Jennie and the Rumba

Jennie and the Rumba

We first met when she introduced me to the audience and I gave a report on the activities of the Haney University Chapter of the Children’s Aid Society. I felt an immediate attraction to Jennie. After my presentation I watched her conduct the official business of the meeting, introduce the children who were guests of honor, and laud the rich and famous of Philadelphia who had given generously of their time and resources to provide care for needy children.
As I watched her, one word grew in my mind: ease. She seemed at ease with the program; the audience; the dignitaries, including the mayor; the handicapped children; the organization’s mission; and her role as president.
Her ease was not the result of a successful performance, nor the approval of the audience, nor pride in a record year of funding, nor any external factor that I could identify. Rather, her ease seemed to come from within, from an awareness of all aspects of the evening and from a connection with the people, the program, and the surroundings. Most of all, I sensed that her ease came from a deep satisfaction with who she is and the choices she has made.
In the evening after the formal presentations were complete, our meeting room took on the ambiance of a supper club from the big band era with tables for four or six arranged around a central dance floor. The speaker’s platform became a dining area for dignitaries and Jennie sat there with the mayor, major donors and officials from the Children’s Aid Society. When dinner was complete the lights were turned low. The band began to play and dancers crowded the floor. On the platform I could see Jennie watching the dancers and moving almost imperceptibly with the music. The band played a succession of Waltzes, Foxtrots, and Quicksteps, which brought me past the speaker’s platform.
As I made each pass by the platform, dancing with a succession of women whose companions chose not to dance, I could see Jennie watching me as she talked with organizers, speakers, and finally, the mayor, who had blocked her path as she attempted to move toward the dance floor. The mayor was animated, displaying the hand gestures and body language of someone who appeared to have more interest in the person than in the conversation.
By this time, I was no longer dancing, but was moving to the rhythm of a Foxtrot toward the speaker’s platform, a structure approximately ten feet by twelve feet by two feet high. When I was within about twenty feet of her, she patted the mayor on the shoulder and moved past him while he was still talking. As she moved across the platform she, too, was captured by the rhythm of the music and her steps became the slow, slow, quick, quick movement of the Foxtrot.
The first complete Foxtrot movement took her almost to the edge of the platform where, without stopping, she danced directly off the platform into midair in front of me. As she descended, still holding dance posture, she extended her arms and rested her hands on my shoulders. I grasped her torso and together we slowed her fall into a graceful descent.
By the poise, ease and confidence with which she moved, I knew that she was a great dancer. As her feet settled onto the floor, we began to dance, moving in flowing synchrony around the room. Dancing the Foxtrot, which to me is more elegant than romantic, we kept to our own spaces as we looked where we were going or where we had been, but not at each other.
We were completely at ease with each other in dance and in motion. I was delighted when the band played a Rumba, a dance that justifiably is called the dance of love. If I believed in magic or fate, I certainly would have considered the band’s choice of music an omen, because the song was “Romance in the Moonlight.” The dance floor extended into the atrium, and from where we began the Rumba we could see a radiant moon softly shining down through the overhead skylight. The dance and the mood of the music were marvelous that night; the night our romance began It was obvious that Rumba was a great favorite of Jennie’s and as we danced she abandoned the technical movements of competitive dance, instead taking every opportunity to connect with me visually and physically.
We became so absorbed in the dance and so intoxicated by the music and the joy of shared movement that we were unaware that we had become the only dancers on the floor until the music ended and applause broke out from the circle of admirers that had surrounded us.
With no sign of embarrassment or discomfort, Jennie turned to me and bowed gracefully. I returned the bow, and then together we bowed to the four corners of the room as the applause grew louder. She bowed to me a second time, turned, and exited the dance floor in the direction of the ladies’ room.
When she did not reappear by the end of the next song, a Waltz, I no longer resisted the invitation of a particularly insistent elderly woman, and we began to dance the Hustle to a tune popular in the disco era. Midway through the dance, Jennie approached me on the floor, placed a card in my hand, and kept walking until she had exited through the doorway leading out of the building.
As the Hustle tune ended I could see that Jennie had given me her business card, and on the back she had written “Call me tomorrow on my cell phone.” Although we had connected in a way I’ve never experienced before, throughout the whole evening we had not spoken a single word to each other.

At two the next day, I met Jennie at the fountain in Washington Square, and we strolled through the old city and talked. When we met at the fountain there was no awkward introductory moment or nervous “getting to know you” chatter. We simply talked with ease, just as we had danced with ease. We marveled at the attraction we felt for each other and wondered how deep, wide, and real that attraction could really be. We vowed to spend as much time together as possible to explore all elements of our attraction: intellectual, social, temperamental, spiritual, sexual, political, and any other aspect we could think of. Amazingly, we agreed that exploration of sexual attraction would come last. It seems that the glories of lust are not foremost in this affair…or wait a moment; perhaps they have simply faded quickly, only to be replaced by the beginning of love.I have often experienced love at first sight. Or to be honest I should say, for the most part, love at first lust. Love at first sight comes in a flash—a flash that is the instant recognition of captivating qualities and exciting possibilities in a potential lover. That flash is much like a photographic flash in the night that freezes time in a snapshot, the foreground of which is illuminated and rendered visible, whereas the near background is cloaked in shadows, and the deep background is covered in total darkness. I must say that I have never been disappointed with the foreground qualities I have seen in the women I have instantly loved.
What I saw in a flash, I saw clearly, and those qualities have never lost their appeal, even long after the relationships they engendered have ended. What I could not see in the darkness, or perhaps dimly perceived as a specter in the shadows but chose not to see, has led to the gradual erosion and eventual death of most of my relationships.
Specters from the shadows or even astonishments from the darkness first make themselves known as whispers of unease. Whispers that eventually become mind-absorbing roars that demand correction, or sadly, herald the seemingly inevitable decline in compatibility and ease that befalls a union.
Jennie and I will renew our exploration of attraction and ease next weekend in Annapolis, Maryland, where we will rent a sailboat and spend three days letting the winds move us, as they will, across the Chesapeake Bay.

Dancers: Shana Heidorn and Nik Pavlov of Society Hill Dance Academy

Watch the Rumba on Youtube

Copyright © F. Wyman Morgan 2011