Learning Day: Become a Man of Confi-DANCE

Sometimes when you look at a book title, you can hear the implied flourish it’s meant to be pronounced with. You can’t properly say the title of this book out loud without a full performance.

Tons of self-help books will tell you how to gain confidence, but only one teaches a patented system for confi-DANCE (twirl, step ball change, pivot, pivot, pull a sparkler out of your pocket. Oh shit, the sparkler isn’t lighting. You should have bought a better lighter, you piece of shit. Wait, there it goes, twirl, twirl, twirl, bow). That is how you properly perform the title of this book.

I know what you’re probably thinking, “a self-help book that tells you to dance out your feelings? Women and Kevin Bacon have been doing that for decades.” However, becoming a man of confi-DANCE is about much more than just dancing. It’s also about getting to touch a human woman through the medium of dance.

It’s true that Raoul Weinstein, much like the humble peacock, is an expert at getting women’s attention through the medium of dance. In fact, he’s attracted two wives and two fiances, so if doing something a lot makes you an expert at it, this man is a certified commitment expert. When I researched him for this article, I couldn’t find much beyond this book and an engagement ring he was selling on Nextdoor so…Not sure things worked out with engagement number four either. When his fourth wife sashayed away from him, do you think she was filled with Confi-DANCE that it wasn’t working out? Do you think she’ll get the resi-DANCE?

He mentions how he’s now happily in love with his finance Nancy at the time he wrote the book, but there was a difficult period in his life when he was robbed of his confi-DANCE by a woman named Barbara Larson. After he and Barb broke up, he found it difficult to go to dances she was also attending and had to switch dance teachers and get a whole new group of dance friends. I thought it was pretty nuts that not only does he mention Barb by first and last name, but he prints a full body picture of her in the book. Thank God he left out her home address and a list of her food allergies. Here she is, Raoul hopes she doesn’t suffer some kind of acci-DANCE:

Several pictures of the author are featured in this book; some are labeled with his initials RW, while others are labeled MOC for Man Of Confi-DANCE. I think it’s worth noting that dancing with Barb is labeled RW while later, when he’s shown dancing with an Elvis, it’s MOC. It’s a profound metaphor for how Barbara Larson (pictured above) stole his confi-DANCE.

It may sound like I’m being a little harsh on Raoul. Who among us hasn’t been burned by a Barb? I know that he did fine during his indepen-DANCE because of chapter five’s title:

Try saying that while sobbing profusely. Who needs the comfort of a loving woman when you have the macarena to keep you warm at night? Now shut up and listen to this extremely, extremely divorced man tell you why you should buy his book about meeting women through the medium of dance.

He goes on to suggest that if a woman wants to encourage a man to learn how to dance, she could give him this book or perhaps even leave it lying around the house as a little hint hint. It’s a pretty good advertisement for the book that may have trouble reaching new readers since it’s located a good 30 pages into a truly unappealing book.

Also, it’s a pretty bold move to say, “I’ve written a book about dancing. No, it will not in any way teach you how to dance. It will teach you to want to learn to dance.” Seems like if you’ve already purchased the book about dancing, you probably already achieved what the book is designed to help you accomplish. Why would you open this book up if you didn’t want to learn to dance unless you were cursed by a wizard to only read books you hate? I work with men like that, but it seems like a pretty small target audience.

I would categorize this book as a memoir disguised as a self-help book. It’s mainly a collection of stories about how Raoul is cool and a good dancer. It’s also a long advertisement for being a cruise ship dance host, which is a man with ballroom dancing experience who gets to go on ballroom dancing cruises for free if he’s willing to dance with the female guests since more women than men tend to book those cruises. It doesn’t have much to say about confidence or self-esteem other than the deep revelation that dancing with beautiful women might make you feel pretty good! Let’s take a look at the book’s definition of a man of confi-DANCE.

This definition seems to imply that if you collect dance skills like Pokémon, you will one day level up to confi-DANCE. They sure did have to add a lot of caveats to that definition, though. He wrote it like a clause in a legal contract. It’s like he was worried someone would say, “Well, what if I ask the queen of England to do the worm, and she turns me down? Am I not a man of confi-DANCE? This book should give me the skills to convince a monarch to get funky, or I want my money back. This book will one day be evi-DANCE in small claims court.

A lot of the advice in this book seems to expect a combative attitude from others. For example, Raoul says that dancing with a woman isn’t only fun because you get to touch them and force them to give you their undivided attention for the length of a song, but because you get to tell your partner what to do for once! Warning: this passage includes strong language, including repeated usage of the phrase “you da man.”

Whoops, sounds like this guy has mistaken a wife for a mommy. This attitude toward women makes me think that despite what he thinks, dancing will eventually leave him too. Luckily, Raol isn’t the only one giving testimony to the benefits of dancing in this book. He also includes stories from his fellow dance pals, and they’re even nice enough to buy into his Confi-DANCE premise as they explain why they too like dancing.

It’s true, men, we’ve said it over and over again in this book. Women will put up with a total weirdo as long as he can do the hustle. The miracle of getting attention from women will completely fix your self-esteem. Base your entire self worth on others’ opinion of you! That always works out great!

You might be wondering what actual solid advice this man has about dancing and I’ve got to say there just isn’t much. We get a few descriptions of dances, but they’re mostly thirsty and unhelpful.

What is close body contact position? That sounds like step 3 in a CPR class manual. “Place the choking victim in close body contact position.” There’s also a lot of pictures of Raoul looking very confident next to various cultural landmarks, and one camel.

Unfortunately that is all the wisdom this book has to impart. Learning that a man went on a lot of cruises has not at all improved my confi-DANCE. However, it did instill in me a deep suspicion of Barbara Larson, and I don’t think that’s mere coinci-DANCE.

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