Takes Two to Tango

Society soirees and shopping sprees, petticoats and pantaloons, dandies and duellists, maidens and matchmakers.

As a wee schoolboy in blue shorts, I found myself drawn to the fanciful flights of fancy woven by the talented likes of Austen and Heyer, both renowned queens of Regency fiction in their own right. Back then of course I didn't realize that my innocent boyhood crush over the stern arrogant Mr Darcy would possibly be a portent of my budding homosexuality. Certainly helped inspire me to compose shockingly sentimental prose detailing sweet romances with schmaltzy happy endings that inevitably earned me the unwelcome sobriquet of the class Austen.

Certainly a dangerous compliment in an all boys school. However I was quite the sly fellow and gainfully employed my writing skills in helping my near illiterate fellow classmates woo their largely unappreciative inamoratas. Yup, the original Cyrano.

Though I swooned over the dashing heroes - always so stolid and silent - I never did understand some of the silly scrapes the heroines seem to tumble into. For instance, I always found it improbable - since I'm the original material boy, oh so practical - that the blushing debutantes would allow themselves to be swept away by the penniless music teacher.


Dancing scruffy cheek to scruffy cheek?
Or even the dancing instructor.

I was wrong obviously. Rather than being an outdated convention relegated only to Regency romances, it seems that youthful debutantes - and some of the far less youthful ones - still find themselves falling head-over-feet for their dashing dancing instructors.

Which Harry Huevos easily corroborated.

Harry : Oh definitely, there are affairs going on all the time.
Paul : Seriously? They all look so stolid, so serious about the dance.
Harry : Well that's only when people are looking.
Paul : Ooh naughty.
Harry : Between teacher and student. Between teachers themselves.
Paul : Ooh, scandalous. Tell me more.
Harry : A man and a woman with all those hours spent together in a torrid embrace, so very romantic, so very intimate. What would you expect?
Paul : Ooh la la, is that a come-on?
Harry : Madre dios! No!

Replace the hunky gardener on Wisteria Lane with a dancing instructor instead.

From what he told me, the dance studio could seriously be the heady setting for our very own Desperate Housewives. Seems like everyone's getting adulterous with each other behind closed doors, along with the prerequisite crazy breakups full of screaming spouses and broken windows.

Since everyone else had pretty much gotten involved, the devil in me couldn't help asking Harry Huevos when we were about to hook-up as well. After all - said I innocently - we could always try the queer tango one day?

All I can say is... the horrified expression on his face?

Priceless.