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Chablis, “you can see they’ve all lost their toenails from kicking and being kicked so much. They’re all bruises, scrapes and scars. From the waist down, I mean. But in case you haven’t noticed, they’re a bunch of queers. Why do you think they hug and pound on each other the way they do over a silly goal? They make huge pile-ups and weep for joy. I think the real reason they fall all over each other is they’re queer.”
    The Chablis lubricated her smooth coastal accent, erasing the s’s from most words and softening the d’s.
    â€œSo are you going to let me disappear among all the little queers waiting on us or are we going to dance? Because what I need is a damn good rumba to clear out my fallopian tubes. And it’ll be good for your kidneys.”
    She caught the waiter’s eye with an elaborate set of gestures and, when he came, said, “I think you brought us domestic wine because it gives me an urgent need to go to the bathroom. The gentleman is very angry.”
    â€œIt’s Chablis from France, ma’am.”
    â€œThen why does it make me want to pee so badly? It tastes like domestic piss to me. Where’s the restroom?”
    At 11:00, in a climax of trombones and bongos audible from the street, we entered the Nader, a sports center in the La Merced district with a ballroom that on weekends drew huge crowds for the best dance music in the city. It was a two-story hulk with a central dance floor that could accommodate as many as 500 couples. The bands came from everywhere. There was New York
salsa,
Jorrín and his band plus the Mexican groups then reviving music from the tropics.
    The Náder was rocking:
    Your case makes me so sad
    So sad
    How sad I am
    your case is mental
    The group
La Libertad
was performing in a huge cage at the rear of the ballroom. A sweating mass of humanity writhed about the dance floor in its own confusion. Waiters circulated in the aisles, and groups of half-drunk teenagers imbibed and argued heatedly among themselves.
La Libertad
overflowed with sweat, chaos and insousciance as its patrons commemorated 60 peaceful years of Mexican Revolution.
    For 100 pesos the waiter got us a corner table. We ordered drinks and danced, that is, Anabela danced with a precision and rhythm I had forgotten. I remembered her dancing with Rojano at a competition in Villa del Mar during a carnival that featured Lobo and Melón. I watched them move among the other dancers, circling each other, moving their feet and hips with dazzling speed and without ever missing a beat. At times they danced counter-rhythms to the music, at others they picked up on themes that were inaudible until they were expressed visually in their dancing. They didn’t win, but, as I watched them holding onto each other bathed in sweat, I saw them as a couple for the first time and realized how blind I’d been to the intensity of Rojano’s pursuit of Anabela.
    â€œIt’s been ten years since I so much as danced in my own living room,” Anabela said over the rim of her vodka. “Ten wasted years in the middle of nowhere, letting the music empty out of my body. Because music is like the muscles in your body. You either use it or lose it. It’s not like women or houses that stay with you forever.”
    She took a drink, put her elbows on the table and leaned forward the better to look at me.
    â€œMaybe you’ll turn out queer on me after all too, just like the politicians and soccer players. But I’m going to tell you something. Do you want me to?”
    â€œIf you like, tell me.”
    â€œNo, no, no. Don’t come onto me with platitudes and all that queer stuff. Say you’re dying for me to tell you, that waiting for me to tell you is driving you crazy.”
    â€œTell me.”
    â€œAre you desperate for me to tell you? Or do you just want me to tell you as if I were one of your usual queers, just to humor