Adventures of a Salsa Goddess

by Hornak, JoAnn

  “It’s a beautiful Cupid!” said Lessie.

  “Thanks again, ma’am,” the tattoo artist said to me as we left.

  Ma’am. I wouldn’t go near a magnet if I were you kid, not unless you wanted to have your face sucked off your skull.

  But the night was far from over. Fifteen minutes later I stood with Lessie outside a two-story caramel-colored brick building in downtown Milwaukee. The music blasting from the upstairs out onto the second-floor patio above us was so loud, the building seemed to pulsate like a giant beating heart in rhythm to the music.

  Lessie stood on the first step with her hand on the brass door handle. She lowered her voice, trying her best to be serious.

  “This may be the last oasis of sexy, sinfully delicious single men left on the face of this planet,” she told me. “I must warn you, this is not a place for amateurs. I met a prime specimen here myself a couple weeks ago, and he’s supposed to be here tonight!”

  The downstairs of Club Cubana wasn’t much to look at. A few guys in suits were at the bar smoking cigars and drinking. We ordered two frozen margaritas and headed straight upstairs past a brightly painted wall mural of the heart of Havana— fifties cars, the Bacardi factory, and the name of a bar I thought I remembered as being one of Hemingway’s haunts when he’d lived there.

  As we reached the top of the stairs, the music hit me physically, like a G-force. Couples were spinning and twirling to salsa music on the packed dance floor.

  “There he is! ” said Lessie, waving to a handsome Latino man dressed all in black who was standing on the other side of the room, next to the patio doors. As soon as he saw her, I could almost hear the deadbolt click shut as their eyes locked. Skirting around the dancers, he slowly made his way over to us, seemingly oblivious to everyone in the bar except her. When he kissed her on the cheek, Lessie giggled like a high school girl being introduced to the star quarterback.

  “Sam Jacobs, I’d like to introduce you to Eliseo Lora,” she said as we shook hands.

  “Eliseo is a fabulous salsa dancer,” gushed Lessie, who immediately latched herself to his arm like a vise—not that I could really blame her since Eliseo’s looks were the kind that typically graced the covers of romance novels. He was handsome in a way that made me want to stare and look away at the same time.

  Eliseo explained that he and his family came from the Dominican Republic to Miami when he was six and that his entire family had moved to Milwaukee five years ago when his younger sister got a scholarship to Marquette University.

  As Eliseo talked, Lessie stared. Her cheeks had flushed to a delicious apple red, and she kept giggling, at nothing, both obvious signs of a woman who had already entered the dangerous deep crush phase that preceded finding out if he was a ladies’ man, a rebounder, or if the planets had magically aligned themselves in just the perfect order and she’d landed herself a real catch.

  Once the introductions were over, Lessie and Eliseo entertained themselves by gazing deeply into each other’s eyes while I stood there feeling invisible. I took a sip of my margarita and licked the salt off my lips:

  The dance floor was filled with couples—black, white, Latino, Asian, young, old, clumsy, graceful, and everything in between. And they all looked happy. The brassy horns and the quick drumbeat were so irresistible that I tried a twirl, tripped, and spilled the rest of my margarita down the front of a stocky man about my height, who grabbed on to my arms to steady me.

  “Oh! I’m so sorry,” I said. Without thinking, I dove in, trying to mop up the damage with a napkin that shredded, leaving little clumps of white tissue sprinkled down the front of his black nylon shirt. I felt his breath on me and looked up into his face. A hot flush rushed through my body like a surge of electricity. Suddenly, everything seemed different. What was I doing with my palms on the chest of this total stranger who seemed so familiar to me? My heart was pounding inside my chest and my legs felt like jelly, but I forced myself to remove my hands from this man who I wanted to touch for the rest of the night, and I took a step backward.

  “I see you’ve met my baby brother, the salsa teacher,” said Eliseo, who’d walked up to his side holding hands with Lessie. Brother? They shared the same coloring, dark chocolate eyes and hair, and skin the shade of a medium roasted coffee laced with a generous dose of cream. But beyond that they looked nothing alike. While one was tall and lean, the other was short and stocky. And where Eliseo was dangerously handsome and unsmiling, his brother was cute with a disarmingly friendly expression. Not my usual type, so I couldn’t understand why my heart was flip-flopping and beating wildly.

  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 contagi
ous. 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.

  Three

  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.”