Weight this morning, 192 pounds.
I was hoping that by morning, after yelling to two housemates and one BFF, I would be feeling better. But I'm not feeling better. I'm fucking angry as hell.
I decided to try to go back to salsa practice on Wednesdays. The last time I went was more than a little bit disastrous, because the guy who was teaching that day (it's an informal gathering of people who dance, rather than organized lessons) couldn't actually keep time or understand dance counts. I kept looking around to see if we were part of some student's experimental film. I stopped going for a month or two.
A friend of mine is interested in social dancing with me, so I decided that this would be a good time to learn to lead salsa so that I could teach her. I feel like I've been dancing salsa long enough to get the follow part engrained in my feet, so I can safely start learning lead. (It's doing both at once that wrecks me, sort of like trying to learn International and American ballroom at the same time. I just don't have enough room in my head.)
I expect that the first time I go somewhere as a lead, I need to announce that I'm leading. No one will assume it. That's fine and normal. What I didn't expect was to have to assert this quite so many times, with quite so much refusal on everyone's part to accept my decision.
We got into a circle, paired up. Everyone looked at me and someone said "there's a guy over there."
I said, "I'm leading." Then someone else said, "you can go over there," and I said "I'm leading." Then a guy switched places so he could be next to me and I told him, "I'm leading." And he said, "No, you're not." He did not say this in a teasing fashion. He was simply correcting my mistake.
I told him, "I think I get to decide that." He said he didn't think so. Then he decided to "compromise," and we would switch off parts. I agreed. And then he tried to explain how this was all for my benefit to help me learn, because it's easier for me to learn a step when I know how it goes for the follow. I think he was trying to make it sound like it wasn't a misogynist asshole move on his part.
I did not explain to him that his argument would work a little better if he had ever told a male lead that he should learn the follow part. If the instructor had not made a disgusted face when asked if he would ever dance the follow part (with the line, "I am not getting in touch with my feminine side!" If there weren't plenty of men in the class who were learning the step from scratch. If it wasn't perfectly obvious that he thought that those men could learn the step from scratch, but I would need to learn it differently. I danced with him. When it was time to rotate partners, I danced with someone else.
Who immediately said, "There's a guy without a partner."
I told her that I knew that. I was leading. And she said, "You're so mean!"
Dear reader, it is terribly selfish and cruel to not dance with a man when I have the opportunity. There is, after all, no possible reason for two women to dance together when there is an available man.
What was I thinking?
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