Last night, I was trying to decide whether or not to go to the second-to-last salsa show at Ruta Maya. By my count, I have attended more than 100 salsa events there, and I wasn't sure I wanted to brave the heat one more time. I opened a book, a first-person account written by an Army Lieutenant of his time as commander of a forty-man infantry platoon fighting the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan. After six months on the front, being shot at, bombed, rocketed, blown-up, and issuing deadly mayhem in return, he rotated to the rear for leave. He flew by helicopter to Bagram Air Force base, the major supply staging area for Afghanistan.
"Bagram looked like a stateside base compared to where we'd been. Signs advertised salsa dance nights at a cafe called Green Bean Coffee. ...Bray and I looked utterly out of place in our filthy, battleworn ACUs. My battle vest still had blood stains on it." ...
"Lieutenant?" A U.S. Army major demanded.
"He stood staring at me, hands on hips, a look of disgust on his face. His ACUs were so clean and well fitting that I assumed they had been tailored and pressed. He wore no combat badges, no sign that he was a Ranger or even infantry. I had never noticed that sort of thing until that moment. I wondered if he was going to be salsa dancing tonight."
I put the book down, and went to Ruta Maya.
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