After work today I sped fast down the 101 and 405 en route to West Los Angeles. Today would be another small milestone for the book of “I’ll try anything once.”

I picked her up at her office and by 7pm Beverly and I had arrived at Ma’Kai and hoofed to our reserved table ahead of the line. I had reserved said table because Beverly’s first choice of dining I had deemed toxic due to the large amount of nutty entrees. Unfortunately, Ma’Kai as it turned out had it’s own share of peanut based dishes. The egg was on my face, not on my plate. She ordered the crab meat sushi roll – and I ordered the sliders. We were thoroughly unimpressed. Our waiter was doing his best Kato Kaelin; long dirty blonde hair and 1986 Don Johnsonesque manicured stubble. I could, however, see the beach from my seat; I guess that should count for something.

After eating we headed over to the “main event” at Monsoon Cafe. Monsoon cafe features beginner and intermediate Salsa lessons on Wednesdays (and salsa dancing without lessons on many other nights). To increase the sales of drinks the intermediate lessons commence before the beginners. We arrived fifteen minutes before the beginners lesson and took a seat. I started to sweat.

At 8:30 the lesson commenced and we were separated. The men stood with backs against the far wall, and women with backs to the bar. The suave instructor started moving his feet and giving out vague suggestions. He assumed #1 we knew the basic rhythm of the dance #2 we were familiar with the vocabulary #3 we had prior Latin dance experience. I assumed he wasn’t getting paid very well. As I tried to keep my eyes on the instructor’s feet I very quickly looked very foolish. After twenty minutes or so of this it was time to “try it out” with a partner. It was then that my real lesson was to begin. As it turned out my (new) instructor had been dancing once or twice a week for over a year and had even taken a Salsa class during her tenure at UCSB.

We moved to the smaller adjacent room to the side of the main dance floor. I would need more room for mistakes. A lot more room. I was pointing and moving my body in every direction but the right one/s. I felt like I had two left feet, but within an hour I was (awkwardly) twirling and maneuvering my feet in a minimalistically satisfactory manner. Around 10:30 I figured I’d frustrated Beverly enough with my attempts (although she was extremely supportive of my efforts) and we left after watching the “masters” (which means her regular dance partners) for ten minutes. We stopped off at a nearby “authentic” 50s diner (where we ran into her roommate out on a first date) for desert before I skedaddled my way back north to get some sleep.

I can’t say Salsa is my kind of thing – but then dancing isn’t really my kind of thing in general. I can see how it could be quite a workout for those involved that know what they are doing. I can also see that nobody there (on Wednesday nights) has to be at work at 7am the next morning – as the live band hadn’t even finished setting up before we left at 10:30.

I may be convinced to go again – but only with the same forgiving dance partner/instructor – and probably not on a “work night.”