The Day I Met My Filipino Partner

It was October 1993. I had seen him around the same bars I frequented. He had approached me on a few occassions asking me to dance. I didn't accept his offer. Reflecting back, it was not because I was not attracted to him, it was just because at those very instances, I did not feel like dancing, or I was chatting with a friend.
Halloween night, I see him again, he approached me while I was at the pool table and asked me again, if I would like to dance. I said, "sorry, but I"m almost up to play pool, maybe some other time?" He said OK and turned and walked away sort of dejected. Almost immediately I turned around and saw a friend approaching that I hadn't seen in about 5 years. I was sooo excited to see him. We hugged and he said come one let's go dance and catch up. So I said ok. We ran out to the dance floor and began dancing and chatting and laughing. I turned around and saw that same asian guy standing on the side of the dance floor looking at me in a way not very different than if you saw your pet hit by a car. I stopped dancing immediately and told my friend, "I have to go fix something". I went to him and introduced myself, he called himself Ed. I told him why he found me dancing and I told him I flet so badly. We began talking and within one hour we were showing affection.
Our first date was the very next evening. Ever since that, we were together and getting ready to celebrate our 16th year together.

To be completely honest, I was not at all familiar with Filipino people or their culture. As a matter of fact, at the time, I could not distinquish filipinos from spanish or mexican.

Of course now after so many years submerged in the culture and also being an intermediate level tagalog speaker...that is NOT the case any more.