The monkey made me do it

A fine romance

Once upon a time, two young ladies decided that their lives needed a touch of spice to help counteract the grey Seattle drizzle. With pounding hearts and much trepidation, they leapt into the latin dance scene and braved clubs full of enthusiastic wolf packs that followed their every move and forced the ladies to learn such Spanish phrases as "I have a boyfriend, he is very big and scary." Soon they found one club that stood apart from the others, a club where there was room to dance and where molestation was rare. They enrolled in lessons, and began to go twice a week to the club and made many lovely friends.

Then, one night, one of the ladies met a man. She was dating another man at the time in a very halfhearted fashion and immediately reanalyzed and ended that relationship once this new man had set her heart to pounding. His effect on her was unprecedented, particularly since they only saw each other for a few hours that night and were barely able to talk. Her friend was suspicious at first, since she had liked the other man (they had bonded over knowing obscure Janet Jackson lyrics, though he was emphatically NOT GAY) (mm-hmm), but when the lady and the new man started e-mailing every day and maintaining constant letters and phone calls for three months straight without any sign of a slowdown, she had to concede that maybe her friend was in love. He was, however, in Mexico.

So one night, out of the blue, the lady in love asked her friend to come with her to Mexico City to see if this relationship had any sort of a chance. And who can turn down a free plane ticket?

I (being not in love) was chosen to be the chaperone of the trip and took my job very seriously. Though K was not prone to flights of emotion, I feared that she was going too far overboard for a man that she had only really ever seen once. I was skeptical, logical, and channeling a schoolmarm with tiny spectacles and a sharp, sharp ruler.

When we arrived in Mexico City, J (the dude) met her with such enthusiasm that I thought she would be ground into a fine powder by his hug. He was excited, loud, joking, and almost overwhelming after the long flight. I was a bit stunned, K seemed quiet to me and I immediately thought that we had made a huge mistake. But she is often quiet and not very demonstrative, so I held back from dragging us onto a returning flight and we went to our hotel.

This bears mentioning - Mexico City in April is beautiful and the weather is perfect. It is also NOT tourist season, and K and I were the only whities that we saw for over a week. We were the recipients of endless catcalls, and my wardrobe of shorts and tank tops gained layer upon layer to try to avoid the attention (but then I gave up the fight. I didn't want to go that far south in the hot sun and end up wearing a full-body wrap). There were car horns that played every tacky song imaginable, but my favorites were the alarm tones that mimicked the stereotypical "whhooooOOOT-WHooooo" cat-call whistle. After a while we didn't even notice them (though J was always apologizing).

We hiked the pyramids nearby, took a gorgeous boat ride down some canals and were part of a parade, toured the cathedrals of the city, saw a ballet, rode the subway... it was a lovely trip, and I almost forgot that we were there on business (except for the fact that J came along with us everywhere and they started holding hands). K became very silent and more and more introspective as the trip went on, I caught her staring off into space often and finally on the fourth day of the trip broke her down and got the scoop.

First I have to back up a little - on the third night we decided to find a local salsa dance club, in memory of how the two of them met. We found a cheesy little bar that was pumping distorted salsa music, and danced for most of the night (they with each other, me with a rotating cast of interesting people that included a guy from New York who wanted to financially support me after one dance and his friend, who looked like a stereotypical mafia thug but moved surprisingly well on the dance floor for someone so big and loaded down with weaponry). At one point I was on the dance floor with a smooth talker and looked back to our table to try and get some sympathy (and maybe a cut in from J), and was shocked by what I saw. K and J, who had been getting increasingly affectionate, were sitting on the opposite ends of the table looking away from each other with traumatized expressions on both of their faces. I was stuck on the dance floor and unable to see what had happened for two more dances. My mind whirled - had they fought? Broken up? Was there a serious problem with either of them? I couldn't get any info from either party, it was a very quiet cab ride back to the hotel and K fell asleep immediately (or pretended to).

Here's what I found out the next day: When I looked over at them in the club, it was just a second or two after he had out of the blue proposed marriage to her! He hadn't really been intending to, and certainly not that soon, but he had somehow. Her shocked look was because she had accepted his proposal, and hadn't been intending to so soon (but had). Even though it was unexpected in both question and answer, neither one wanted to take it back, and were rocked to the core by the implications of what had just occurred. There were differences in location, language, religion, culture... plus the fact that they had been in each other's presence a grand total of four days. K and I talked a lot that night, and the rest of the trip. She looked at it from every angle, analyzing her suddenly impulsive nature, and came to the same conclusion - that she wanted to marry him and probably knew it from the first day they had met. They wed in Seattle and moved back to Mexico for a while, and now are back in town with their bilingual baby boy. Bridging the two (or more) cultures hasn't been easy (he's originally from Colombia), but their commitment to each other and willingness to sacrifice has been wonderful to see.

So if anyone wants a chaperone to bring to a tropical locale and interview a potential honey, I'm totally 1 for 1 and available anytime.

posted by LadyJay @ 7:52 AM