In Spanish, it means sauce

Of all the places for it to happen, I wouldn't have expected it to happen in a Cuban Salsa lesson. I was at a Salsa, Bachata and Kizomba festival in Liverpool and, of those styles, Cuban Salsa was the one I'd danced the most. Yes, in Cuba they call it Casino, but that obviously causes confusion in this part of the world. I know some call it Salsa Cubana, but to me that sounds like a cocktail - the kind you drink and then wonder why you've woken up in your wardrobe, clutching a note in your own handwriting which tells you that Narnia doesn't exist.

Anyway, I'm calling it Cuban Salsa and, when this happened, I'd been dancing the style for almost two years. The class hadn't been particularly challenging, but I'd been off my game for most of the weekend. I was there mainly because I'd won two passes for the weekend (the other one meant that I was accompanied by a good friend), and was determined to make good use of my prize.

I remember winning the passes, and being shocked by my good fortune. I remember the lady who was telling me about what I'd actually won saying that I didn't look very happy, but I didn't fully understand what was happening. To be honest, I feel a little uncomfortable in that kind of situation, and I'm always glad when it's over: I suppose, in that respect, it was a little like hearing a song by Justin Timberlake.

I was distracted. It's no excuse, because I know Cuban Salsa well enough, in theory, to avoid accidents like the one that happened. I also have no idea how it happened. I was going through the movements that had been shown to us at that point in the class, and the young lady in question wasn't the first to go through that part of the sequence with me, and yet my finger still went up her nostril.

I recoiled. I was aware that my finger had entered a strange woman's orifice and come into contact with bodily fluid. If it's still the same as it was when I was in my early twenties, then the polite thing would have been to buy her dinner first. I also thought that I should phone my fiancée and tell her how much I loved her.

The best way I can describe the immediate discomfort I felt would be to compare it to the time I saw a photo of a particularly creepy uncle in a pair of swimming trunks. I've no idea what the photo was doing in the swimming trunks, or to whom the trunks belonged, and those factors contributed in no small way to the feeling of discomfort.

After the class, I approached her, and apologised for the violation of her nasal passage. She replied that I had actually done her a favour, because one of the men had been wearing a particularly nasty cologne, and our little accident meant that she could no longer smell it so strongly. She also said that, as special as the moment had been for her, it was something we should never talk about again.

Other than that, it was quite a good weekend.