In an effort to prove him wrong, I signed up for private dance lessons. It was one of those things I always wanted to do, but hadn’t the gumption to do before. Now, two nights a week, it is just me and my dance instructor.
When my instructor and I first met, I think my hormones spiked, relaxed, were spun around the dance floor a few times, and finally dipped to a decrescendo.
This was a man who occupied my personal space and whose personal space I occupied in turn. This was a man I was tangoing with. This was a man so close to me he could see all of my pores. This was a man who was learning my body and my movements with precision.
And yet, I felt nothing except for a compulsion to be attracted to him.
Within weeks of commencing lessons, the compulsion diminished and for the first time in my life I realized that dancing and sex are not intrinsically connected. In fact, I would argue, that dancing is better when separated from sexual impulses. Otherwise, your head might not be in the game.
As a frequent club goer, I have danced with a lot of strangers, but usually the lights are low, the music is thumping, and the alcohol is flowing. These factors makes the unfamiliarity of the arms I am dancing in, the man I am dancing with, surprising and enthralling; it opens the door of opportunity for new love.
But on the ballroom floor at the dance studio, there is no alcohol, the lights are bright, the music is not loud, and I am face-to-face with my dance instructor narrowing his personal space. It is more like business than pleasure.
None of this is romantic, except for the dancing. The rumba. The tango. The waltz. They are meant to be danced with someone you are flirting with. Someone you are lusting after. Someone you are in love with.
I often become enthralled watching dancers – they are hypnotizing. More than once, I have been known to watch the ballroom dance competitions on PBS: The women float across the floor, elegantly posing; and the men are dapper, displaying their partners’ most attractive features as they glide around the dance floor. I envy them for the love they purport on the dance floor. But it is possible to experience intimacy on the dance floor without it needing to be transported to the bedroom.
I once went dancing with a fellow student from the dance studio. He had trouble separating sexuality from dancing and made a lot of presumptions about where his hands and lips should be as we salsaed. He thought we were looking for new love; I thought we were dancing. I thought we were practicing; he thought that the dancing was foreplay. Dancing is not the same as romancing.
Someday, with optimism, I predict I will meet a man who can become my dance partner: someone who loves to dance as much as I do, to be in the limelight of a dance floor. At that moment, my thoughts on dancing and sex might change.
But I am not the type of person who wants to sit around and wait for my Fred Astaire. I’d rather be a dancing queen.
• "A Single Serving" appears the 1st and 15th of every month, exclusively in Lumino Magazine.
