Let There Be Salsa!

I’m in no mood for time travel. I’ve paid my dues as the awkward teenager who doesn’t get asked to dance at socials and so the fact that I’m standing in a salsa class watching the crowd thin into pairs after the instructor yells “partner up!” is a little more than my fragile ego can handle on a Friday night in which I am almost 30, single and sober.

The mojitos aren’t doing a roaring thing. You get one free with your ticket to a half hour salsa lesson and since the general taste screams ‘splashed together by blind man’, they’re incredibly heavy on Sprite, low on rum and so mild on mint I pop a stick of Orbit into my mouth to add some extra flavour to the flatness.

Despite middling mojitos in full force, I’m not even vaguely inebriated enough to step forward towards the man eyeballing me from across the room looking half rhino/half bear with regard to determination and flatness of feet.

It’s about to get awkward and I know it. The man is on the move, I’m rooted to the spot and instead of using the 15 seconds it will take him to get to me to flee to the toilet, I use the time to stand precisely where I am and analyse my existence.

From somewhere up near the ceiling, I see myself standing there with my mouth slightly open in smilingly hushed horror. It’s an open lesson and I didn’t come with a date so I don’t know what I expected but I know it’s not the pale, hulk of a man lumbering towards me looking as much murderous as he looks like the longest half hour of my life.

Though it’s silly and somewhat insane, the truth is I was kinda expecting John Travolta.

I’ve signed up for this Salsa Windhoek class because I have some vague ideas about glory beyond comfort zones and I guess the debauchee in me figured there’d be some sleek ‘Saturday Night Fever’ looking hotties in the house but the reality is a little more ragged.

While I’m learning to love them for their …um… charms, the gang of guys I rolled in with are the most eligible bachelors in the building and a cursory look around the room sees them in varying degrees of dorkhood.

El’s interrogating his partner about her level of shoulder tension while dancing her around the room with a hand so stiff it’s on the brink of ‘heil!’. Rob’s all goofy smiles and almost visible dreams of ‘Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights’ with a beautiful black woman who needs lessons about as much as she needs a second head and David’s laughing hysterically at Dani working a sequence of twerks into his sweetheart turns while I stand there wondering whether I can leave them all on a doorstep.

Back to me and my man for the half hour and I’m resigning myself to the reality of it being the longest night in awkward history.

But just as I’m stepping forward to get on with it, I feel a familiar hand in mine and I turn around to see my sister who utters an exasperated “f*ck this pick me, pick me high school sh*t. I’ll be the man!”

And just like that, with thanks to my mother’s generous womb, I remember I have a partner for life and Mel and I get busy with our footwork as the instructor yells something about Cuba asking potential visitors whether or not they can salsa on their immigration forms.

She’s kidding but a couple of people look concerned.

The rest look at this couple who are definitely not at their first rodeo and who spend the entire lesson looking like something straight out of ‘Dancing with the Stars’.

Clearly, they’ve been living this life.

And flourishing.

While most of us hiccup and hobble along, the woman twists her hips at about five miles a minute above sky high gold stilettos as her man drags her along gracefully in a salsa that makes us all look a little epileptic.

Still, we push on.

We practice the steps over and over and over again and, when Mel and I get sick of each other’s mugs, we finally start dancing with boys. And that’s when Sam, the instructor, asks me if I’m a man.

“Well, then stop leading!”

Though I try my best to be dragged this way and that, the truth is it feels a little counter-intuitive and, once I finally do pair up with a man, I find myself instantly campaigning for equal rights.

My friend Rob gets the worst of it.

When he tries to turn me right, I go left. If he wants to move forward, I move back and when I finally call it quits pleading heat, sweat and general feminist affront, Rob laughs in my face and says “Martha, it’s just a dance!”

It is. And my mouth is set in such a grim line of annoyance I can’t help but laugh at how this is exactly the kind of behaviour that will see me having my eyeballs eaten by 15 cats when I eventually die alone in my apartment in front of a TV blaring ‘Lost’ reruns.

Armed with a little perspective, I take it a little easier and start enjoying myself. The event is called ‘Let There Be Salsa!” and though it requires I loosen up, a lot, I finally get to it and let it be.

I let there be another horrific mojito.

I even let there be salsa with the murderous man who looks even more murdery up close…

And with his hands so close to one’s neck.

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