Stu

Dan showed up at Maria’s and Steve’s house at exactly 8:30 p.m. on Saturday. Steve answered the door, introduced himself, and they sat down to talk. Steve talked about his career in the computer industry, while Dan talked about his plans for a business career. Dan seemed like a thoughtful, decent young man, although Steve felt Dan could use a haircut and a wardrobe makeover. If he is looking to impress beautiful women, Steve thought, the faded brown shirt and cheap blue slacks he is wearing tonight won’t quite get the job done.

To Dan, Steve seemed very much as Maria had described him: a nice, smart guy who was reasonably attractive but not exceptionally handsome. Looking at Steve, Dan felt that perhaps there was indeed some hope for himself. He was dying to know how Steve and Maria had met and fallen in love, but he felt it would be premature to ask.

The two men had been talking for several minutes when Maria entered the room. She was wearing a body-hugging, bright red dress, that was especially tight around her hips and thighs, and which ended just above her knees. Black seamed stockings and a pair of 5-1/2-inch blood-red stiletto sandals completed her attire. “Hello, Dan,” she said in a sultry voice. She vamped over to him, her hips rocking back and forth shamelessly, until she stood over her younger friend, who sat nervously in the couch.

“Stand up, please,” she said in a soft monotone.

Dan stood up. Maria moved over until her lips were only inches from Dan’s. She began caressing the back of his neck suggestively with her long, red fingernails, while looking deep into his eyes.

“Are you ready for a night of hot, Latin dancing?” she cooed. She finished the sentence and promptly broke out into a big smile and began laughing. “Oh, forgive me, Dan. I am such a bad actress. But I just couldn’t resist.”

“You had me going,” a relieved Dan replied.

Steve looked at Dan and said jokingly, “You see what I have to go through? Life with this woman is just pure torture.”

“The sultry stuff is not me. You know that,” Maria said to Dan. She took a couple of steps back from him and assumed a very feminine pose. “But this dress and these heels are me. Remember what I said the other night: Beauty is an attitude.”

They got into Steve’s car and headed toward the Latin dance club, the same club where Ana and Bob had taken Steve several years earlier, before he had met Maria. It was the ideal place to take Dan, as it catered to a mostly English-speaking, middle-class Latino clientele, including plenty of women who shared Maria’s philosophy concerning beauty and femininity. The club also attracted a small but growing number of Anglo women who dressed like Latinas. During the drive over, Steve and Maria told Dan how they had met and about their early dates, which enabled Dan to satisfy his curiosity about how these two people from completely different cultural backgrounds had established a successful relationship.

They arrived at the club in time to hear the salsa band begin its repertoire for the evening. As always, there were an abundant number of attractive women decked out in all kinds of colorful dresses and high heels. While Maria still drew her fair share of approving looks from the male patrons, the club nevertheless was one of the few places where she did not stand out from everyone else. There were a lot of well-dressed women to admire.

Steve bought beers for the three of them, while Maria led Dan out to the dance floor. “It is easy to fall in love with salsa music,” Maria told him. “Just move naturally with the music.” Despite her advice, Dan started dancing slowly with a jerky motion that looked anything but natural. He looked nervous and self-conscious.

“Just relax, Dan. You’re trying too hard,” Maria said. She took him by the hand, and wiggled her hips sensuously to the beat of the music. This seemed to have a soothing effect on Dan, who began moving a little more fluidly, although it was still a far cry from what most people would call dancing.

They both got into a groove as the song continued. Dan became lost in his thoughts as he looked at Maria rock back and forth in her tight red dress and ultra-high stiletto heels. Having spent hours in classrooms and libraries with Maria over the previous year, it had not occurred to him that she could be any sexier than she appeared on campus, but tonight she was a quantum level beyond anything he had previously imagined. He felt good that Maria was willingly spending time with him. It was better for her to be a platonic friend than not a friend at all.

The song ended, and they returned to their table to sip beer with Steve. They relaxed for a few minutes until Maria said to Dan, “I want you to look around the room here. Look at the women. In a few minutes, I want you to walk up to the most attractive unaccompanied woman here, the one who in your eyes is the biggest knockout, and ask her to dance.”

“Oh, Maria, I can’t do that…”

“No excuses, Dan. You danced with me, you can dance with them. You don’t have to talk with them, you don’t have to sit down with them after the song and try to get their phone number. Just dance one song with a lady, thank her, and come back here.”

“It’s not going to work…”

Steve broke in. “Dan, I hate to tell you, but Maria is right. No guts, no glory. You’re not trying to find a wife right now. It is just an exercise to build up your self-confidence. And it will. The first time is the hardest, and then it will get easier. Trust me. I didn’t get to meet Maria by being gun shy.”

Dan looked around the room. Two tables away, there were four women sitting around talking. “What about the one at that table, the one at the left?” he asked. The woman was a slim, dark-haired Latina, wearing a short white mini-skirt and white stiletto pumps.

“Yeah, good choice. She is hot,” Steve said. “If you don’t ask her to dance, I will.”

“You’re not going anywhere, Steve,” Maria said. “She looks fine to me. Go for it, Dan.”

Dan took two big gulps of beer, got up and walked over to the table with the four women. “Ex- excuse me, would you like to d-dance?” he said nervously to the girl. She looked at her friends and said, “Why not?” Dan and the girl went out to the dance floor. Dan was obviously nervous, and reverted to his jerky dance style. It might have been OK at a rock club, but salsa dancing required a little more refinement.

Maria sipped at her beer while she watched Dan dance. She said to Steve, “You have to believe me, when Dan is on campus, he is such a nice guy. Funny, witty, very pleasant, and he is bright when it comes to academics. He is a different person right now.”

“It happens,” Steve said. “It starts in high school, maybe even middle school. Other students develop a little faster than you do, maybe by only a few months. But the other boys put you down, girls ignore you, and your self-confidence can dry up quickly. And it takes years to get it back.”

The song finished, Dan walked the girl back to her table, thanked her, and then returned to Maria and Steve with a big smile on his face. “That wasn’t so bad. A baby step is a baby step.”

Dan went out to ask another girl to dance, and then another and another, each one looking as if she had been personally instructed by Maria in the art of feminine appearance. He told Steve and Maria he wanted to ask one last girl to dance, and walked up to a thin blonde Anglo woman sitting alone at a table. She got up to dance, looking very striking in a tight black skirt and pumps with heels that were as high as Maria’s. They danced one song, and then another. The band then began playing a romantic ballad. Dan turned to accompany her back to her table, and he was caught totally off-guard when she walked up to him, put her left hand in his, put her right arm around his shoulder, and began slow-dancing with him. He felt awkward for the first minute, but kept his composure and relaxed. They slow-danced for one song, and then a second. The woman then thanked him and Dan accompanied her back to her table.

A surly man was sitting at the table and glared at Dan. “Thank you for dancing with my woman,” he said.

“Oh, what do you care?” the blonde woman snapped back at him. “He asked me to dance, I was alone, and I said yes. Where the fuck were you, anyway?”

“Don’t use that kind of fucking language with me!” the man shouted. Dan scurried back to Steve and Maria, while the blonde woman and her male companion became increasingly louder and profane. A couple of bouncers walked quickly up to their table, talked to them for a minute and then accompanied them out of the building, as most of the other patrons looked on.

“That’s the story of my life,” Dan said dejectedly. “Even when I do the right thing, I still mess things up.”

“You did nothing wrong,” Maria said. “It’s not your fault those two started to fight with each other and use foul language.”

“Maybe not,” Dan said. “But they would not have started fighting if I had not asked the woman to dance. Every thing I try to do with women just turns to shit. It happens over and over and over.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Steve said. “You had a good night tonight. You handled yourself well with all those women.”

“Yes, you did,” Maria said. The band was still playing slow tunes. She took Dan by the hand and said, “Come on. This was a good night, and it is going to end on a positive note for you.”

They started to slow dance, but Dan held Maria at some distance, dancing the way a young boy would dance with his aunt at a wedding. Maria could tell he was nervous and shaking a little. She pulled him close to her, pressing her chest against his, and taking his left hand and guiding it down to her hip. She wanted Dan to experience the feel of her shapely body, to know the thrill of intimate contact with a beautiful woman so that he would be determined to go back out in the world and not give up until he found one of his own. She felt him tense up, then she stood on her tiptoes and whispered in his ear, “Relax, just relax. Enjoy this.” She felt the tenseness leaving his body, and she noticed that he was now the one holding her tightly. As the song continued, Dan started running his nose along the side of Maria’s neck, experiencing the wonderful scent of her perfume. The music ended, and Maria gave him an affectionate kiss on the cheek.

“You know, I think that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me in my entire life. Honest,” Dan said.

“It makes up for all those times you helped me with homework,” she replied. “I’m glad I could help you with something.”

To be continued.