Dancing with Attraction I

This is the first of a series of blogs that describes various attempts to follow an attraction to a woman I met on the dance floor. While each of my first four attempts ended in frustration and dissatisfaction, giving them all up led to another, far more satisfying result. This experience with an attractive dancer was my initiation into a more embodied way to engage whoever (and whatever) captures my attention, on and off the dance floor.

As I surveyed the dance floor for familiar faces, I was immediately drawn to a woman I’d never seen before. With dark curly hair and a slender figure, she wore a short sexy skirt that flared out when she danced. And boy, could she dance. I’d always liked to dance and considered myself pretty good, but she knocked my socks off. Not only could she dance in the free form that was the norm at this dance venue, but whenever she met a new dance partner, she could do the west coast swing, the cha-cha, the rumba, the salsa and anything else her partners tried.
I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. When I saw Peter, the man who knew everybody, I asked him directly, “Who is THAT?” “Oh,” Peter answered nonchalantly, “Would you like to meet her?” “Of course,” I say without a second of reflection. Immediately, Peter takes me up to the woman and introduces us. She nods, smiles and says hi. I’m not so coy. Practically leaping out of my skin, my face gets within a foot of hers and I almost shout, “Boy, are you a good dancer.” She smiles again, but quickly disappears to the furthest corner of the dance floor where she spends the rest of the night.
I wonder if I was perhaps a little too aggressive. Moving towards women is often well received. I learned in my 20’s that showering women with attention and they often melted. But here was a woman who didn’t seem to like it. I wondered if I scared her and even pushed her away. I went home, licked my wounds and realized that I could make up all kinds of stories about what motivated her to move all the way across the dance floor, but as long as she stayed away from me, it would remain speculation.
But I could look at what I did. I turned my attention towards my own behavior and energy. I wondered if my energy was as far out in front of me as those cartoon characters whose eyes bugged out of their sockets when they were shocked. Like in the cartoons, not only did my eyes charge forward, but my torso went backward. I was certainly not in my body.
It was then that I decided to watch my reactions to this attractive dancer. It was time to learn about myself by returning to the “scene of the crime.”