I can’t dance for shit, which is fine because I rarely dance. I’ve never had the time to go for any sort of dance classes even though I’ve intended to sometime (apparently it really scores brownie points with girls). My dancing experience is mostly limited to shaking my booty to various hip hop stuff when sufficiently drunk and there are only two girls in the world that have the ability to drag me onto the dance floor before I reach that level of inebriation.

Thus it was with some surprise that I found myself at a salsa club of all places on Saturday night. The argument for us hitting this club was free alcohol because N who had driven up from LA for the weekend knew the manager, who also happened to be Sri Lankan. The lure of free booze is generally enough to take me anywhere apart from perhaps a KKK convention, in fact its often the only reason I attend family events with any regularity. So there I was free vodka red bull in hand, in a salsa club.

N’s girl (in a manner of speaking) loves salsa and when her afro’d self came over to me and dragged me onto the dance floor I willingly accompanied her. Suffice to say my blood alcohol level was sufficiently high and I was expecting to move around a bit and then beg off the dance floor with the excuse of thirstiness and/or dizziness, besides S is a pretty funny girl. What I was NOT expecting was her to deliver me to who I can only describe as a slightly more feminine looking version of Serena Williams with the exclamation "here’s the guy I want you to teach how to dance."

"Huh?!" Was my first thought, I then paused for a second to contemplate choosing between scrambling for the nearest fire exit or being a good sport. The tipsiness and the fact I’m usually a good sport swayed me towards the latter, while the finger numbing grip ‘Serena’ had on my hand finally convinced me. It quickly became clear that I couldn’t tell my left foot from my right ear but it was a fun 15 minutes of pathetic salsa studentship. In my defense everytime she twirled I got hit in the face with a monsoonal tide of sweat, distracting to say the least. Also in the background I could see N and R laughing their little heads off. Which in all fairness was probably warranted, imagine Serena Williams giving Romesh Kaluwitharana salsa lessons (though I’m not as short, I think) and you have some idea of what the tableau must have appeared. After the 15 minutes though I had to beg off citing the lack of a snorkel and dizziness from trying to follow her lead (or was she supposed to follow mine?).

The rest of the night passed like the usual blur, there was a cute, small latino girl somewhere, I refused to play wingman at some point of the night (I was the only single guy there!?) and I suddenly found myself in a different club trying to chat up two or three chinky pinky badu. All in all one of the more random nights out I’ve had, but refreshingly funny.

Must make a mental note to learn salsa sometime, I’ve heard it helps with the chicks.