Lyk ZOMG can't she tell he's teh GAY????///??/?I always have an amazing time at the Night Cat - I love me some live salsa/reggae/funk beats. The only thing is, it can get awkward if I only go with one other girl; invariably some guy will jump in and grab one of us as a dance partner, leaving the other vulnerable. Or we’ll be targeted by college boys’ wingman routines.
So Brenda and I were warming up on the back dance floor, testing the salsa waters, when a young guy sidles up to Brenda and in a loud, aggressively Australian accent slurs, “I couldn’t help but notice you girls are pretty good. Would you mind giving us guys some lessons?”
I notice his friend skulking around to where I’m standing, and sigh. The old wingman routine. Guy #1 engages Brenda under the pretence of wanting to learn salsa steps - the urgency of which suddenly disappeared as he picked up her Brazilian accent and started trying to "get to know her" instead. Guy #2 made feeble attempts at small talk with me, which I am immediately bored by. “So what do you do? Yeah I’m doing my engineering degree. Do you study? What do you study? Where are you from? Where do you work? How do you two know each other? Yeah... nah... yeah...”
Oh, YAWN. I’m here to dance, not die of boredom reliving all my first-year-of-uni conversations.
The band starts up and we make an excuse to lose them, itching as we are to actually dance, as opposed to standing around nodding politely while being chatted up. Later as Brenda and I are in the bathroom she says, "The guy who liked you was cute, didn’t you like him?" I was hard-pressed to explain the whole “turned off by the obnoxious Aussie college boy vibe” to someone with English as a second language, and simply said, “Um, too young.”
Later on in the evening as Brenda is cutting up the floor with a bona fide salsa dancer I found myself flanked by the same two guys again, joined by a third who plonks himself down in the chair opposite to stare from a respectable distance at his mate’s attempted conquest. I grin to myself as I realise the trio are like a Melbourne version of JJ, Freddie and Cook from Skins – "Cook" the bold first guy who used salsa as a way to weedle a conversation out of us, "JJ" the shy but curious outsider, and "Freddie" the dark-haired one hitting on me.
Brenda is dancing with a campy (and holy FUCK he could salsa) guy wearing a beret and scarf with a tank top, and Freddie decides the best way to engage me in conversation is by being a homophobe and assigning me as the sole representative of all womankind everywhere and thus obligated to answer his stupid questions.
“Can I ask you a question?" he begins. "Do girls honestly find that-” pointing disdainfully at beret guy as he swayed against Brenda, “attractive? I mean, how is that attractive? What do you think, the hat, the scarf…” the offending guy broke away from Brenda and performed a spinning spot turn, “I mean, look at that!”
And he got up and performed his own spot turn, waving his arms in an exaggeratedly feminine manner as his mates laughed. “Isn’t that just gay?” Cook and Freddie continue to mock Brenda's partner, complete with hoots and shoulder wiggles as JJ spins his chair around and perches on the opposite side, legs straddling the back like twelve-year-olds do when they think it's cool.
I know this game. This is the part where I giggle insipidly at the boys' incomparable wit, join in making fun of gay guys, and roll my eyes over how stupid the girls who like them are (duh, can't their silly ladybrains recognise boys who wear berets as unsuitable breeding partners?), while also assuring some insecure kid of his superiority and thus encourage his advances. Hell no, Freddie, you’re not tricking me into reassuring you of your manhood. Times like this I wish I'd just pretended I didn’t speak English.
Suddenly, an equally “metrosexual” guy cut into our circle (I like to think he saw my frustration), complete with his own beret and a vest over his t-shirt. He held out a hand for me. “Want to dance?”
I grabbed him straight away with a relieved, “YES.”
And off we sambaed, leaving Freddie, JJ and Cook behind to ponder further why all the gay guys were getting the girls.
So Brenda and I were warming up on the back dance floor, testing the salsa waters, when a young guy sidles up to Brenda and in a loud, aggressively Australian accent slurs, “I couldn’t help but notice you girls are pretty good. Would you mind giving us guys some lessons?”
I notice his friend skulking around to where I’m standing, and sigh. The old wingman routine. Guy #1 engages Brenda under the pretence of wanting to learn salsa steps - the urgency of which suddenly disappeared as he picked up her Brazilian accent and started trying to "get to know her" instead. Guy #2 made feeble attempts at small talk with me, which I am immediately bored by. “So what do you do? Yeah I’m doing my engineering degree. Do you study? What do you study? Where are you from? Where do you work? How do you two know each other? Yeah... nah... yeah...”
Oh, YAWN. I’m here to dance, not die of boredom reliving all my first-year-of-uni conversations.
The band starts up and we make an excuse to lose them, itching as we are to actually dance, as opposed to standing around nodding politely while being chatted up. Later as Brenda and I are in the bathroom she says, "The guy who liked you was cute, didn’t you like him?" I was hard-pressed to explain the whole “turned off by the obnoxious Aussie college boy vibe” to someone with English as a second language, and simply said, “Um, too young.”
Later on in the evening as Brenda is cutting up the floor with a bona fide salsa dancer I found myself flanked by the same two guys again, joined by a third who plonks himself down in the chair opposite to stare from a respectable distance at his mate’s attempted conquest. I grin to myself as I realise the trio are like a Melbourne version of JJ, Freddie and Cook from Skins – "Cook" the bold first guy who used salsa as a way to weedle a conversation out of us, "JJ" the shy but curious outsider, and "Freddie" the dark-haired one hitting on me.
Brenda is dancing with a campy (and holy FUCK he could salsa) guy wearing a beret and scarf with a tank top, and Freddie decides the best way to engage me in conversation is by being a homophobe and assigning me as the sole representative of all womankind everywhere and thus obligated to answer his stupid questions.
“Can I ask you a question?" he begins. "Do girls honestly find that-” pointing disdainfully at beret guy as he swayed against Brenda, “attractive? I mean, how is that attractive? What do you think, the hat, the scarf…” the offending guy broke away from Brenda and performed a spinning spot turn, “I mean, look at that!”
And he got up and performed his own spot turn, waving his arms in an exaggeratedly feminine manner as his mates laughed. “Isn’t that just gay?” Cook and Freddie continue to mock Brenda's partner, complete with hoots and shoulder wiggles as JJ spins his chair around and perches on the opposite side, legs straddling the back like twelve-year-olds do when they think it's cool.
I know this game. This is the part where I giggle insipidly at the boys' incomparable wit, join in making fun of gay guys, and roll my eyes over how stupid the girls who like them are (duh, can't their silly ladybrains recognise boys who wear berets as unsuitable breeding partners?), while also assuring some insecure kid of his superiority and thus encourage his advances. Hell no, Freddie, you’re not tricking me into reassuring you of your manhood. Times like this I wish I'd just pretended I didn’t speak English.
Suddenly, an equally “metrosexual” guy cut into our circle (I like to think he saw my frustration), complete with his own beret and a vest over his t-shirt. He held out a hand for me. “Want to dance?”
I grabbed him straight away with a relieved, “YES.”
And off we sambaed, leaving Freddie, JJ and Cook behind to ponder further why all the gay guys were getting the girls.
(Psst, here's a clue: sometimes, when women go places, the things they want to do actually DON'T somehow revolve around your cock!)
Haha, great post!
ReplyDeleteIt has to be said: I think the majority of straight guys see salsa primarily through the lens of picking up women. And probably not just salsa for that matter. A LOT of guys would virtually never dance at clubs purely out of the enjoyment of dancing.
The funniest aspect of this story is those guys will go away scratching their heads at how they could be out-played and thus out-manned by some campy beret-wearing guys with flexible hips.