Sorry, Boyfriend: The Mark Ballas Edition

You know what takes the edge off being sexually harassed by students? Dancing with the Stars. There is something incredibly endearing about watching B-List celebrities or fallen A-List celebrities or sports stars try to do the rumba, and on Monday nights I park myself in front of the television and try to make it through the show without hyperventilating.

It never fails--there's always someone on Dancing with the Stars that I can lust after. Recall the Helio Castroneves incident? Well, that type of thing is happening again, except this season I have developed multiple crushes. For some reason, I find pretty much everyone on this current season to be as charming as all get out. Especially the professional dancers. Especially Mark Ballas. So, here we go:

Sorry, Boyfriend, but I am in love with Mark Ballas.

Mark Ballas is enough to make me want to enroll in acting classes just so that I can become some B-List star and land a gig on Dancing with the Stars, where I will be his one, his only, his partner for all those sexy Latin dances. I want him to murmur the phrase hip-action! to me until my brain leaks out my ear.

Last week when Amy was in town, we had the pleasure of watching the show together, and that meant we got eighteen different kinds of worked up about Mark Ballas whenever he appeared on screen. Then, after we had thoroughly discussed the reasons we thought he was just so hot, we got curious about him. We thought we should Google him. And we did. And we found out that Mark Ballas is a singer. A singer who plays the guitar. A singer who plays the guitar in a band he formed with another of the dancers from the show. Oh, it was too much!

Mark Ballas reminds me of a lot of people. Sometimes he reminds me of the old New Boy, what with the dark hair and tan skin, those curls. Sometimes he reminds me of a ton of the boys I had crushes on during college--preppy boys with cute hats, crisp shirts, clean sneakers. He reminds me of a boy who loves his mother a whole lot. I want to bake him cookies.

Oh, but I want to do more than bake cookies for him. I want to learn to dance for him. With him. Listen, I would be the world's worst dancer. That much is fact. I wouldn't be able to contort my body or wiggle my hips or do any of those things the judges of the show are always yapping about. After all, I am the girl who, when she was in the local pageant during her senior year and thus required to do a group dance--a swing dance--fouled it up but good almost every single time she did it. When our perky, blond-haired, recently-engaged-and-flaunting-her-ring-every-chance-she-got dance instructor ever sighed and called the number to a halt, it was usually on my behalf. My jazz hands? Not jazzy. My snaps and flips? Ugly. My timing? Sucky. Which is a shame because I really, really, really love to dance. Some of the moves I can throw down in my bedroom? Brilliant. And I would try so hard to get it together if just Mark Ballas would dance with me.

Of course, I'm not going to take him away from his current girlfriend. I wouldn't dream of it! After all, they have a lovely story. A classic story. It was all Disney-pop-sensation-and-hero-to-adolescent-girls-everywhere meets fine-assed-ballroom-champion. A few foxtrots, a few jives, a few waltzes and poof!

And who can blame them? They were stuck in a stuffy studio for weeks. They had only each other. They practiced for hours and hours on end. They were half-clothed and sweaty and they had to hold each other like they were lovers. So why not actually become lovers? Man, I wouldn't have been able to hold out very long at all. The first time that boy slanted his eyes at me in just the right kind of way, I would've had him up against the wall. And if that moment had occurred after hours of practice which left us both smelling like sour dishrags, so be it. I wouldn't have cared. I wouldn't have even insisted on going off and taking a shower before stepping back into the studio, suddenly smelling decidedly un-dishrag-y. I would've had him up against the wall even if I was dirty and sweaty and smelly, even if my hair was a frazzled nest on the top of my head, even if my muscles ached and ached and ached. And, coming from a girl who for years had to shower immediately after coming home from waitressing so she no longer would smell like the fryer, that's quite a big deal.

Oh just try to tell me you wouldn't feel the same way. Just you try.