I do some freelancing for a local web site where I cover events. I was asked by my editor to write a story about dancing locations around town. She made it clear that she did not mean the bump and grind places I used to frequent, but more places where you can for real dance – like tango. Truth be told, my years of bumping and grinding are only because that is all I know how to do.

So I find this guy at Shall We Dance Cincinnati who teaches at Step n Out Dance Studio in Covington, Kentucky. He is nice and agrees to the trifecta if story perks: lets me interview him, gives me and my boy two free dance lessons one right after another – one group and one private – which I desperately need as research for this story AND agrees to raffle off a dance lesson along with the story. What, I ask, is better than that?

My BF, henceforth referred to as Wonder Boy because I think it’s funny, agreed to the dance lesson research under some conditions:

  1. The resulting article would not be called “Dancing with the geek” (Blog posts were never mentioned in these conditions.)
  2. Participation in the group lesson was optional so he didn’t have to make an ass of himself in front of people

I agreed and Wonder Boy and I signed up to take our classes lat night. What we approached with visible fear and trepidation turned out to be F-U-N.

The twelve or so people who were taking the class would line up with the (shiny-shoed) instructor in front of them. He taught them some rumba steps and before long I convinced Wonder Boy that a little public humiliation in front of strangers would be worth pulling out the rumba at the next wedding we got invited to. Long story short, we kinda sucked for most of the group class. Actually, I would say we were mediocre and then we were taught some swing steps and then we sucked. During the private lesson though we went back to the rumba and I can now be twirled, rumba in a circle and do the basic box. And not only that, I do this all without leading, which is a first!

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.