Alice and ballroom dancing

Below is an excerpt from a school assignment my friend’s son wrote about his father, ballroom dancing, and a woman named Alice. 

It had been posted to an online blog for teen writers. 

Thanks, S.M., for the url and access. 

My Mom taught me that we learned what to expect from the people we dealt with mostly by interacting with them and seeing what happened. 

What I learned about my father by trying to interact with him is that he does not care about other people—be they family, friends, colleagues, or acquaintances. He only pretends to care in order to use them or to “buy” time to halt the problem and get away before it erupt. Let me explain with an example. It involve a woman named Alice. 

Alice is an older woman with whom my father began his ballroom dancing journey: she was his partner in many of the group dance classes, social dance practice sessions and parties because she was more than willing to partner with and to pay for him at a time when he was deficient in both dancing/leading skills and money. 

Alice was also the only person willing to pay the money to bail him out from jail for assaulting my mother. 

For a time, he was quite satisfied with the arrangement with Alice until his dancing/leading skills improved to the point that other women in the dancing community took notice and became eager to partner with and to pay for him. That is when his attitude toward Alice change. Overnight, she became “unbearably ugly” so that he had to put on “blinders” just to partner with her on the dance floor. 

He tried avoiding her through various means: misinforming her about class schedules and studio locations; feeding her the wrong information about which social dancing events he might attend for a particular Friday and/or Saturday, hoping that she would not search for him; telling her he would be at a studio at a certain time only to show up 30 to 45 minutes late, knowing she would not have a partner to practice with and would leave as a result. Had she guessed correctly about where he might be and find him then he would make all kinds of excuses as to why he cannot dance with her. 

One of the excuses was her being “too short” so dancing with her would break his all-important dance frame. Naturally, he would couch these excuses so as not to offend her; thus, instead of him complaining about having to break his frame to accommodate her short stature, he made it seem that he care too much about her dancing progress and that she should not be made to break her frame by dancing with him. 

He is very good at doing that—twisting words and things around so that you feel you owe him because he has your best interest at heart while actually caring little or nothing about you. 

Alice, however, does not give in nor does she give up easily on the person whom she had invested much time and money—a person she had introduced into her network of influential friends and associates—in exchange for a dancing partnership. 

As an unbeatable Viennese Waltz dancer—or so he thought of himself and proclaimed to my mother—within the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, a man whom every women who loves dancing would seek out and fight over among themselves for a chance to dance with, my father hated being stuck dancing with an “ugly old woman” when other equally wealthy and more attractive options are available. In his eyes, Alice might still be an acceptable partner in dance classes as she is a quick learner and able to help him troubleshoot some spotty patterns, but she is no longer a viable dance partner for him at social ballroom dancing events. In those places, she is simply a nuisance to be rid of. 

Now, Alice loves to dance the slow Waltz—it is a dance she could not get enough of but because of the lack of quality male dancer who can lead her through such vigorous routine on the dance floor, she was always in a state of unfulfilled wanting. 

And Alice’s heart-felt longing was something he exploited: on those occasions when he finds himself face-to-face with Alice at the same social gatherings, and tiring of seeing her “ugly and unruly” face that can “dampen the life of any party,” he would wait for her frustration from having to dance with bad leads to build while working himself up to giving her the dance she desires so that she would leave the party in rapture from the Waltz or Viennese Waltz he was willing to “throw her way.” 

He did not mind partnering up with Alice for the East Coast Swing or Jive and Cha-Cha, which he thought she was good at because her feet were quick. And though he minded terribly at the thought of having to waltz through the dance floor with Alice, he saw it as an act of personal sacrifice and contribution for the common good—since he felt that ballroom dancing is a playground reserved only for those with talents, looks, and money, he would see to it that those lacking this trio are encouraged to leave so there would be more space for the ones remaining. He was sure that after having endured all those bad dances for one-third of the social evening, Alice would want to preserve a rapturous memories of having waltzed with the Best Ballroom Male Dancer in Texas by departing for home where she can continue that vision and sensation of having danced the most elegant and beautiful Waltz while being the object of every women’s envy for the entire evening.

And as he had planned, an unknowing and grateful Alice would oblige him by leaving after having been twirled around the dance floor in a spirited and elegant Waltz or Viennese Waltz. 

Whether they are truthful facts or fancy delusions, every time he recite them to me, his eyes swell with pride in having come up with a clever maneuver to rid himself and the social dancing parties of Alice’s presence while making it seem like he was doing Alice a favor for which she owe him. 

I cannot say the same about my feelings toward him—all I felt were unrelenting headaches and nausea, and a need to get away from him. ... 

This post ends here though the writing continues with more detailed reflections and self-understanding.
 
Stay tune, and until next post,
 
We dream / We believe / And we will succeed

About this blog 

Excepting this introduction and the posts that are published after March 2015, this blog mirrored a now out-of-commission blog, http://ya-chang-lin.blogspot.com, which was taken down on October 21, 2013 by its author Phandeluys Truong. 

The author's original contents and supporting documents were captured by multiple means from the above-mentioned blog while it was alive and active. There may have been a glitch here and there that prevented me from downloading the complete blog as it had existed. Thus, readers familiar with the original blog may find a few missing posts and/or comments. Those postings that I was able to grab and preserve in their entirety are reposted here under my name, however, all rights remain that of the original author. 

This series of posts documents the fraudulent, sometimes criminal, and frequent unethical/immoral activities of Ya-Chang Robert Lin, a Taiwanese native of mainland Chinese parentage, who defrauded a naturalized US citizen, Phandeluys Truong, into a marriage that had been his shield against USCIS for his intentional violations of immigration law: 

as a nonimmigrant F-1 student, he had willfully operated an international students recruiting business without prior work authorization from the then United States Immigration and Naturalization Service; 

as President of said business, he had knowingly helped both mainland Chinese and Taiwanese students to evade military drafts in their countries by facilitating their applications to study in the US and abroad; 

as President of said business, he had knowingly helped both mainland Chinese and Taiwanese students looking to enter the United States with the intention of gaining permanent US resident status under the pretense of studying; 

as President of said business, he had purposely evaded paying taxes on the commissions received from it and failed to report the earned income to the IRS by having the payments wired back to Taiwan to his mother Chang Hsueh; 

he had applied for reinstatement of his F-1 or student status and a change of status, while knowingly withheld the preceding facts on his own application for permanent resident and citizenship in the United States. 

And those are just the tip of the iceberg. 

Ya-Chang Robert Lin had been employed at AAFES or The Exchange headquarter in Dallas, Texas as an information technology auditor, where he managed to steal—by downloading to CDs that he kept in his personal possession while abiding for time and opportunities to "do business" in Taiwan and/or China—thousands of his colleagues’ Social Security numbers and personnel files while working on one of its HR projects. The HR data on one of these projects became the basis for an academic paper,  speaking proposal for ISACA, and a consulting business he was "collaborating with " [more like conning other people into developing for him].

Ya-Chang Robert Lin is a reprobate with a seared conscience. Lacking normal capacity for empathy, remorse, and reciprocation of good will, he is addicted to lying, cheating, and stealing for the pure pleasures derived from being able to get away with it. Because he is such a good liar—so charming and well versed in manipulation techniques and acting skills—it is hard to distinguish him from reprobates. 

Ya-Chang Robert Lin was able to dupe some of the smart people in federal government, higher education, and information technology auditing and security. Among his legacy: A son who refused any connection with him and wished that he were dead.