Boy didn’t know anything about dating. Not how to ask someone out on a date. Not what to do or expect on a date. He’d never been on a real date. The closest he ever got to one was as a chamberlain at wedding and quinceañera marchas, where he marched alongside a girl until the music ended. Then he’d go sit with his cousins, and the girl went to her family’s table the rest of the night. He’s done almost a dozen of those. But they never turned into anything, for even at practice the girls kept apart from the boys.
Next weekend, however, Boy expected things to be different. He’d been invited to go to a wedding dance by his cousin, Cacho, who was going to meet a girl there. As the girl was going to be accompanied by her sister, Boy was supposed to entertain the sister while Cacho talked about serious things with his date.
“You know how to chanclear, ese?” Cacho asked a few days before the dance.
“Simón, ese,” Boy lied.
Cacho looked askance at Boy. He wasn’t fooled.
“Totacha’s good enough. Or just talk to her. We meet’em at the dance at 7,” Cacho said.
Boy went home and decided to practice. His parents had a small but wide repertoire of records, mostly Latin music with some Italian mambos. His favorite was a record of Cuban music. So he practiced with that album alone in the living/dining/boys’ sleeping room, while the rest of his family watched TV in another room.
He was just starting to get into a rhythm he thought passed as dancing, when he saw somebody staring at him from the other side of the front screen door. It was a young man and woman. They’d been spying on him for some time. And they seemed amused by his dancing.
The young man handed him an envelope.
“Here’s an invitation to the wedding,” he said, turning and grimacing at his companion.
Boy turned off the music and took the envelope.
In school the next, he thought he saw girls giving him side glances. He felt self-conscious the rest of the week.
When Cacho came by to pick him up on Saturday, Boy got into the car quietly.
“Muy quite. Qué onda, ese?” he asked Boy.
“No. Nada,” Boy responded.
Cacho’s date and a companion were waiting for them.
Boy immediately saw it was the young woman who’d helped deliver the invitation. Plus, it turned out she was Cacho’s date’s older, not younger, sister.
Cacho took his date out to dance right after the marcha. Boy, on the other hand, froze in place.
“Wanna dance?” the young woman asked after a long silent moment.
Boy nodded.
“I only know totacha,” she said.
“Me too,” Boy said.
They danced to every song that evening.
Boy remembered that first date fondly for the rest of his life.
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