Chris Jones: I so badly want to be able to dance
I AM going to tread on her toes.
No, worse, I am going to crush them to a fine paste all over the floor, leaving her writhing in agony and regretting the decision to ever attend an evening class.
It will be the worst dance-related tragedy since... well... Ann Widdecombe.
Given these disproportionate toe-crushing fears, it is unsurprising that I can barely keep time or indeed move with anything in the same postal district as elegance.
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My Argentine Tango is less Fred Astaire, more falling-down-the-stairs; as graceful as a cow on ice.
I am tense, awkward and frustrated but I don't want to give up. I want to be able to dance.
As you can possibly gather, this week I took a dancing lesson and, while I wouldn't say it went well, it did at least go, I did at least complete it.
Why do this?
I can't dance very well. I don't want to say I can't dance at all; after all, apparently, most people can dance.
I just can't dance well, or even acceptably competently.
And the thing is, I'm 29 and I feel I have already defined myself as "someone who can't dance" and there is a lazy possibility I might continue to do so for my entire life.
I give this feeble explanation every time I see the sparkle of a mirror ball or hear the fuzzy, inaudible chuckles of a disco DJ.
I don't want to be like this, though. Dancing looks fun. I watch people moving to music and am filled with a genuine envy. I love music and rhythm and play a few instruments well.
I don't want much; I don't want to win a ballroom trophy or appear in a street dance film. I just want to be able to hear a good song and dance along in time, anonymously, with friends in a club.
I want to be able to take my wife by the hand on our wedding day and lead her to the dance floor, lost in the private romance of the public moment, moving smoothly in time together, not clanking along like a drunk robot.
I want the standard, basic level of competence it seems so many other people have. I want to be able to enjoy dancing, to relish a night out which might include it, rather than looking forward to it about as much as you might an amputation.
But to get there, I need practice. My co-ordination is poor, I find telling left from right hard and I am fatally self-conscious about my awkwardness, which only increases the horror.
I have tried a few martial arts (basically dancing speeded up, right?) and have quit after about two months, frightened not so much about being punched in the face but about messing up the angle of timing of this block or that twist. Which would, of course, be the primary concern for anyone being smashed up in a dark alleyway.
And Argentine Tango was a tough choice as a first dance class: the website WikiDance gleefully tells me it is a dance known as "complex and difficult to learn".
So, maybe it's not quite right. But there are other classes, other dances.
And one day, when you look upon a mass of people bobbing around, roughly in time to Deee-Lite's Groove is in the Heart, one of those people might be me.
It is important to have a dream.
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