Adventures of a Salsa Goddess (5 page)

A waitress came up with a towel and handed it to Eliseo’s brother, who nodded toward my empty margarita glass. He held his shirt out from his body with one hand while brushing it off with the towel.

“Good as new,” he said with a big grin, exposing one dimple on his left cheek. Oh God, I love dimples. I had to grab both of my hands to prevent myself from reaching out to touch it. He greeted Lessie with a kiss to her cheek, and then turned to me.

“Hi, I’m Javier Lora,” he said, kissing me on the cheek as well, provoking a delicious quiver to jolt through my body.

“I’m really sorry,” I said to Javier, pointing to his shirt. “I’ll pay for the cleaning.”

Actually, I wouldn’t have minded taking the shirt home and washing it by hand, but standing next to a fully clothed Javier seemed dangerous enough. I couldn’t picture a shirtless Javier. Well, of course I could, but I’d better not.

Suddenly, there was altogether too much going on. The waitress appeared and handed me another margarita. It took all the self-
discipline I possessed not to drink it down like a shot and ask for another.

“It’s nothing,” he assured me. “But you could do something for me
.”

A myriad of possibilities came to mind.

“Like?” I asked.

“Tell me your name,” he said.

“Samantha Jacobs, but everyone calls me Sam.” Oh God, I hope he doesn’t notice that my hand feels like a dead trout, although this was probably wishful thinking, since Javier seemed like the kind of guy who missed very little.

“Eliseo is going to teach me some more salsa,” said Lessie, as Eliseo pulled her out to the center of the dance floor. Lessie stood in front of him on the balls of her feet, about to float off the floor.

“Would you like to dance?” Javier asked.

“I’d love to, but I don’t know how,” I said. My heart picked up tempo again at the anticipation of his touch.

“I’ll teach you,” said Javier, who proceeded to demonstrate the basic salsa steps. A step back with my right foot, together in the middle for two counts, and then forward with my left foot. Sounded easy, but I wasn’t getting it.

“Quick, quick, slow,” he said over and over again to explain the rhythm. I felt like a circus clown on stilts, but he just kept flashing that one-dimpled smile and I responded with a giggle. I hoped he didn’t think I was a blond airhead.

After twenty minutes, we took a break and stood at the bar rail running alongside the dance floor.

“How did you learn how to salsa?” I asked him, but was really wondering what it was about Javier that made me feel completely comfortable and at ease around him, despite the fact that I’d only known him for thirty minutes.

“I used to hang out at the Miami clubs from the time I was fourteen. One of the dishwashers would sneak me in the back door and I’d watch the dancers,” he said.

“So you
’ve never had a lesson?” I asked. “And you’re the instructor here?”

He shrugged in a good-natured way and ran his hand through his brown hair. I couldn’t believe that something that seemed as complicated as salsa dancing could be picked up by simply watching.

We went back out to practice, and I started to get it. The next thing I knew he twirled and dipped me. Wow! Looking up into his face, my heart hammering and the blood in my veins flowing like lava, I realized that salsa dancing might be contagious. Or was it Javier? Would it feel this incredible with just any man who could dance?

“So how long have you known Eliseo?” I asked Lessie later on the drive home.

“Two weeks,” she said. “Lisa, who teaches pottery at my school, talked me into coming here after I’d had two martinis. Eliseo asked me to dance, and at the end of the night he asked for my phone number. We went out last weekend. And,” she added barely able to contain her excitement, “he asked me out again for this Saturday night!”

I could understand her elation. After a wonderful first date, a man had actually asked her out for a second date instead of running away from her in a commitment-phobic frenzy. It almost sounded like a fairy tale.

“Younger men are definitely the way to go,” she said. “The last guy I dated who was my age complained about waking up every day with a new ache or pain and talked incessantly about getting hair plugs. The one before that had to take medication for high blood pressure and couldn’t get it up.”

I’d never dated a younger man before. All of the significant men in my life, starting with Pierre in Paris, had been at least a few years older. But now, a few years older meant getting dangerously close to AARP cards and early-bird buffet dinners.

“How old is Eliseo?” I asked her.

“Thirty-five,” she said, letting out a big happy sigh.

“That means Javier must be thirty-two,” I said, doing the arithmetic. Eliseo said he was six and Javier was three when they moved to Miami from the Dominican Republic. Oh no! He’s almost ten years younger. He’d never be interested in me.

When Lessie dropped me off at my apartment it was almost midnight. I took off my clothes and dropped into bed exhausted. I was too excited to fall asleep immediately. But eventually, when I did, I dreamt of being in Javier’s arms, both on and off the dance floor.

The Demise of Courtship,
The Era of Un-Dating

By Samantha Jacobs

A close friend, let’s call her Lisa, forty-two, met Kirk, thirty-nine, at a summer festival. He was tall, friendly, and shared his pretzel with her. They talked about politics, books, and music. He asked for her number and actually called three days later.

It all went downhill from there.

“We should get together sometime,” said Kirk toward the end of their first telephone conversation.

Lisa readily agreed, but Kirk was unable to respond with a suggestion for where they might meet, what they might do, or even a date for a possible rendezvous. Finally, after much hemming and hawing, Kirk arranged to meet Lisa at his favorite dive bar, where he bought her a fifty-cent tap beer and then asked her to go home with him.

Another friend, Mary, forty-one, had a post-first date experience that was also troubling. She went out to dinner with a divorced businessman in his forties, father of a ten-year-old boy, owner of a two-seater airplane and a Jaguar. Mary first heard from him a week after their date.

“He e-mailed me and asked me if we were ever going out again. An e-mail. Can you believe it? I wonder if he likes women?” Mary pondered.

Indeed one would assume that a successful entrepreneur who had previously taken the vows of matrimony, procreated, and made major consumer purchases could have done a little better than sending off a flaccid e-mail that suggested nothing. I seriously doubt that Donald Trump courts women via e-mail. But perhaps Lisa and Mary should count themselves fortunate, since a far more ominous dating situation faces the typical twenty- and thirty-something woman.

When a generation Y or X man and woman do get together these days, it seems to be a joint project, patchworked together with hints and obscure references to the future. A man's initial attempt to woo a woman typically starts with an amorphous statement, such as, “I might be at ABC bar tomorrow night.” Silence follows this statement and the prospect of spending time together is left floating in the telephone or computer cables until the woman responds with something more definitive, such as, “I will be at ABC bar tomorrow
night. Should we meet?” But, alas, today’s typical bachelor is not ready to commit to anything more serious than a tee time. Thus, he is likely to respond, “Well, then again, I might not be there. But if I do show up, maybe we could have a drink, if we happen to run into each other.” Thus, a chance encounter (for it really would be a gross exaggeration to call it a date), is set.

What is going on here?

Sadly, we have entered the era of un-dating. Un-dating is characterized by nebulous, half-hearted missives suggesting some sort of activity, which are never quite explicit enough to be mistaken for an actual romantic invitation. Modern courtship has evolved into a form of tango dancing in outer space. The male partner stays on the mother ship, while the woman floats in her bulky and unflattering spacesuit, tenuously tethered to the hull of the vessel, desperately hoping to be reeled back inside, as she catches glimpses of her would-be suitor twirling and dipping himself on the bridge of the craft.

Un-dating is a frustrating and gloomy state of affairs, but I think I have the solution, based on my theory that women have forgotten what the real man of yesterday was like. A refresher course is in order. I propose a nationwide one-week marathon film festival, mandatory for all unmarried women over eighteen. I’m proposing the following films be shown, although other suggestions are welcome:

Cary Grant in
North by Northwest
, Richard Burton in
Cleopatra
, Clark Gable in
Gone With the Wind
, Humphrey Bogart in
Casablanca
and the ultimate man, Steve McQueen, in any movie. These are men that make us pant with lust. We blush just thinking of five minutes in a bedroom with them. In short, these are men who know how to pursue women and ask them out on actual dates.

I’m hopeful that after the Real Man Film Festival, single women will politely turn down our typical bachelor of the new millennium when he suggests that he and his would-be date bump into each other with all the deliberation of electrons in a cathode tube. I’m confident that with persistence, in the not-too-distant future un
-dating will be undone. In time, women will recapture the era our female ancestors inhabited—an age when men gallantly fought in duels for the women they loved, a time when men buried their emotions and drank themselves to oblivion over a lost love in a faraway Casablanca nightclub, a time when men told women, “I’ll call you,” and actually did.

It was with zero enthusiasm and a feeling bordering on actual dread
, that bright and early Tuesday morning, after an emergency jolt of two cups of organic Dark Sumatran coffee, I drove to the address of Single No More, the largest video dating service in the country. I entered a narrow two-story wood-frame building on the near west side of town. Fifteen minutes later I felt close to committing the first truly violent act of my life.

“Yes, but how much does the service cost?” I asked for the third time. Bunny Woods bounced up from her chair and leaned her manicured hands on her desk.

“We have a special price just for you if you sign up today!” she said, repeating the same response she’d given the other three times I’d asked. When I’d called yesterday with the same question, I was told that they never discuss prices over the phone. Apparently they don’t discuss them in their office either.

Bunny sat down again, her big seventies, blond hair flouncing with her as she waved her arm Vanna White-like toward the video room, where I saw a barstool, a camera on a tripod, and bookshelves filled with video tapes.

“But Ms. Woods,” I began, “I really need to know the price of...”

“Samantha, please call me Bunny. I insist,” she said, flashing a saccharine smile.

Bunny’s overenthusiastic personality, in contrast to the shabby surroundings, made her stand out like a Las Vegas showgirl at a wake. The tan carpeting was frayed and balding and soiled with assorted dark brown and yellow stains, the furniture had apparently been collected from cheap outlets, while the walls were covered with faded posters of arm-in-arm couples with plastic smiles against backdrops of fabulously fun and romantic sunset beach and Ferris wheel scenes.

“What kind of screening of prospective clients do you do, Bunny?” I asked her, feeling stupid calling a grown woman Bunny.

She explained, that Single No More did a standard criminal background check, verified education and employment history, and if there were any doubts or discrepancies, turned those applicants away.

“I can assure you Samantha, that Single No More has only the highest quality members—well-educated professionals such as yourself.”

I wondered where the rejects went? Single Forevermore? Or worse—to the online personals? I’d spent valuable minutes slashing and burning my way through twenty pages of profiles on MilwaukeeDates.com earlier in the week and had felt afterward as though I’d been accosted by a roomful of men, each with the same bad pick-up lines. I couldn’t believe how many profiles mentioned the stomach-churning, “I love ‘hugs’ or ‘cuddling’ or ‘sunsets.’” Who the hell doesn’t? It’s like saying you like breathing, food, and water. And I was highly disappointed to find that not one man had the guts to cut through the crap and share some really valuable information like, “Haven’t scrubbed out bathtub for five months,” or “Have 7K in credit card debt.”

I’d never placed a personal ad or done the Internet dating thing myself, but how was I supposed to find the man of my dreams based on an autobiographical profile that is: a) de facto not neutral since no one, not even Buddha or Gandhi, was capable of describing themselves that way, and b) intended to conceal faults and highlight assets that probably didn’t exist?

Finally, I’d tallied up the grand total of profiles that claimed to be professional, college-educated, and over thirty-seven and under fifty. That left two, both without photos posted: The first, a divorced man, 46, 6’, 185, college-educated, self-described hopeless romantic who enjoys movies and dining out; the second, a never-married, 47, 5’11”, nonsmoker who likes music, books, traveling, outdoor cafes, romantic evenings, and summer festivals.

I nixed Bachelor #2 immediately. Although I had to give him credit for saying he’s 5
’11” since most guys would just fudge it up to the nice, round, six-foot number, his profile stated that he was looking for a “possible close relationship.”

As Dr. Laura says, to date an over-forty never-married man was a major red flag. I couldn’t agree more. If dating a never-married guy in his thirties was like taking a short walk over a bed of hot coals, dating a never-married man over forty was the equivalent of trekking across the Mojave desert barefoot and without water. Bachelor #2, Mr. “Possible Close Relationship,” was screaming through cyberspace, “I’m commitment-phobic and will never get married!” That had left Bachelor #1,
whose profile I responded to two days ago.

Bunny jumped up and darted to the other side of her office, giving me whiplash.

“Before I sign up, could I see your book of photographs?” I asked Bunny. I was starting to be amused by the number of my questions and requests that she skillfully evaded. “I’d like to see what kind of men are available before I commit my time and money ...”

“I can see that you are a smart, discerning woman,” she said. Bingo! Bunny scores again.

“Can you tell me how many men are available in the age range I’m looking for?” I persisted.

Bunny looked around and lowered her voice as if she were about to impart answers to the mysteries of the universe. “If I were still single and not an employee, I’d be tempted to break
the rules and dip into what I like to call
the vault
,” she said, reverently stroking the cover of a thick photo album as if it were an original fifteenth-century Gutenberg Bible. “The men in here are to die for!”

I noticed that her hand was interestingly devoid of rings of any
kind as she faked a swoon, brushing the back of her left hand across her brow.

“Yes, but how many
...?”

“I’d be shocked, shocked if your husband wasn’t in here, Samantha!” she interrupted.

Bunny had her sales pitch down to a science. On the one hand, she made it sound as though if I didn’t sign up at this very moment, my soul mate would surely slip through my fingers and tie the knot with a less ambivalent woman who’d had the good sense to sign up immediately, no questions asked. At the same time, Bunny implied that there were so many extraordinary men overflowing the books and videos of Single No More that I could be busy dating all of them until the end of time.

Against my better judgment, but having no choice since it was the only video dating service in Milwaukee, I mustered the minimal amount of enthusiasm necessary to convince Bunny that I wanted to sign on the dotted line and discovered that the “special price” was two thousand dollars for six months, which sounded suspiciously like the special price for everyone all of the time. I filled out the forms, claiming to have been self-employed as a freelance writer since grad school. Next came my Single No More video debut: directed by Bunny Woods, produced by Bunny Woods, and written by Bunny Woods.

First, she forced me to primp in the bathroom, and sent me back in twice to “fix my face,” which as far as I could see looked fine, but then, I’d only been looking at it for forty-one years so what did I know? We practiced, doing so many takes that I lost count, until she insisted on writing out an actual script. I’m fairly certain the filming of Cecil B. DeMille’s
The Ten Commandments
had taken less time to make than my Single No More video.

“You won’t be disappointed. See you on Friday,” said
Bunny, giving me a wave, which I returned halfheartedly, like a flag signaling distress. In three days, after my background check had cleared, I could finally be initiated and allowed entry into the vault and the video room. I could hardly wait.