Hold Me Tight and Tango Me Home (11 page)

“You don’t want to be judged,” I said.

He nodded. “Probably.”

After Peter tied his laces, he led me to the center of the floor. We started in open embrace, but he moved me so that I stood
right at his side. He placed his foot at the outside of mine, pulled my full weight against him, and then whispered, “Relax.” I was plank stiff, leaning against him.

“Even though you’re just learning, you’re fun to dance with,” he said. “You don’t care if I add moves that aren’t really tango.”

“That wasn’t a tango step?” I asked.

“No, I made it up.”

I came to learn that Peter improvised a lot; he had trained as a modern dancer, and we liked to just walk, side by side, hitting beats as our feet landed. He’d spin me and I’d spot myself the way I had learned in salsa. When I danced with Peter I forgot about worrying; I just let go, realizing that I was really dancing — fully in the moment, like a meditation — and when I lost myself like that, I stopped caring how I looked or who was watching.

The song “Libertango,” by Astor Piazzolla, came on and Peter grabbed me again. We walked, hitting the beat. Then he added a syncopation and also stepped on the off-beat; our legs battled and synchronized at the same time. Piazzolla was one of Argentina’s greatest composers. Though many of this compositions are not danceable, his influence on contemporary tango is immense and also ties New York to the evolution of this music and dance. Piazzolla’s family moved from the Mar de la Plata in Argentina to New York City in 1925, when he was four years old. He spent a good portion of his childhood learning classical music from his next-door neighbor, Hungarian pianist Béla Wilda, who had studied with the great Sergei Rachmaninoff. It was also the time
of the Harlem Renaissance, and the jazz played then would later influence Piazzolla. He met Carlos Gardel, the leading singer of tango, when Gardel was at the height of his fame. Gardel took a liking to him and let Piazzolla accompany him on shopping trips around New York. Piazzolla translated for the great singer and occasionally played the bandoneón for Gardel, who let him act the part of a newspaper boy in his film
El Día que Me Quieras
(The Day You Love Me).

Audiences throughout Latin America packed movie houses for the Spanish-language musicals in which Gardel starred, oftentimes insisting that the scenes in which he sang be rewound for encores. Gardel’s voice relayed the laments of a million sorrows and immeasurable heartbreak; it was bigger than his brief, remarkable life. He died in 1935 at the peak of his career, when his plane crashed in Colombia. This sent the South American continent into grieving, and Gardel was canonized as the unofficial saint of the Southern Hemisphere and guardian angel of the milonga.

The tango waned after that, but it wasn’t due only to Gardel’s death. In the 1930s the Great Depression had hit the United States, and more people gathered in food lines than in dance halls. The Depression affected Argentina as well, and this, coupled with the 1930 military coup that forced President Hipólito Yrigoyen from power, created a somber and repressive atmosphere.

Still, Piazzolla carried on, playing in Argentina, Europe, Latin America, and the United States. His music evolved into something sophisticated that was meant to be listened to, not danced
to. In many of Piazzolla’s later compositions the tango rhythm is vague and difficult to dance to because of the jazz and classical riffs. Traditional tangueros hated him and believed he was polluting their beloved music. Even Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges, who might himself be considered avant-garde, allegedly stormed out of a Piazzolla concert in 1960, saying, “I’m leaving. They aren’t playing tangos today.” (The two geniuses would later collaborate.)

“Libertango,” however, is very danceable and perfect for someone like Peter, who makes up his own steps and blurs the boundaries of tradition. After the song ended, Peter and I practiced sacadas. When I anticipated, he reminded me to wait until his leg touched mine.

“I think I might have restless leg syndrome,” I joked.

“Aren’t there meds for that?” he asked.

“I’ve seen ads, but the side effects sound terrible.”

When I finally gave myself over to waiting, the leg that had been displaced almost swung back behind me on its own. The beauty of the move — the woman’s motion comes from a practically involuntary swing — is a little tragic. (Imagine a French film with the main character walking away in the rain and not looking back. The subtitle reads: “This dance step is the sad realization that two people can never truly share the same axis.”)

Peter and I saw Dario start to dance a sacada sequence, or a
cadena
(a chain) with a student from his performance class. He would step into her space and do a sacada, then as they spun together she would in turn step into his space and displace him.
They’d make a half turn and a sacada, then they’d spin again, making their way around the room, never stopping for the basic, just taking each other’s axis, spinning, then taking it again.

“We have to try that,” Peter said.

We followed the line of dance around the room, spinning our small sacadas. I started to understand why Graciela said that the only steps in tango are the side, forward, and back step and all tango dance sequences are a variation of these. Believers in chaos theory locate logic in the seemingly random and disorderly — to find this logic, you have to identify the sequences, or the fractals, which create patterns. Tango is about fractals; the steps are essentially triangles of different shapes and sizes. These fixed patterns, set to melodies and harmonies, give order in the chaos of emotions. Patterns are what we follow to find the source, and in tango, the source is why a person chooses this dance.

A storm will leave wreckage, in which we can see its fractal pattern. In this way the tempest tells its story. The repetition of patterns is what we perceive as harmony in the natural order. It is beauty in its most sublime form. People usually prefer subtle variations on a theme to abrupt change and, as in music, favor harmony over discord. This is why tangueros objected to Piazzolla’s discordant sounds. Harmony makes us believe that all is well in our universe, and even though we might be picking through the flotsam of a storm, we still find comfort in pattern.

Fractal patterns in nature can be refined further and further: the storm to the coastline, the coastline to the boulder, the
boulder to the fossil of a shell embedded in it, the fossil to the microscopic pieces of minerals, the mica and oxide in volcanic stone. Smaller and smaller pieces of the story are fractal patterns, leading back to that initial, singular spark in the primordial puddle.

We can follow these patterns in our lives and trace them back. Claire’s betrayal by her boyfriend is merely the larger part of the wreckage left by her father. Peter’s shame at telling people he’s making a film about gay men, his fear of being judged, goes back to many other moments in his life. Allen’s desire to learn how to talk with women, to take them in his arms, comes after what were probably many mishaps and embarrassments. For me, marrying a man who wasn’t committed to me, who didn’t love me fully, goes back to my seeking approval from those who are least likely to give it. I wanted to change this. The dance steps give us the route back to the sources of human sorrow and human happiness. And if sorrow can duplicate itself, then happiness must be able to do so as well. If we follow a different pattern or find a new rhythm, then a new sequence, a new cadena, can be formed.

S
OME MEN LIKE
the woman’s gancho to be hard and smile at the erotic impulse of a woman’s leg snapping against theirs. Others prefer a more sedate gancho, a gentle swing of the follower’s leg hooking into theirs. Usually it isn’t a slow, seductive move; rather, it’s saucy and a little dangerous. Imagine a hit, a kiss, a hug, a slap.

You learn the gancho by teetering on one foot (which is stuck in a two-inch stiletto) like a precarious stork. When you feel your partner bend his leg and twist his torso, you wind your upper body around his and try to relax your legs and let them swing, based on the motion of your leader and the energy he exerts. Adapting to one man is hard enough, never mind adjusting to many men. Irish Guy had wanted me to do it so he could really feel it.

“But my high heel could really hurt you,” I said. “Safety first. Then when I learn it, I will gancho you like a cowgirl.” Hipster liked one slow, soft flick of the heel that involved a sexy winding
of legs, and Martial Artist informed me that he really didn’t like the gancho much at all. “Just because I know it doesn’t mean I have to use it,” he said. “I’m mastering the unvalued art of restraint,” he said.

“Think of colors as you hear the music,” Graciela said. “If it’s a sharp, clear beat, think red. Staccato. Heat. If it’s long and melodic, lead it white. Soothing and clear.” We rotated partners and I tried the gancho with short men and then tall; they led it gently or firmly, brittlely or flexibly; some led it red, some white, and lots blundered through it in a confounding shade of pink. The gancho requires understanding a man’s intention, inferring his desires, and learning how he likes it to feel — it’s too soft for one, too hard for the next. No wonder this dance came from the brothels.

I used tango to prepare myself for dating again, to understand the intricacies of romantic negotiation. Friends had convinced me that the fastest way to recover from divorce would be to Internet date. Since I had stopped crying in public, I figured that I was ready. I went over to Amy and Isaac’s to write an online profile. I wanted both a male and a female perspective — it was marketing, after all. I looked over the Craigslist personals for Men Looking for Women and was aghast.

WARM OIL MASSAGE FOR A WOMAN WITH CURVES — 38 (M
ANHATTAN
)

Y
OUR
S
EXY
S
ECRET
L
OVER
— 32 (NYC)
LARGE NIPPLE FETISH
Y
OU
+ M
E
= PHOTO

Finally I burst out laughing. “No way. I can’t do this,” I told Amy.

“Oh, that site is for sex workers,” Amy said. “Normal people don’t go to Craigslist.” We poured ourselves more wine and looked over some tamer dating sites. It was like catalogue shopping. We came across a man dressed in hunting camouflage fatigues who appeared to be holding a large gun. He was looking for someone who was “kind and compassionate.”

“To go kill animals with,” I said.

We laughed at the many poorly cropped images. Men had simply cut out ex-girlfriends, but something always remained, a hand or a strand of hair. Then we found a skinny bald guy standing on a boulder with his knobby knees exposed, who had listed “simultaneous orgasms” as something he couldn’t live without, and we had to wipe tears from our eyes.

Amy told me about Isaac’s personal ad. They actually met through mutual friends, but at the time, Isaac had an online dating profile. He was a catch, handsome and intelligent, but didn’t get one response. Apparently a friend “styled” him and helped him write his entry. For his picture he wore a shiny disco shirt and his hair was shaped into a pompadour. Amy told me that the profile ended with the catch phrase “Doesn’t anyone out there want to get their funk on?” We laughed so hard we pounded the table.

The unspoken rules are that guys who don’t mention sex in their profile are likely to get more dates, and women should never mention marriage or babies. But over and over again, these rules were broken. As we perused both sexes’ profiles I learned
something I had never known about New Yorkers: They all loved the outdoors — none were indoorsy. Odd for the most crowded, urban metropolis in the United States, where people prized their expensive shoes. There were also a surprising number of jazz lovers.

Isaac warned me against mentioning dancing: He believed it would scare men off. They might think that I expected a boyfriend to learn to do it. I just slipped a reference in once, when filling in the blanks on one site. “________ is sexy . . . but ________ is sexier.” I typed in “salsa” then “tango.”

I posted my personal ad and waited. It felt kind of like dropping a fishing pole in the water, then wandering off to do something else while it bobbed.

At the practica, I kept focused on getting ready to date. I stood at the side of the floor, waiting to be asked to dance. I wanted to look open but not too eager. I caught myself folding my arms across my chest. This defensive stance was surely a deterrent; I dropped my arms and tried to look alert. When men passed by without making eye contact, I folded my arms back across my chest. Then, after standing alone for a few moments, I let them dangle.

I had learned about certain body language, mostly from teaching. I had walked into my freshman composition classroom, a required course, and observed my students slouching in their seats, heads nodding toward their chests from drowsiness, jaws slack, and announced, “If I knew how to read body language, I’m sure I’d be offended right now.” In creative writing
classes, an elective, everyone was sitting at attention, shoulders squared, ready to go.

I was unsure of what posture meant “available but not desperate” at the side of a dance floor. Dance is a coded language. The steps are the vocabulary and grammar; the sequences that come from putting steps together are the syntax. Once, years ago when I was learning the mambo jazz step at a salsa class, I was reminded of Emily Dickinson’s poems. I was teaching an introduction to literature survey course at the time. The salsa jazz step ends abruptly, on an off-beat, and it felt like the syntax Dickinson might use: “A poor — torn heart — a tattered heart —”

In various styles of tango songs, I could hear some of the poets whom I had taught to many a listless student: In the songs that hit a strong, fast beat, there’s the meter of John Donne’s “Death be not proud, though some have called thee.” More melodious songs reminded me of the sexy alliteration of Walt Whitman, such as “Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.” And the gancho? The sharp, snappy hook? It can be upbeat or angry or sexy, like the Dylan Thomas poem “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night.”