black, blue, and red (part 2)

This is Part 2 of a three-part blog entry called "black, blue, and red."
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

When I met Ms. NF at a milonga a month ago, I was a little angry and depressed. I was stood up on a movie/dinner/dancing date earlier that evening, so I decided to drown my sorrows at a bar then listen to live Tango music at the Belmont milonga.

The first half of my plan was in full effect, and I had just arrived at the milonga to start the second half. I was in no mood to dance, so the idea was just to kick back and enjoy the sounds of a guitar and bandoneon as I watched the Tangueros and Tangueras whirl around the floor. Hopefully I'd learn a thing or two.

Just before she walked in, I had just started on my first glass of wine (not counting the four I had at the bar I was at previously). I was sitting down with a couple of Latino guys and a Latino woman. The Latina, a relative beginner in Tango, dragged her two non-Tanguero friends to the milonga. They couldn't dance, so she was begging me to dance with her.

"I'm sorry," I told her, "but I'm in no mood to dance tonight. I'm just here to listen to the music."

I did tell her, however, that typically after two or three drinks, I dance anyway, so if she could just wait, she might get lucky.

She looked at me like I was some sort of freak, said "O.K.," then got other people to dance with her.

That's when Ms. NF stepped in the door.

I had actually seen her before -- maybe 10 or 11 months ago, when I had just started learning Tango. I was at a class in Sunnyvale when two Japanese women walked in. One of them, I swear she looked like an anime sex goddess brought to life from the pages of a Lupin story.

The other was also memorable, but not in the sexy Bond-womanesque kind of way ... she was just damn cute. Continuing with the anime analogies, this woman kind of looked like Nausicaa, but with black hair and heels, and without the funky clothes or rifle. Either way, I remember thinking the two of them were stunning -- among the most attractive Japanese women I'd seen since leaving Japan. And I was glad there were finally women around my age in a Tango class. (Most Tango students in this area, it seems, are much older than me.)

During rotations, I paired up with the sexy one. As I was just a beginner, I knew how to do next to nothing in terms of dance steps. So at that point in my Tango career, a typical follower's experience with me as a leader was a decidedly monotonous affair ... punctuated, of course, with random episodes of her yelping as one of my shoes came crashing down her instep.

Fully aware of my shortcomings, right from the beginning, I told her I was just a beginner, and that I'm apologizing ahead of time if I step on her feet. I remember her reply clearly, as well as the look of sheer disgust on her face as she warned: "Don't step on my feet tonight. I'm wearing open-toed dancing shoes."

Bitch. Come on, I was a beginner in a beginner class. What did she expect?

Thank God we weren't paired together for long. Our practice dance ended uneventfully, and I rotated into the next partner. As it was almost a year ago, I am not sure if I purposefully avoided the cute one or if the luck of the rotation draw just kept us two apart, but I did not dance with her that night. It was all for the good, too, because in my mind I was thinking she was most likely just as big a bitch as the sexy one. You know what they say about birds of a feather ...

I didn't see either of them again -- that is, until that milonga a month ago.

This is Part 2 of a three-part blog entry called "black, blue, and red."

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3