BURGER SCOOT

The post below was originally posted on February 20, 2006. Jesus, that was more than 20 years ago! It was the second post on my first blog, which I discontinued many years ago. Occasionally, I like to resurrect an old post, rewrite it a little (i.e., run it through an editor to see all the errors I made), and then publish it. I’m sure errors persist. A lot of things have changed in two decades. I no longer drive. I bought a scooter, put a lot of miles on it, crashed it, fractured a bunch of ribs, and retired from my job of 37 years.

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I’m standing in a circle in a studio at my health club, mainly used for HIIT or step classes. In my mouth, I jockey an Altoid around—the last of many I’ve been popping since I got off work and walked to this health club. I look around the circle, checking out my classmates—primarily couples. In the middle of the circle is Rebecca, a tall, dark-haired woman with a black beaded top, a black skirt with a long slit in it, and stilettos. Her partner, Aaron, is also in black, with black suede dancing shoes with Cuban heels.

This is the third night of Argentine Tango lessons sponsored by the club. I love Argentine Tango—at least the music—but my self-consciousness makes dancing—even with my wife of 18 years—a mixed bag of emotions. I continue because I believe I will overcome these feelings and fully appreciate this wonderful dance and the absolute hypnotic music we dance to, but I am clumsy and am a horrible lead.

After doing some warm-up exercises, Rebecca told us to find a partner. Immediately, all the women who came with men clutch on to their partners as if they had just been told the floor may drop out from under them. I can’t help but take this personal—like all these women checked me out when I walked in the studio and ran to their partners spitting, “Please don’t make me dance with the short, bald guy!” I go counterclockwise past all the white knuckled women until I find a fellow wallflower—usually an older woman who was told tango lessons would be much more fun than bingo.

Dancing is a strange activity. Something I am sure anthropologists have written volumes about. Whether it’s true or not, I think they would liken it to the homosapien’s mating call, which makes the experience with a stranger all the more awkward. For a shy, sociably awkward person like myself, dancing the tango with a stranger pushes this awkwardness far beyond what I felt when I took casual waltz lessons from Darlene, an ex-Arthur Murray teacher who worked in the same building I did.

One day, Darlene showed up at my cubicle with a boombox and asked if I wanted to learn how to waltz. I was floored: why would she offer to teach me dancing lessons? I was too embarrassed to tell anyone about my struggles with learning Argentinian Tango with my wife. That would be almost as embarrassing as announcing to the whole crew in the warehouse where we worked that I was going through marital problems, which, in a small way, I was. Anyway, I said yes, even though it meant giving up a beloved lunch hour every week where I would go to some eatery by myself and listen to an audiobook with my ear pods in place—blocking out all human contact except for an occasional visit by a waitress. Darlene and I would go to the far end of the warehouse, and she would play a mixed tape of waltzes: Chopin’s “Waltz in C-Sharp Minor” and more recent American ones like “The Tennessee Waltz,” and “The West Texas Waltz.” She also played probably the most recognizable of all waltzes, “The Blue Danube,” but it was hard to concentrate on this one when I had played Spike Jones & His City Slickers’ send-up so many times in the past. I thought the waltz lessons would improve my tango, but Darlene’s lessons had an additional, unsettling effect on me.

I don’t know how many lunch breaks we took waltzing in the warehouse, but I both loved and hated the experience. I loved the time I danced with someone who gently instructed me on the dance—my wife usually criticized my poor skills. I hated myself for liking to hold someone other than my wife. Ultimately, I was glad when Darlene ended our lunchtime waltzes. I had restaurant booths to sit in and lunches to eat in solitude, damn it!

These waltz lessons didn’t cure my awkwardness toward the opposite sex, even though Darlene was gentle, beautiful, and even shorter than my wife (and that was an achievement considering I am only 5’6″). So, when Darlene placed my right hand on her soft hip, and instructed me to hold her other delicate hand and then counted the steps to the music “ONE, two, three, ONE, two three…” I could only think of my right hand and where it was and what it would feel like if she were naked. I had been introduced to the Salon Embrace in the tango class, but Darlene wanted me closer. After a while, she would tell me to stop, and she gave me some pointers on leading while shaking her right hand. I didn’t realize in my nervousness that I was crushing that lovely soft hand. I was so embarrassed and apologized. She shook off the apology while shaking and rubbing her hand. I wanted to suggest I rub her sore hand while she gave me advice, but that would have been too forward. We tried again, my right hand landing on that lovely hip while I gingerly held her left—until I started crushing it again.

It was a very different experience from the tango lessons. When the few of us loners found partners and introduce ourselves, Rebecca and Aaron illustrate just how awkward this is going to be – they show us the close embrace: Rebecca leans into Aaron almost as if she tripped and crashed into his’s chest; her face so close to his neck she could be whispering “Hey Aaron, check out the short guy who swallowed a whole tin of Altoids. He must have got the message.” Then, they backed off and showed us the much more conservative Salon Embrace, which made me feel better when we ultimately switched partners. So, I was shocked and felt a little tingly down there when Darlene skipped the conservative embrace. Hmm.

Back at the tango lesson, I checked to see if the Altoids did their job by breathing in sharply through my mouth. Ooh, that almost hurt; it’s working! My wife tells me I have bad breath when I get home from work, but when I go from work to the club and ultimately get close to a stranger in a salon embrace, I don’t have a bottle of mouthwash or a snack to tame the acids raging in my empty stomach before dancing. Tonight, my wife is not with me, but my Altoids are—she has a college class, but even if she was present, Rebecca suggests switching partners after each tango so couples don’t “complement each others’ mistakes.” My wife supports Rebecca’s suggestion, so I’m out of luck about whether she’s here or not. Since she is so critical of my dancing, I’m sure any other dance partner is better for me, though I wonder what they say about me when the class is over.

My first partner is a woman who must be in her sixties and can’t be over five feet tall. Knowing how short I am, this may not seem too bad, but it is. Tango is about intrusions—the leader steps deep between the follower’s legs. If it weren’t a dance, it would look like a sexual act. This lady’s little legs can’t create the space required to execute the proper steps, at least for a rookie like me. We trip and almost fall. She apologizes, and while I show more grace towards her than my wife shows me, I’m frustrated just the same.

After we stumble through an otherwise excellent tango by Astor Piazzolla, it is time for the leaders (men) to move to the next follower (women). After I travel over half the entire circle distance—being turned away by all the women that came with their beaus and happily shun Rebecca’s

suggestion of switching partners, I find Julie, a young woman at least five inches taller than me. We must look ridiculous. I feel ridiculous, the volleyball player with a metal mouth I’m dancing with thinks it funny and smiles through the tango—braces and all, but when the music began, I realized I couldn’t see over her shoulder to direct us around the room and ensuring we don’t crash into another couple; navigation had to be done by dead reckoning. At least Julie’s legs are long enough for my leg to pass through.

Time to change up. Now I have Rebecca—just as tall as the girl with braces, only sexy as hell, and she tries to follow while softly directing me. (Is that a vanilla version of “Topping from the bottom”?) I’m listening, but it takes all my effort not to stare at her chest. She didn’t have to make a joke to the class earlier that she wasn’t wearing a bra under her silk blouse.

I finish the circle only to find I am back with the five-foot lady. I finish the lesson with my three partners, pissed at the women who refused to give up their leads, check out of the club, and go to my car, where I put in my Tango Nuevo CD and crank it up. I’m the least awkward when listening to tango alone, I think to myself.

The last time I came close to dancing with my wife, or anyone else, was when we attended a milonga at Rebecca’s club in Old Sacramento. I was thoroughly intimidated by all the couples dancing so close to each other that if someone tripped (like I’m sure I would), it would cause a tango pileup. Maybe it’s my dirty mind, but it looked like a clothed orgy moving counter-clockwise in a very tight space. I never asked my wife to dance—it was too intimidating, and I paid for it. Over the next few weeks, whenever someone asked how the tango lessons were going, she would say something like, “Oh, that ended. We did go to a milonga, though. My husband never asked me to dance.” When Rebecca offered Argentinian Tango lessons at the club the following year, my wife signed up, but I didn’t attend. I “worked out” in the weight room, but remembered to poke my head into the studio where she was practicing tango. She was laughing with someone. I didn’t feel threatened just happy she got to dance with someone obviously better than me.