work today to start the mass purging of my office. On my drive in (and on my drive home), I listened to this compilation and as unpleasant as it may seem to visualize it, I was dancing in my car seat grooving to these righteous tunes. Both ways and like a madman. Every track was a winner.

I'm going back into the office tomorrow to finish the purge (my predecessor, while someone I admire, was anal retentive to the nth degree and left a large paper legacy). And tomorrow, that funk CD is going into the office with me and I intend to play it loud. If I have to purge, mama is going to do so with funk.