Kidnapped

Last night at Pura Austin:

me: Where have you been? I haven't seen you in a while.

She: I was kidnapped.

me: You mean you were a sex slave?

She gave me a sly nod yes.

The handicapped

me: The way I see it, extreme beauty such as yours is like a physical handicap. When guys meet you, their brains short-circuit; they can't think straight, and they start strutting their egos like peacocks, while women become insanely jealous because you embody everything to which they aspire.

She: Oh, you understand.

1 mph

Yesterday, as I was walking through my HEB’s parking lot, I heard someone calling my name.  I turned, and saw one of my salsa partners approaching at a rapid pace while she waved me down.

I stopped, and when she got close, I gave her a big salsa hug.  Over her shoulder, I could see a late model pickup approaching us at 1 mph.  The guy, in his fifties, pulled along side us with his passenger window was rolled down because of the cold front, and said: 

“I thought y’all were going to start dancing.”

I said:  “We do that.”

He drove on, smiling, at 1 mph.

Ruta Maya

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.

Special Ed

Salsa under the stars on a lovely end-of-summer evening at Central Market.

me: What do you do?

She: I'm a Special Ed teacher.

me: Really? What's that like?

She: One of my students is in a wheelchair, and wears a catheter. She doesn't speak English,           and she can't ask me to change her diaper. She is beautiful.

me: Oh wow. Let's dance.

Which is it?

Overheard at the One2One:

He: On1 or On2?

She: You lead, I follow.

Dr. She

At my annual ophthalmologist exam:

Dr. She: What do you do for fun?

me: Salsa dancing.

Dr. She: Oh. I'm thinking about taking that up.

me: Well, at salsa, you're going to find every race, every color, every creed, every nationality,         every religion, and all five sexes. If you can handle all that, salsa is for you.

Dr. She: Sounds good to me. Where do I start?