I was a little nervous going to a salsa night at the Century Ballroom last night, so I did something I learned from Weetabix and announced, immediately upon arriving, that I was the hottest girl in the room. I mainly announced it to my friend M who’d invited me for the evening, but I felt that it was an important small step in the process of my owning the room completely.

M and I work together. She is a big fancy psychologist and about a year ago I invited her to come to a bellydance class with me, and we had a great time there. It’s very important to have a good work friend, as everyone knows. When you begin to hate the very walls of your office and all the world seems bleak and overly academic, you need to be able to call your work friend and say “Dude, meet me at the gift shop because I totally need some chocolate right now and also to tell you all about my private business. Right now. Meet you there.” Yesterday she emailed me to ask if I wanted to go dancing that night. I was on the verge of writing back something along the lines of how I was supposed to go to the gym because Thursday is my gym night, but almost immediately I came to my senses and accepted her invitation with pleasure. Compare and contrast: one hour of furrowed-brow cardiovascular activity on a machine followed by grimacing vis-à-vis the weight machine vs. several hours of pretending to be a fiery love siren whose passion will not be denied. Both get you sweaty, and both involve loud music, but clearly the winner here is the salsa dancing, and so I made plans to meet M later that evening.

Notwithstanding my electricity going off just as I was getting dressed and causing me to have to fumble around in the camping drawer for my headlamp so I could find my shoes, I made it all the way to M’s house (after forgetting my glasses and realizing halfway there that no, I really shouldn’t be driving without them anymore) and we headed out. I wore basic black pants and a long-sleeved red top and some ridiculous costume jewelry I got at Target five years ago. I was looking medium-hot, I’d guess, for a school night. That’s the nice thing about bellydance, I have to say: even if your class is on a Monday night you can still put on all your gear and instantly be transformed from Well Meaning Suburbanite to Gypsy Mistress of the Night. I can carry that off pretty well. The salsa thing is a little more difficult, primarily because it involves high heels.

Anyway, we did the half hour “combat salsa” intro thing, wherein I learned the basic step, and then the DJ started playing and I reminded M of our combined hotness. We were standing at the edge of the dance floor, looking like very hot wallflowers. Some sort of orchid or bromeliad, perhaps. A couple of guys came over and asked us to dance and that was okay. That song ended and another was halfway over by the time I thought that maybe the problem was that our hotness was too concentrated in that one area and that we needed to spread it around a little. Let everyone have their chance, you know.

While M was dancing with someone else and I was reflecting that I had never been to my prom and repeating obsessively to myself “Hottest girl in the room. Hottest girl in the room!” I noticed that two very beautiful young men were dancing the salsa with uncommon grace and beauty and, it must be said, hotness. I felt I would get along well with them. I started talking to them when the song ended and we had a very nice time discussing the pros and cons of salsa vs. other types of dance. Jeremy takes salsa classes at the Century Ballroom twice a week. Aaron had never done it before that night, but as Jeremy mentioned, he’d had “years of dance training before.” Jeremy asked me to dance and he was a lovely lead, with none of this “This is my dance space and this is your dance space!” jive that so many people feel the need to break out with a novice. He showed me a couple more moves so I could do more than just the basic and he was just very nice and sweet and funny and, of course, a wonderful dancer. Jeremy, if you are reading this, you are the best.

Jeremy’s hotness somehow re-ignited my own and all of a sudden I started getting asked to dance by all these guys, almost all of whom were shorter than me, for some reason. I got into it. My hotness caused men to approach me and ask me to dance by wordlessly holding their hands out and pulling me to the floor. I laughed and smiled and directed smoldering glances at various people on the floor. At one point M and I danced together and caused many eyes to linger appreciatively in our direction. A shy boy asked me to coffee after one dance, marking, I think, the first time ever in my life that a random person has asked me out. I’m almost twenty-nine and last night was the first time ever in my life that someone has asked me out without knowing me first. Such is the combined power of salsa music and hotness, I’m telling you.

That was all very good, and I had some more partners, some of whom were sort of condescending and some of whom were just fine, thanks, and one of whom was absolutely amazing. He was slight and very sweet and had an East Caribbean accent. He held his hand out to me for a cha-cha, which I totally didn’t know how to do. I sort of muddled through and tried to follow as best as I could and I told him that I’d never done this kind of dance before. He said is his gorgeous, luscious voice: “Don’t worry about doing it right. Just move like you would to any other kind of music.” I felt like I was in Strictly Ballroom, when the abuelita says through her tears “Feel the rhythm! Don’t be scared!”

So I wasn’t scared, and I followed beautifully, and every time I made a mistake I just smiled and tried again and he smiled back and we just danced and danced and I felt like the most fantastic, beautiful dancer in the whole world and I thought that I saw people checking out how wonderful we were but I didn’t even care because I was having the best time. I was high off that one dance for the rest of the evening. I sipped my cranberry juice and ginger ale seductively and I giggled with M and swooned over all the amazing salsa dancers and had a great evening. When I got home my electricity was back on so I didn’t have to shower with my headlight on and I was in bed by midnight in my flannel sheets, all warm and happy. I woke up in a great mood this morning.

If I was feeling bad about myself right now I would probably make some sort of snarky comment about how my hair was all messed up all night or that I was sweating buckets (cardio!) or that my butt looked really big in the pants I was wearing, but I’m not, and in the absence of pictures you’re just going to have to trust me when I tell you I was the hottest girl in the room. So are you, you know.

Posted on January 30th, 2004 by
Filed under: Everything