The August heat in Boston was a weighted blanket that everyone tried to breath under. Havana, with its lack of air conditioning, was no different. Dancers led the heat in waves of frantic momentum, pushing it onto everyone around them. Rapid turns and body rolls gave birth to an unexpected mist of sweat. Though it sounds repugnant, the scene of bare limbs sharing steam gave air to an enticing latin sex appeal. It was Salsa Saturdays and the ballroom was at capacity, or so I’d hoped. I’d chosen my outfit thinking, “which has the least amount of clothing,” a thought opposing my usual style. “Boring” is what my friends called it. “If I had your body,” my cousin Karina always said, “I’’d wear as little as I could.” I always laughed at the compliment, thinking, but don’t you already?
The dress I wore was one my friend had given me after gaining the “dental school fifteen.” It was a tube top style maroon dress with a full exposed back, all connected with thin, black netting. A piece I would come to wear more than once, but one I’d never buy on my own. It scrunched around my hips and hugged by butt tight enough to stay in place when my legs became slick with sweat, or when i was twirled in endless circles, through risky dips, or when men tried that old school move of dancing with their leg between mine, to hike up my thigh. It was stretchy and form fitting, but best of all, I could breathe.
Two shots of whiskey, my crew (the girls, friends, and fam— we were rolling deep), and Marc Anthony singing me sweet melodies del amor and i was burning holes on the dance floor. I floated from partner to partner, laughing at my own clumsiness and lack of rhythm. “Just follow the man,” my mom reminded me growing up, a lesson every Dominican girl would learn. She’d taught my brother and me bachata and merengue steps on evenings in our living room; Maria’s own school of dance. My hips, however, were not a ball in socket joint, they were fixed to my legs and no ethnic or genetic power would save me. “Just listen to the beat,” she would say. What beat? I’d think with frustration.I used a metronome during piano lessons to keep me at pace. I listened to the backstreet boys. How could I hear a single beat through clashing bongos and tamboras? “Una tabla,” my mom would call me, and at one point she gave up.
At Havana, everything changed. I surrendered to the beat, and I followed. I didn’t care for the steps, moves, or routines, I simply let my body flow as a reflection of the man who led me. Most times, we’d move fluidly as one. Often I’d turn in the wrong direction, or step on a toe or two. I found it more fun that way, more simple, and free.
I danced that night with young new beginners, with men from Guatemala to Ecuador, with a widower well into his eighties, with my cousins, friends, and with so many random guys that their faces all blurred together. A ton of quick, meaningless ballads. Then he asked me to dance. I had seen him on the dance floor, who hadn’t. But in front of me he was taller than I expected, broad up top, with soft dark eyes and my a contagious smile. “Would you like to dance?” he asked. I nodded yes and quickly placed my hand in his.
I can’t tell you what song was playing, or how many songs we danced to, just the feeling of my arms stretched up, gripping the rigged corners of his back. Of how he dipped me so close to the ground that I feared for my life. His arms, strong under the small of my back, never budged, and I always landed safely, inches above the floor. I laughed from the adrenaline rush, laughed at his need to fan off so often, at dancing on opposite beats, at his surprised expression when he told me that his shirt was soaked, and I proposed he take it off. I was forward, as I’d always been, and embodied what he would later share as his favorite quote, “Fortune favors the bold.”
The club was ours, everyone else had faded into the walls. I clung to him like we’d come to Havana together, as if there were no one else to dance with, no one left in the world at all. Finished dancing, we sat on open stools, dehydrated and with shaky legs. The energy that hummed between us masked any signs of exhaustion. We talked and laughed until our lips connected and danced as freely as our bodies had a couple hours before.
My brother approached us. Albert was there, wow I’d forgotten. He said, “Hey, we’re all leaving, are you going to stay?”
“Yea, I’m going to stay,” I answered mindlessly, not realizing it was close to 2am.
Seeing my brother sucked me back into a reality that I’d escaped from. It was almost 2 am! I got up just minutes after they’d left, and ordered myself an Uber home. We exchanged numbers, and I added yet another “Mike” into the contacts on my phone. With one last kiss I left Havana, re-emerging into the chaos of a Boston summer night. My knees had almost given out while waiting for my ride, my heels cut deep into my feet from the constant weight of my body, but I was light and still floating after starting a dance that would last for years
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