the cubanito, emphasis on the ito

I am going to admit something here that may shock those of you who know me. I have seen Runaway Bride. Furthermore, there is a certain scene in the movie which I find myself revisiting at various points in my life. What I am speaking of, is the moment Maggie Carpenter (as played by Julia Roberts) sits down to a table of egg plates, each prepared in its own unique way, and attempts to figure out how best she actually prefers her eggs. Much like Maggie, I too, find myself not exactly knowing how I feel about certain situations and not exactly knowing what I would prefer.

Take the cubanito for example. To add to the recent acquisitions in the trying-on-new-things department, I went salsa dancing on Sunday. It is something I have done before, but not something I do regularly and for all the predictable reasons, like, there are only so many indignities I am prepared to suffer in one evening, and not only can I NOT salsa dance, but I really cannot salsa dance in HEELS.

But a bit of tequila and an encouraging friend and hell anything's possible. After a fair amount of time of being tossed around and thrust into the oncoming lanes of another couples' dance space, I decided to take a breather and, well, hide out for a half hour or two. It was precisely at this juncture, the cubanito introduced himself and impressed me greatly by simply not asking me to dance. I quickly assigned him the role of my hero for the evening.

Assuming he was gay and thus, not my type, I immediately complimented him on his wardrobe. He was dressed to the nines, as they say. He was also a talker, particularly--and no surprise here--when it came to fashion. Now, I am the opposite of the talker, more of an enabler actually: I am quite good at drawing people out and discovering all kinds of minutiae about them in a surprisingly short breadth of time. As my designated hero for the evening, he demanded my full attention, which meant bringing out the entire arsenal of questions.

There were some charming details. He had been in a breakdancing crew in the 80's which went by the sparkling name of The Midnight Dancers, precisely because they only challenged the other crews at midnight. (This, of course, greatly wowed the 12-yr old in me who watched Wild Style, oh, a few dozen times.) He believed a man should only wear a suit when going out on Saturdays (I can't imagine what a woman should have to wear). And he was a Wedding Planner who wanted kids and was the only child in a family of ten who did not, as of yet, have any--much to his father's chagrin. And oh yeah, he taught me more about salsa dancing in 5 minutes than 34 years of faking it and 3 extensive Latin American vacations. Why he was spending time with me in my sloppy t-shirt, jeans and sandals was anybody's guess. Moreover, he didn't seem to mind terribly that I had scuffed up his Champagne-colored loafers by repeatedly stomping on his feet. In fact, he laughed even harder.

When he made his intentions clear by certain cephalopod-like maneuverings, I remained open-minded. But did I like him? Honestly, I had no idea, and well, I had invested a certain amount of time in getting to know him. So I gave him my number, thinking perhaps a date would settle the matter. But when he called fifteen minutes after I had left the club and again early this morning, my once open heart began to shutter. Honestly, it's nice to be on the other side of this particular fence, but now I am faced with the onerous task of dumping someone with whom I have yet to even go on a date.

It's complicated folks. Nor do I feel I have the emotional energy to wage battle with such darning matters. Not with the new roommate--we are, afterall, in the honeymoon phase--the new yoga teacher--we are courting--and my new friend--we are undergoing a temporary separation so that she can travel to France with her family. Presently, I think I have enough relationships with which to contend.

And getting back to those eggs: poached please, with a warm, crusty baguette and a side of blackberry jam.