My supervisor invited Rob and I to take a ballroom dancing class with her and her husband. I jumped at the chance because I've always thought ballroom dancing would be a blast. I'd suggested lessons to Rob before but his reaction was always to scrunch up his nose like he'd just test-whiffed the half carton of milk at the back of the fridge and found it to be sour...nay, curdling. But this time he reluctantly agreed. I'm not sure why, but I think it has something to do with the fact that he likes my boss better than me. (She buys him Twizzlers - how can I compete with that?!) But whatever - we get to go dancing! (I insist on saying dance with an ah sound. As in, "Shall we dahnce, my dahling?" It's the only way to get the full effect of the formality and fancy-pantsity that is ballroom dahncing. And also because it annoys Rob.)

Our first class was last evening. The first thing the instructor dude (think cutest old man ever, complete with suspenders) did was separate the men from the women. As Rob was banished with the other boys to the far side of the room, he cast a desperate, helpless look over his shoulder. It was the look five-year-olds give their moms as they get on the school bus for the first time, except remove the innocence and add a healthy dose of You are going to pay for this, bitch.

Ol' Suspenders showed the men their foxtrot steps and then showed us our foxtrot steps and then told us to join our partners and practice together. There was a flurry as the women headed over to snatch up their men and it felt just like that moment in 6th grade gym class when we were learning square dancing and the teacher said to "Partner up" and there was a mad dash to stand next to the cutest boy and then once he was grabbed up there was another mad dash to the next cutest boy etc. etc. I'll admit it was a relief, last night, to know that I just so happened to have prior claim to the cutest boy in the room. (Although I totally think I caught Rob appraising the other women, like maybe he thought he could trade up or something.)

I have to say, and this isn't just my overbearing self-confidence talking, that we were pretty damn good. Ol' Suspenders gave us approving nods or thumbs up every time we passed him. Rob is one of those people who has an ear for music, who can hear a song and then sit down at the piano or pull out his guitar and like, play the song he just heard. And so I knew he'd be good at this ballroom dancing thing because hearing and staying with a beat is like breathing to him - it comes completely natural. With me, not so much. With me, if staying on beat = breathing, then I would have drowned on that dance floor without Rob.

Let me tell you that as the one not leading, it is rather disconcerting to navigate a dance floor backwards, especially when that dance floor is full of awkwardly swaying amateurs. Given my trust issues (which stem from 4th grade when I leaned back into Doreen as part of a cheerleading move only to fall hard onto the ground because she didn't catch me), it would have been completely like me to have danced the entire evening with my head turned around backwards on my neck. However, Rob is the one person I trust even more than myself and so I was fine to let him lead. (My boss, who is an even bigger control freak than me if you can even imagine that, struggled with not being in charge the entire evening. She kept insisting that her husband let her lead. And he succumbed until Ol' Suspenders caught them and told her sternly that the man needs to lead. Which, if you ask me, is sorta sexist. I mean, why can't the woman lead? Shit ain't right.)

Rob did well - I think we only bumped into another couple once and I'm sure it was their fault and not ours, although Rob muttered an apology anyway, something about "still learning how to steer this thing." (This thing being, of course, me.) One time I did swivel my head around and Rob accused me of not trusting him and so then I had to explain that in fact I was just checking out my ass in the mirror wall.

The only real problem of the evening was the motherfucking toe cramp I got half an hour into the class. I have a propensity to get toe cramps at The Worst Possible Times. Like while driving. Like during sex. Like when I'm pole-climbing up a hill on cross country skis. Last night we were foxtrotting away when suddenly one of my toes seized up. "FUCK," I gasped. Because, you know, it fucking hurt. I really needed to take a moment to stretch it out, but I didn't want to stop dancing because we'd surely get trampled by the foxtrotters coming our way. So I tried to do the foxtrot steps such that I could bend and stretch the toes of my left foot as I stepped back, which was not only entirely ineffective but surely looked ridiculous as well. When that didn't work I just grimaced and grit my teeth and managed to make it through the rest of the song as best I could, trotting in a way that resembled a limping gazelle much more than a fox.

We've got seven more classes. My goal by the end is to get Ol' Suspenders snaking.