I was sitting in the den at home - home home, Connecticut home. Not school home. So I was sitting in the den, watching the late night, post-SNL broadcast when it turned to dance. It wasn't just one kind of dance, either, but all dance. Not explicitly, of course, but it was aware of its span.

Anyone who's seen Dirty Dancing is familiar with that style of close dance, always in unison, usually in contact, never actually giving in to the powerful, sexual energy coursing through and around you and your partner, because, frankly, it's sexier. This was after a cabaret bit, before they switched to middle eastern and African dance (and eventually went onward to burlesque).

But I was watching the contact, the physical and mental, the awareness of what they were doing and just how close they were to each other, but what they would never do. They were two reporters for the segment, taught by the leads themselves (or perhaps the choreographers? Either way, those two could dance.) and obviously a little self conscious. They began with no idea of what they were doing and the woman remarked, when the male lead was behind her, that she was married.

Then they reached the "finale." The two stood at opposite ends of the stage and approached each other, touched, slipped into one anothers' hands while remaining outside the arms, at arms' length. Their bodies - their cores - found one another and they moved as they had been taught, his hand sliding sensuously down her arm and slipping to the small of her back, supporting her as she leaned over and whipped herself around.

And then they were face to back, his chest behind her, against her, their pelvises touching or, at least, very close. His arm was around her waist, his hand on her abdomen, on her belly, gently, barely touching it. It was as though he encompassed her, but wasn't truly in contact with her, yet her head was beside his as if she had leaned back into him, her face to the sky.

The leads looked on and I swore I saw in their faces, only for a moment, the realization flash in their minds of how they must look, of what it stirred in people to observe that and what must have been going through those dancers' minds.

People are sensuous. Is that how it goes? An object, an act, can be sensual because it evokes the senses, but the people themselves are sensuous because they have their senses provoked, drawn upon.

Yes. I think that's it. Humans are sensuous. People are humans. Your family and your friends are people. They feel both physically and emotionally, possibly spiritually as well.

Be aware of that. Please.