cancer – day 57

I have this red dress. Well, I have several red dresses, and most of them are admittedly pretty sexy. Then again, what red dress isn’t? But last night I wore the one that I know, from past experience in salsa, well, it has an effect. I didn’t know if the milonga was casual or dressy, and this dress works either way. So . . . a couple funny red dress stories from the milonga last night . . . one was the woman apparently hitting on Mark. It’s very close to the end of the night, like 1:45AM, and I don’t know when she sat down, but there was this woman sitting next to Mark while I was dancing. Sitting with her shoulder a little behind his so she can sit really close to him, putting her head on his shoulder, etc., which made me laugh out loud on the dance floor at the look on his face when she did that, and, I swear to God, she looked like she was trying to find a way to hold his hand, or least his leg! And Mark was sitting there, tired, ready to leave, stone-faced with his arms over his legs and his hands together, apparently not interested in the non-verbal situation she was going for. And not smiling, which isn’t like Mark at a milonga, unless it’s late and time to go home. Anyway, I saw this from the dance floor for a couple of songs, and when the tanda was over I went to get my water bottle (which conveniently was right under Mark’s chair) and I said something innocuous like “how’s it going?” And while I knelt at the other side of his chair drinking my water and watching the dance floor, it was like she just evaporated or something, poof! I turned my head and she was gone. And Mark patted the seat for me to sit with him, and put his arm around me and held my hand, and, well, we sat together like that for the last tanda, tired and just enjoying the moment and the dancing. I’m sorry, it was just soooo funny how she just disappeared as soon as she saw me come close.

So, anyway, back to the dress. I was wearing the sexy red dress, and my first tandas were with Mark and Dan, and then for the rest of the night all I only had one set of tandas with someone I know from Sacramento and the rest were all guys I didn’t know. They’re all really different. Some lead snappy moves, some try to be, ummm, let’s call it, “sensual” (one guy actually tried to lead me to grind, talk about tacky). Others actually get the meaning of tango and feel the music and move their bodies to it (that being my favorite milonguero, of course). So . . . the dress has a flippy skirt and with some guys it was like they were waving a red flag out there on the dance floor. And . . . though I wasn’t paying enough attention and didn’t actually catch anyone doing this myself . . . I was apparently turning a lot of heads. Brooke told me on the way home that more than once between songs while she was chatting with a guy on the dance floor, he would turn his head to watch me walk by. She’d tease them for being, whatever, guys, and they were like “sorry, blond in a red dress, can’t not look.” And in telling me about it, she was like, “and it happened more than once!” We had a great laugh over that one after the milonga.