#timbalive

Circa October 2007. At the small teaching college I went to for my second degree I was trying to meet college girls. Turns out not a lot of them were in my science/technology program, so my plan was to join some dance classes.

My luck* being what it is there were only two classes that involved partner dancing. A General Ballroom class and a Cuban Salsa class. The first I officially registered for, the latter I just started showing up to. You see, I was under the impression that women would be attracted to a guy who danced (I was already a pretty ok dancer). This delusion I suffered from had been long lived, but now I know better.

Ballroom attracted the freshmen crowd, which at my then 29 years of age seemed waaaaay to immature to be of any interest. I mean they were just girls. Salsa, by contrast, seemed to attract upperclassmen and grad students, in short: women. Real women. Rowr.

Couple that with the nature of Cuban salsa... the men are all shoulder-movements and hip thrusts, and the women’s movements are all shimmies and hip gyrations. Going from Ballroom to Salsa was like moving from holding hands to foreplay.

The room salsa was held in was normally a dance rehearsal room. Dance classes are always in the gymnasium. Ballroom was. Salsa, however, was on the part of campus annexed by the dance department. Salsa was in a real dance building. It lent some air of credibility to the endeavor that Ballroom lacked.

This particular class started with warmups. In warmups the entire class faced the instructor who would play a couple songs and start doing increasingly complicated feet and body motions that we were meant to mimic. I took the opportunity to move the back of the room to get a... better view of the assets of the class.

In latin dance classes there are two kinds of women. Women who’s hips move and those whose don’t. This is a skill that can be learned, but there are some women who just know how to move them intrinsically. Cece was one of the latter. Short brown hair, blue eyes, pale skin, short of stature, gifted of hip-sway.

We were asked to switch partners often during the class and I remember dancing with her and feeling it before seeing it. Her left hand in my right, a ring and bulbous what I can only presume to be a diamond on her left ring finger. “Chalk her off the list” I think to myself and mark her off the list of attractive seemingly eligible women in the room...

*Luck is made, not had.