I overheard a curious couple at Starbucks.

The girl is reading her boyfriend's transcript incredulously, and she rips him apart mercilessly:

'You've been lying to me for two years! You told me you got straight A's. You told me you graduated with a GPA of 3.85!'

Boy says weakly, 'I said I got A's and B's...'

'This transcript says you've got C's and D's. C's and D's!!' She goes on a tirade, and all of Starbucks is her audience. Some words figured prominently in her speech: C's and D's, stupid and dumb, I got an A in history and I hate history.

Boy mutters something unintelligible.

'How did you get into your college? It's a good college! I really want to know.'

Boy gets up from his seat and tries to grab the transcript out of her hands. Boy loses fight. The tirade continues. Eventually the girl leaves in a huff and heads over to the Starbucks counter. It's my turn to leave too, and my last sight is of the boy biting his fingernails furiously, as the girl flirts outrageously with the Starbucks waiter. I am not sure whose behaviour I find more disagreeable.

For love

Was walking home one day, through the train station in Princeton, where I met a young man blowing forlornly on his bagpipes.

He asked me if I had a quarter for a train ride to New York, and I promptly informed him that the ride will cost him fifteen dollars.

I asked him what his story was. 'It's a long one.' But he quickly gives me the short version anyway, ending it with, 'For love.'

I gave him a dollar. The next day, I find him still there, still blowing.

Polished silver nipples

Here I was soldering my third sound-to-light for Laetitia. The second one (the one you sent me) failed for no reason I can fathom. The first problem was the solder wouldn't stick to the copper surface. It defied me completely, just absolutely refuses to stick to what it should. I was mystified, I thought it was me, I thought I had reverted to being an apeman fiddling with technology. However, a friend Ilyah pointed out that it was in fact, the solder, and he retrieved another solder with a higher percentage of lead from his laboratory in the basement. The new solder worked like a charm, sticking so well that I felt like a soldering pro. I was quickly becoming efficient at this, this being my third attempt. At the end, I thought, nothing could go wrong, it was the most perfect soldering job I've ever done, each connection looked like a perfectly polished silver nipple. Battery on. Light on. Light responds weakly to sound. Light is on even with zero sound. Third failure. I was in despair, near tears. I couldn't see the problem, I thought the connections were perfect. I left my failure and had dinner, swam forty laps, and thought sadly about going to amazon.com and trying out this amazon prime special for students so I can get another kit shipped to me for free.

Then I thought: hold on, what would Jimmy do? Jimmy wouldn't take this lying down. He's not that kind of guy. Jimmy would retrieve the carcass of the second failed attempt, he would try changing transistors between the two carcasses and somehow he'd coax life into one of them. So I returned to the physics building in the middle of the night, and started removing a transistor. Which transistor to start? I didn't know. They ALL looked good to me. I chose the one closest to the edge first, the easiest to extract. I started remelting the solder on the three legs of it, except, ironically, I was foiled by the solder again. The solder stuck so well to the copper I couldn't scrape it off hardly at all. I succeeded in removing half the solder off the three legs, and tried to pull off the transistor. It's stuck.

I ran out of ideas, I sat down and played Deathly by Aimee Mann on my labtop. Idly I put on the battery again; I've been doing this all evening, staring at it, willing it to work properly, foolishly hoping it would, but it never did. Except this time it began flashing to the rhythm of the song. It worked! I don't even really know why, something about THAT transistor. Whew, I sat down and played more music and watched more flashing lights. I feel alright again, more than that, I feel great. I went down to the basement and looked for a friend to hug, but its 3 am and nobody's here.Today I fly to Singapore and can finally make good my promise.

This one is for you, Jimmy.

That plane rides cost so much is an accident of our timeline, of when we are born. In our timeline, we employ transportation technologies that are so intensively consumes fossil fuels. That we never have enough fuels is a quirk of this planet. We are lucky enough that planes exist today. When we buy a plane ticket, we ...aren't even paying for the plane ride. We are paying for new experiences, the potential for human connection. If you are convinced you will find them in Europe, Africa, whatever, it seems accidental that you are born in America.

On the other hand, it is no accident that a single driver owning two cars costs twice as much. Some kinds of greed are inexcusable.

There are a few desires in my life that I would gladly spend a great deal of money on. These desires - I can honestly say I would be a miserable person if I could not obtain them. I think it is well within our rights as human beings to pursue happiness, even happiness that is monetarily heavy, with the caveat that we keep learning, keep expanding our sphere of social awareness and keep trying to empathize.

If, in our continuous search for meaning, we find that our material desires descend into meaninglessness, I think this is natural, even admirable. And then there are desires that are experiential, that derive from our insatiable hunger for new human connection or to maintain the old, whether small-scale (family, friends) or large (Europe, the world). I think these experiential desires affirm our humanity, expand our knowledge and our capacity to empathize. If sometimes there is a price tag to these kinds of desires, I think it is almost an accident of our culture, of where we are born and under what unique circumstances.

Swallowed

Cirrus clouds layer the sky, like long wispy strips of confetti frozen in the act of falling to earth. The sun skims over the silhouette of nearby buildings, and short trees cast long shadows. I am roused by the howl of an unknown animal. Three cries and no more. Birdsong fills to overflowing in the ravine of Warren Woods. It sounds incoherent, a mess; I cannot grasp the hidden symphonies, the meaning of it all.

I walk.

Under my feet crackles the mournful voice of forgotten branches, strips of bark carelessly shed by trees, and thousands upon thousands of dried-out seed husks, their life essence forever leached away. Light is life. Infinitesimal specks of light in the distance engage in a chaotic dance. It is all very mysterious, like some curvilinear Brownian motion, like drunken dancers careening through a crowd and randomly colliding with faceless strangers. They are nature’s agents and I cannot grasp their agenda, their intent.

I walk.

Catching the whiff of mint, I kneel to inhale a plant’s scent. Each of its leaves is partitioned first by the veins that give it life and then into smaller roundish speckles that resemble scales – just like mint leaves. It is not mint. While kneeling, a hummingbird appears out of the tangled branches and rises up meanderingly to a great height. There it stops, as if uncertain where to go. The hummingbird manages to convey a sense of absolute stillness, despite its near-invisible wings fluttering valiantly at twenty strokes a second, despite its heart pumping at a prodigious rate of up to a thousand beats per minute. As I stare intently, the spell of indecision is broken, and it swoops down, ghostlike, with unerring precision and blistering speed, as if it were a bird of prey intent on prey. Except it is not a bird of prey; the hummingbird lives on nectar. I lose sight of the bird, but I have scant time to register my disappointment, because a second one rises to the sky and performs exactly the same ritual. A third hummingbird appears and dives, and this time my eyes trace the path of the bird in flight as it reverses direction at the end of the dive and returns to where I imagine the previous two birds had emerged. Bewildered, I quickly realize my mistake – there were never three of them.

I walk away.

Much later, I find out that males of this species (Anna’s Hummingbird) perform display dives as a courtship ritual. A male bird accelerates to fifty miles per hour while descending, then unfurls and closes its tail feathers within a twentieth of a second, producing a loud chirp – its mating call. A twentieth of a second is faster than my eye can blink; I understand why I didn’t catch this aerial maneuver with my naked eye.

The trail snakes down the v-shaped slope of the ravine and disappears precariously at the edge of a short vertical fall. Is this trail made by man or carved by surface runoff during sporadic rainstorms?

(Am I making a mistake?)

Over the edge, the slope steepens. Each step I take is another input to a feedback loop that is amplifying my awareness of gravity. All other thoughts flee my consciousness. I crouch down, half walking, half sliding. Soft sedimentary rock crumbles with a sigh under my weight and rolls away and down, down, down…

(Too late.)

I hit rock bottom, the vertex of the V, the convergence of fear and curiosity, the familiar and unknown. Except it’s not rock I am standing on but asphalt. The signature white dashed lines confirm my suspicion. I know what I expected – the last vestige of untouched nature secreted away in urbanized La Jolla. Not this.

X marks the spot. I lay branches on the ground to mark my entry point, and gaze up longingly at the edge of the trail that brought me here. I am not certain that I can climb out of the ravine from X, where the soil is too soft to provide my feet any purchase. The evening light is dying, and the vibrancy of greens is slowly being bleached into night’s grey. A slim crescent in the darkening sky is my sole sliver of comfort. Something else is missing. It takes me a moment to pinpoint – the birds have stopped singing.

(What else can I do?)

I follow the abandoned road, this winding river of asphalt that is slowly dying from age, from neglect, from the encroachment of nature. The river banks are the interlocking vines and shrubbery that grow on a thin mat of soil over the asphalt. I have been a spectator for only a night, but the future of this forgotten road is as clear to me as a movie reel played on fastforward through time. By inches it will shrink, over years, until nothing is left.

I reach a point where the road has bifurcated completely – one semicircular section of the road has sunk four feet lower, while the rest of the road insists on staying level; there is a mutual agreement to separate. I have always been impressed at how utterly a layer of asphalt erases all traces of whatever lies beneath. Nature seemingly has no answer to the clinical efficiency with which roads and highways are transforming the landscape. Extracted from crude petroleum, asphalt is the black, sticky semi-liquid that binds together the crushed stone and gravel that make up our roads. How much asphalt and gravel does it take to drown the world? I hop onto the sunken section and got my answer: four fingers’ breadth – nothing, really. The earth is eight thousand miles in diameter; it will not be erased.

I walk on.

The vegetation becomes denser. The shrubbery has reached my waist; I tiptoe around them when I can and bulldoze across when I can’t. In the dimming light, I pick out the shape of a unique plant whose thorns I have learned painstakingly to avoid. I tussle with small trees and shield my face from branches that swat me with a will. On rare occasions when they get past my defenses, I have had to spit out leaves and twigs in disgust. I stumble onto trees and shrubs that form such an effective barricade that I resort to crawling through small chinks in their armor when I can find them and bludgeoning a swathe of destruction through them with hands and feet when I can’t. Sorry, sorry, sorry, I have to get through.

The road ends. It has been swallowed.

I hesitate. Though itself forgotten, the road is my only connection to the world outside this ravine, the world I desperately wish to return to. I have struggled through so much vegetation to get to where I am that I dread retracing my steps more than I fear what lies ahead. I warily peruse the sloped sides of the ravine and conclude that they are insurmountable. What am I afraid of?

I push forward.

I am swallowed.

The Hair Comb

I didn’t see it coming. Clinically, I inspect the blood smeared on my fingers. My partner Rubina is mortified and begins apologizing profusely; she tells me she will never do this again. I smile at her and tell her it’s alright, it’s nothing really; she doesn’t look convinced. I excuse myself and find the washroom. In the mirror, I peer morbidly at white teeth now no longer white. My tongue darts across the tiny tear on the inside of my cheek; there is no sting, only a dash of sanguine, on the day of my dance final.

Is it over yet?

My roommate Jake is laughing at me; I must look ridiculous. I am practicing on-the-spot spins on the smooth kitchen floor. My thighs ache from a midnight jog, from one spin too many. My eyes are trained on the teddy bear on the kitchen cabinet – a hand-drawn Christmas gift from my youngest sister. By focusing on a spot in my line of sight and returning to it after each three-sixty rotation, I should be able to maintain posture and balance. The bear blinks in and out of my vision as I whirl and whirl the world away…

Finally, I stagger to a stop; I am dizzy.

One, two, three… Five, six, seven… Always the same beat. The music quickens; it quickens me. There is no space to think, no time to procrastinate; I just listen and move. The flow of my body precedes and shapes my emotions. Move and be moved. There is a girl dancing with me and I do not know her name; I wish I do. There is no time for introductions, no space for chatter.

Something about her smile… Brown hair sways and swishes as she turns under my outstretched arm. While spinning, she crisply twists her neck and the bottom edge of her hair lifts itself as if suddenly weightless and brushes a trail of warmth across my cheek. I have to quench the immediate urge to touch my face; it tingles. I am distracted by her crooked smile. Does she notice?

I wonder what makes a good pairing on the dance floor. She gives I take, I give she takes; our flows meld harmoniously to form a pure, resonant note. This doesn’t happen often enough. I make extended eye contact. This also seldom occurs – physical intimacy in salsa is necessary, but the mind and body are easily and often disconnected. I read in her face the same recognition, the same quickening in spirit. The dance studio and the dancers around us recede into a distant halo, and though the music never stops, I hear more keenly the silence that permeates the space between us and binds us together. Her lips are curved in mysterious satisfaction and my steps are light. Her radiant smile carries me through the dance, this smile that is mine, mine alone.

The song ends. We part hands and I say thank you, because I say thank you to all my dance partners. We will dance again but not today. Today in the Wagner Dance Facility, I will dance with many others because the practice is to exchange partners and never get too comfortable with one. The rationale for social dancing in lessons is simple – you are more likely to expose your own weaknesses by having to dance with a variety of partners who respond differently to the same cues.

I remember when I first learned salsa. My world swelled to bursting with a myriad of new, vibrant colors. It’s seeing a new language through tinted lenses. The bright audacious colors are the energetic, eye-catching stunts that leave me gasping; the subtle hues are the nuances in hip gyration and finger placement that make even the simplest moves look ineffably graceful. I painted from this new-found palette of self-expression; I picked my colors without fear or favor.

I remember also that I was thrust into an alien culture of casual intimacy – the initial shock was at once liberating and disquieting. Like clockwork, I would dance with a stranger, part from her when the song ended and move on immediately to the next partner. The dance floor is my idea of a social anomaly because it provides a respectable setting where everyday touch-me-not constraints are relaxed. Fingers release, seek each other out and intertwine during turns; hips and bodies mold into one another vigorously; while in close-embrace position, my firm hand clasps her back to cue the next move. As a general rule, salsa is sensuous, not intentionally salacious. Yet this distinction is very fine and I wonder…

Sandra is lithe and endearingly nervous. The small of her back is pressed tightly against my right forearm. One. I grasp both her elbows and whirl her outward in a whip-like jerk that is necessarily forceful and almost violent. I imagine she would have kept on spinning, forever, across the blackened floor, if I do not check her. I check her. Five. With my right arm extended and my weight shifted to my left foot for balance, I pull her back in. She spins inward now, mesmerizing; I do not take my eyes off of her. Seven, I catch her. As her left hip meets my right, I soften the impact by kinking my body inward at the hip, so that she sinks into me snugly and the natural curve of her body delineates mine, as mine delineates hers. One. We are one. With her body resting on mine, I clasp her tightly, step out on my left foot and sink downwards. The right side of my body is rigid to support her full weight; my left knee feels the strain, and nearly buckles. We hold. Three. I shift her back to her feet. Five. We separate. It’s your move.

On paper, one of my favorite moves looks simple to perform. It is called, appropriately, the Hair Comb; I raise both her arms in a delicate arc that sweeps over and may lightly touch her hair. This move ends as I gently pin her hands to the back of her neck. If I were pressed to explain why I especially like the Hair Comb, I admit that it closely resembles the classic picture of a lover’s caress and a woman’s vulnerability. The illusion of a lover’s intimacy is potent, so potent that sometimes the spirit quickens and the illusion dissipates, but the intimacy lingers.

Strange.

It never starts out quite like that. Before the dance session begins, we file in, like nervous schoolchildren, making idle talk. Our instructor Maria begins a roll call and we respond obediently. The tremors begin, invisible to everybody else; I feel them. I walk to my favorite corner, set my bags down on the dull black floor, set myself down and retrieve my dance shoes – a black and white classic which I judiciously picked out of a brochure. The black shines with controlled exuberance; the white is pristine. A stubborn crease runs across the vamp of my shoe; it crinkles every time I stand on the ball of my feet. Soothingly I run my fingertips over scars that have suffered the occasional sharp collision. There, tiny flecks of black are missing if one knows where to look. It’s been more than a month since these shoes caught my eye on the brochure; they still look wonderful. I snuggle my feet in and I let my hands take over in a lacing routine that is as comforting as it is familiar. As I methodically pull out the loose loops and tighten the knots, I tie away my apprehension and the tremors subside. I hear Maria’s voice, and the first strains of a Merengue tune. One, two, one, two… I rise to my feet. The tremors are completely gone. I strut to the nearest high-heel and I ask her to dance.

To my bemusement, I find myself in a strange playground where the unspoken rules are bewildering, the air is tinged with a subdued eroticism and I am not sure what to make of it all. Every dance is an extended flirtation, every new partner a temporary obsession. On the dance-floor, I am brazen; off it, I am reticent. Sometimes the music leaves me behind, floundering. Or my hands, slippery with sweat, slip. Or in my inexperience, I twist my partner into knots. Then I imagine I must look like a damn fool. Other times, I complete a complicated movement with panache. Or I perform a simple Hair Comb with the right pressure on her fingers, so that the motion of her arm looks unhurried and graceful, as if she were really combing her hair in front of her mirror. Or I meet a special girl whose hands fit mine like a well-lined glove, whose smile captures my imagination. I feel breathless, charged, confident, sexy, awkward, mortified, ridiculous – and then it starts all over again.

Salsa is a continuous flux of tension. After one studies the basic steps and pairs up with a partner in the neutral position, one then learns about tension. While facing each other with hands clasped together, I maintain a constant, moderate pressure on her hands, and she on mine; our shoulders are connected together as if by a coiled spring. When I push, she feels it immediately and steps back; she pushes back and the flow of energy reverses direction. One communicates on the dance floor essentially through these quick exchanges of energy.

There is yet another kind of tension that flits across the periphery of my consciousness, rarely acknowledged. Nevertheless, its presence feels as tangible as any physical connection. It is this wicked pot that boils with irreconcilable emotions: my feelings of liberation and unease for stepping over everyday social boundaries. It is the implicit and mutual appraisal between dance partners for a different kind of partnership. It is the improbable possibility that the most fleeting of connections made on this unique playground can spark something deeper.

Two years ago. I am a beginner.

A popular salsa bar in Union Square, Singapore.

In the corner a deejay spins a mix of salsa, merengue and bachata to a lively crowd of over forty. The dance floor is so cramped that if I do not identify the song’s beat, grab a partner and claim a spot within ten seconds into each song, I will have to dance in the hallway where the lockers and unused shoes are located. I know this because the process takes me about ten seconds; I am a tad too familiar with the layout of this hallway. My hesitancy at the beginning of every song proves fatal; to my untrained ear, all Latin music begins in the same way – loud, frantic and incoherent. Then one must muster the nerve to approach a girl; I find myself at the bar sipping a drink to fortify myself.

Later that night.

One, two, three… Five, six, seven… Always the same beat. The music quickens; it quickens me. I am dancing with a girl once again. This time, the music is too quick and I resort to calling out the beat and ignoring the song altogether. This time, I know the girl’s name; she is my reason for being there, for learning salsa, for making a fool of myself.

Close embrace. Spin. Open break. Cross-body lead.

I wonder if she knows.

Hammerlock hold. Break out. Spin again. Faster. Faster.

The Hair Comb

I didn’t see it coming. Clinically, I inspect the blood smeared on my fingers. My partner Rubina is mortified and begins apologizing profusely; she tells me she will never do this again. I smile at her and tell her it’s alright, it’s nothing really; she doesn’t look convinced. I excuse myself and find the washroom. In the mirror, I peer morbidly at white teeth now no longer white. My tongue darts across the tiny tear on the inside of my cheek; there is no sting, only a dash of sanguine, on the day of my dance final.

Is it over yet?

My roommate Jake is laughing at me; I must look ridiculous. I am practicing on-the-spot spins on the smooth kitchen floor. My thighs ache from a midnight jog, from one spin too many. My eyes are trained on the teddy bear on the kitchen cabinet – a hand-drawn Christmas gift from my youngest sister. By focusing on a spot in my line of sight and returning to it after each three-sixty rotation, I should be able to maintain posture and balance. The bear blinks in and out of my vision as I whirl and whirl the world away…

Finally, I stagger to a stop; I am dizzy.

One, two, three… Five, six, seven… Always the same beat, but the music quickens; it quickens me. There is no space to think, no time to procrastinate; I just listen and move. The flow of my body precedes and shapes my emotions. Move and be moved. There is a girl dancing with me and I do not know her name; I wish I do. There is no time for introductions, no space for chatter.
Something about her smile… Brown hair sways and swishes as she turns under my outstretched arm. While spinning, she crisply twists her neck and the bottom edge of her hair lifts itself as if suddenly weightless and brushes a trail of warmth across my cheek. I have to quench the immediate urge to touch my face; it tingles. I am distracted by her crooked smile. Does she notice?

I wonder what makes a good pairing on the dance floor. She gives I take, I give she takes; our flows meld harmoniously to form a pure, resonant note. This doesn’t happen often enough. I make extended eye contact. This also seldom occurs – physical intimacy in salsa is necessary, but the mind and body are easily and often disconnected. I read in her face the same recognition, the same quickening in spirit. The dance studio and the dancers around us recede into a distant halo, and though the music never stops, I hear more keenly the silence that permeates the space between us and binds us together. Her lips are curved in mysterious satisfaction and my steps are light. Her radiant smile carries me through the dance, this smile that is mine, mine alone.

The song ends. We part hands and I say thank you, because I say thank you to all my dance partners. We will dance again but not today. Today in the Wagner Dance Facility, I will dance with many others because the practice is to exchange partners and never get too comfortable with one. The rationale for social dancing in lessons is simple – you are more likely to expose your own weaknesses by having to dance with a variety of partners who have different body shapes and respond differently to the same cues.

I remember when I first learned salsa. My world swelled with a myriad colors I have never experienced. I admired the I learned to identify the subtle hues that I painted from this new-found palette of self-expression; I picked my colors without fear or favor; I was daring, I was invincible.

I remember also that I was thrust into an alien culture of casual intimacy; the initial shock was at once liberating and disquieting. Like clockwork, I would dance with a stranger, part from her when the song ended and move on immediately to the next partner. The dance floor is my idea of a social anomaly because it provides a respectable setting where everyday touch-me-not constraints are relaxed. Fingers release, seek each other out and intertwine during turns; hips and bodies mold into one another vigorously; while in close-embrace position, my firm hand clasps her back to cue the next move. As a general rule, salsa is sensuous, not intentionally salacious. Yet this distinction is very fine and I wonder…

Sandra is lithe and endearingly nervous. The small of her back is pressed tightly against my right forearm. One. I grasp both her elbows and whirl her outward in a whip-like jerk that is necessarily forceful and almost violent. I imagine she would have kept on spinning, forever, across the blackened floor, if I do not check her. I check her. Five. With my right arm extended and my weight shifted to my left foot for balance, I pull her back in. She spins inward now, mesmerizing; I do not take my eyes off of her. Seven, I catch her. As her left hip meets my right, I soften the impact by kinking my body inward at the hip, so that she sinks into me snugly and the natural curve of her body delineates mine, as mine delineates hers. One. We are one. With her body resting on mine, I clasp her tightly, step out on my left foot and sink downwards. The right side of my body is rigid to support her full weight; my left knee feels the strain, and nearly buckles. We hold. Three. I shift her back to her feet. Five. We separate. It’s your move.

On paper, one of my favorite moves looks simple to perform. It is called, appropriately, the Hair Comb; I raise both her arms in a delicate arc that sweeps over and may lightly touch her hair. This move ends as I gently pin her hands to the back of her neck. If I were pressed to explain why I especially like the Hair Comb, I admit that it closely resembles the classic picture of a lover’s caress and a woman’s vulnerability. The illusion of a lover’s intimacy is potent, so potent that sometimes the spirit quickens and the illusion dissipates, but the intimacy lingers.

Strange.

It never starts out quite like that. Before the dance session begins, we file in, like nervous schoolchildren, making idle talk. Our instructor Maria begins a roll call and we respond obediently. The tremors begin, invisible to everybody else; I feel them. I walk to my favorite corner, set my bags down on the dull black floor, set myself down and retrieve my dance shoes – a black and white classic which I judiciously picked out of a brochure. The black shines with controlled exuberance; the white is pristine. A stubborn crease runs across the vamp of my shoe; it crinkles every time I stand on the ball of my feet. Soothingly I run my fingertips over scars that have suffered the occasional sharp collision. There, tiny flecks of black are missing if one knows where to look. It’s been more than a month since these shoes caught my eye on the brochure; they still look wonderful. I snuggle my feet in and I let my hands take over in a lacing routine that is as comforting as it is familiar. As I methodically pull out the loose loops and tighten the knots, I tie away my apprehension and the tremors subside. I hear Maria’s voice, and the first strains of a Merengue tune. One, two, one, two… I rise to my feet. The tremors are completely gone. I strut to the nearest high-heel and I ask her to dance.

To my bemusement, I find myself in a strange playground where the unspoken rules are bewildering, the air is tinged with a subdued eroticism and I am not sure what to make of it all. Every dance is an extended flirtation, every new partner a temporary obsession. On the dance-floor, I am brazen; off it, I am reticent. Sometimes the music leaves me behind, floundering. Or my hands, slippery with sweat, slip. Or in my inexperience, I twist my partner into knots. Then I imagine I must look like a damn fool. Other times, I complete a complicated movement with panache. Or I perform a simple Hair Comb with the right pressure on her fingers, so that the motion of her arm looks unhurried and graceful, as if she were really combing her hair in front of her mirror. Or I meet a special girl whose hands fit mine like a well-lined glove, whose smile captures my imagination. I feel breathless, charged, confident, sexy, awkward, mortified, ridiculous – and then it starts all over again.

Salsa is a continuous flux of tension. After one studies the basic steps and pairs up with a partner in the neutral position, one then learns about tension. While facing each other with hands clasped together, I maintain a constant, moderate pressure on her hands, and she on mine; our shoulders are connected together as if by a coiled spring. When I push, she feels it immediately and steps back; she pushes back and the flow of energy reverses direction. One communicates on the dance floor essentially through these quick exchanges of energy.

There is yet another kind of tension that flits across the periphery of my consciousness, rarely acknowledged. Nevertheless, its presence feels as tangible as any physical connection. It is this wicked pot that boils with irreconcilable emotions: my feelings of liberation and unease for stepping over everyday social boundaries. It is the implicit and mutual appraisal between dance partners for a different kind of partnership. It is the improbable possibility that the most fleeting of connections made on this unique playground can spark something deeper.

Two years ago. I am a beginner.

A popular salsa bar in Union Square, Singapore.

In a dark corner, a deejay spins a mix of salsa, merengue and bachata to a lively crowd of over forty. The dance floor is so cramped that if I do not identify the song’s beat, grab a partner and claim a spot within ten seconds into each song, I will have to dance in the hallway where the lockers and unused shoes are located. I know this because the process takes me about ten seconds; hence, I am a tad too familiar with the layout of this hallway. My weakness is a fatal bout of hesitation at the beginning of every song; to my untrained ear, all Latin music begins in the same way – loud, frantic and incoherent. Then one must muster the nerve to approach a girl; I find myself at the bar buying a drink to fortify my courage.

Later that night. One, two, three… Five, six, seven… Always the same beat. The music quickens; it quickens me. I am dancing with a girl, once again. This time, the music is too quick and I resort to calling out the beat and ignoring the song altogether. This time, I know the girl’s name; she is my reason for being there, for learning salsa, for making a fool of myself.

Close embrace. Spin. Open break. Cross-body lead.

I wonder if she knows.

Hammerlock hold. Break out. Spin again. Faster. Faster.

Intimacy

One, two, three, pause, five, six, seven, pause… Always the same beat, but the music quickens; it quickens me. There is no space to think, no time to procrastinate; I just listen and move. My outward bodily expression precedes, and shapes, my emotions. Move and be moved. There is a girl dancing with me, and I do not know her name, though I now wish I do. There is no time for introductions, no space for chit-chat.

She has an infectious smile. Her dirty-blonde hair sways and swishes as she turns under my outstretched arm. I sometimes wonder what makes a good match on the dance-floor. She gives, I take, I give, she takes; we respond to each other’s cues with alacrity, grace and prescience. This doesn’t happen often enough. I make extended eye contact. Surprisingly, this also occurs infrequently – physical intimacy in salsa is necessary, but the body and mind are easily disconnected. I read in her face the same recognition, the same quickening in spirit. The dance studio and the dancers around us recede into a distant halo, and though the music never stops, I hear more keenly the silence that permeates the space between us, and binds us together. Her lips are curved in mysterious satisfaction, and I am happy. Her radiant smile carries me through the dance, this smile that is mine, mine alone.
The song ends. We part hands, and I say thank you, because I say thank you to all my dance partners. We will dance again, but not today. Today, in the Wagner Dance Facility, I will dance with many other partners, because the practice is to exchange partners and never get too comfortable with one. The rationale for ‘social dancing’ in lessons is simple: you are more likely to expose your own weaknesses by having to dance with a variety of partners, who have different body shapes and respond differently to the same cues.

When I first began to learn salsa, I was thrust into an alien culture of ‘casual intimacy’, and the initial shock was at once liberating, and disquieting. Like clockwork, I would dance with a stranger, and part from her when the song ends, to move on immediately to the next partner. The dance-floor is my idea of a social anomaly, because it provides a respectable setting where everyday touch-me-not constraints are relaxed. Fingers release, seek each other out, and intertwine during turns; hips and bodies mold into one another vigorously; while in close-embrace position, a firm hand clasps her back to cue the next move. One of my favorite moves is also the simplest to perform. It is called, appropriately, the Hair Comb: I would raise both her arms in a delicate arc that sweeps over and may lightly touch her hair. This move ends as I gently pin her hands to the back of her neck. If I were pressed to explain why I especially like the Hair Comb, I admit that it closely resembles the classic picture of a lover’s caress, and a woman’s vulnerability. The illusion of a lover’s intimacy is potent, so potent that sometimes the spirit quickens, and the illusion dissipates, but the intimacy remains.

Two years ago. A popular salsa bar in Union Square, Singapore. I am a beginner, and I am dancing with a girl, once again. This time, the music is too quick, and I often fail to follow the beat. This time, I know the girl’s name, and she is my reason for being there, for learning salsa, for making a fool of myself.

Close embrance. Spin. Open break. Cross-body lead.

I wonder if she knows.

(She will.)

Hammerhold lock. Break out. Spin again. Faster. Faster.