Bitch

I have a friend who says that it has not been a good week for him until at least one person has called him a “cocksucker”. Well, I don’t think I can go out for a good evening of dancing without having at least one guy think of me as a bitch.

For some reason, ballroom dancing places (“place” is not the best word, but “club” is far too hip to apply, “dancehall” is just too country and “venue” sounds like we are going to Disneyland) have their own strange set of social norms. The biggest one is that it is rude to turn down a dance when asked. I guess this little piece of etiquette is a holdover from the era of Jane Austen, although RWT wonders if it is really a modern “rule” made up by desperate, nerdy, ballroom-dancing guys.

Whatever the origin, if anyone asks you to dance and you are not already on your way to dance with someone else, you are supposed to accept (hmm, a fresh compound fracture or death may also be acceptable reasons to decline a dance, but only in some situations). Well, not me.

I took up ballroom dancing at RWT’s urging as something for us to do together while living around here (good hiking/rock scrambling is just to far away and limited by weather in this area and dancing is slightly safer). In my mind, the main purpose of ballroom dancing is to spend time with my husband. Not dancing with random guys that I don’t know -- I had enough of that to last me a lifetime way back when I was in college. So when we go out dancing, I dance with my husband and no one else.

Most of you know how I hate confrontation, but being bugged for dances by strange men who will not take "no" for an answer instantly throws me into some sort of time warp back to the 80’s when I spent far too much of my free time in meat-market clubs. My polite, appropriate, good-little-military-wife behavior is suddenly replaced by that cold, hard bitch of yesteryear (but without the desire to wear lace anklets with my high heels).

For example, an exchange that happened last Saturday while out dancing:

Guy (who I think is one of the dance instructors at the dance place and appeared to be a very nice man): “Would you like to dance?”

Me (smiling nicely): “No thank you”

Guy: “Ah, come on. You can merengue, it is easy.”

Me (still smiling, but said in tone with more icicles dangling from it than were probably necessary): “I do know how to merengue, but no thank you”.

Guy (thinking to himself as he walks away): Bitch.

Oh well, it was a nice night of dancing with my husband.