佚名/Anonymous
I began to learn about love in dancing school,at age 12.I remember thinking on the first day I was going to fall madly in love with one of the boys and spend the next years of my life kissing and waltzing.
During class,however,I sat among the girls,waiting for a boy to ask me to dance.To my complete shock,I was consistently one of the last to be asked.At first I thought the boys had made a terrible mistake.I was so funny and pretty,and I could beat everyone I knew at tennis and climb trees faster than a cat.Why didnt they dash toward me?
Yet class after class.I watched boys dressed in blue blazers and gray pants head toward girls in flowered shifts whose perfect ponytails swung back and forth like metronomes.They fell easily into step with one another in a way that was completely mysterious to me.I came to believe that love belonged only to those who glided,who never shimmied up trees or even really touched the ground.
By the time I was 13，I knew how to subtly tilt my head and make my tears fall back into my eyes,instead of down my cheeks,when no one asked me to dance.I also discovered the“power room”，which became my softly lit,reliable retreat.Whenever I started to cry,Id excuse myself and run in there,
I finally stopped crying when I met Matt,who was quiet and hung out on the edges of the room.When we danced for the first time,he wouldnt even look me in the eyes.But he was cute,and he told great stories.We became good buddies,dancing every dance together until the end of school.I learned from him my most important early lesson about romance:that the potential for love exists in corners,in the most unlikely as well as the most obvious places.
For years my love life continued to be one long tragicomic novel.In college I fell in love with a tall English major who rode a motorcycle.He stood me up on our sixth date-an afternoon of sky diving.I jumped out of the plane alone and landed in a parking lot.
In my mid-20s I moved to New York City where love is as hard to find as a legal parking spot.My first Valentines Day there,I went on a date to a crowded bar on the Upper West Side.Halfway through dinner,my date excused himself and never returned.