Hold Me Tight and Tango Me Home (13 page)

“He sounds emotionally promiscuous,” a friend told me. “Watch out for that.”

L. arrived late to our second date, at a Spanish tapas bar. That’s when he told me that he had started writing poetry and composing folk songs to perform at open mike night. “Sometimes I read my poetry, but sometimes I go up there with my guitar,” he said. “Either way, I just like to step up to the microphone and put myself out there. I’d really like it if you came and watched me sometime.”

Definitely promiscuous. I had a strong inkling that open mike night would be the end for us. I thought it would be better to stop now and not have to squirm through that experience.

I went to the bathroom and called Claire.

“Hey, I’m still at work,” she said. “I have a big meeting with clients coming up.”

“When you finish, you want to go dance tonight?” I asked her.

“It’s like you’re inside my brain,” she said.

“I hang out there a lot,” I told her. “Just so you know.”

She laughed and said, “Stay in the light and away from the dark, shadowy places. Want to meet in the East Village?”

I returned to the sangria and my date. He was a nice guy. I wanted him to know I thought that, but he wasn’t right for me. Back then, probably nobody was. I thanked him for the date, insisted on paying our bill, and hurried to a milonga taking place nearby in the back room of a Ukrainian restaurant.

The crowd was the usual mix of couples, along with Irish Guy, a few leaders from Turkey, some women from my studio, and a small gang of Argentinean women. These tango mavens had zero body fat, jet-black hair, and fabulous outfits. They danced with equally skilled men whose feet slid preternaturally over the floor as if caressing it.

I felt a light tap on my shoulder and was relieved to find it was Claire.

“I never thought that I’d say this, but I just want to close my eyes and let a man lead me around,” she said. “I’m exhausted. I’ve been negotiating with the contractors all day on this project. It’s not really my job, but the clients keep calling me.”

“I had a date,” I told her. “It didn’t go so well.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I told her. “He’s into reading poetry and playing his guitar at open mikes and he wanted me to go.”

“Ooh. That’s bold on his part,” she said. “Look, you’re probably not ready. You’re not even officially divorced yet. It all takes a while.”

I spotted a few guys from class and danced with one of them. There wasn’t “chemistry,” but dancing with them was pleasant, safe. That’s all I wanted. Afterward I went and stood on the sidelines.

Claire came over and nudged me.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “How’s your evening going?”

“I hate being a beginner,” she said. “Sometimes I feel like I’m improving, then I lose it all and start fumbling.”

“Take it easy on yourself,” I said.

“I don’t think I can do that,” she said.

“It’s just dancing,” I said.

“You don’t really believe that,” she answered.

“No, but I keep telling myself I do,” I said.

We both left a little after midnight and walked to the subway, clutching our bags, which bulged with dance shoes.

Later that night I checked my e-mails. A married man — he’d stated it clearly on his profile — had contacted me through the dating site. His “photo” was just a black-and-white drawing of an eye. I wanted to send him a nasty message, tell him how he’s going to ruin his wife’s life, but I didn’t. Very late that night my phone rang, and when I answered, the caller didn’t say a word; it was the void, that place to which my husband, the life I had imagined for myself, had disappeared.

The next day I took down my profile and started dressing for a milonga. Black underwear, black bra, black hose, black skirt, black top, black shoes. Once at the milonga, I changed shoes
and then stood on the edge of the dance floor, arms crossed to warm myself. Then I remembered to let them dangle and waited to be asked to dance. Here, it was no longer New York City but any city; the tango music pushed back the world outside as the lyrics of “Donde Estás Corazón,” sung in a high throaty call by Teresita Asprella, dominated the room. “
¿Donde estás corazón? / No oigo tu palpitar, / Es tan grande el dolor / que no puedo llorar. / Yo quisiera llorary no tengo más llanto / la quería yo tanto y se fue para no retornar.
” (Where are you, my heart? / I don’t hear your beat / My pain is so great / that I can’t even cry. / I wish I could cry / but I have no more tears / All this love that I had for him and he left me never to return.)

C
LAIRE AND
I met at the subway station between our apartments and headed into Manhattan for a Friday-night milonga.

“Whenever I buy clothes now,” Claire said, “I think, Can I use these for tango? and if the answer is no, I don’t buy them.”

“I think I have to start wearing totally flat shoes in my everyday life,” I said. “To save my feet for tango.”

“That’s a good idea,” she answered. “I need new dancing shoes. The suede wore right off my last pair.”

The people with whom Claire shared an office referred to it as the Tango Hole; when she started talking about tango, she couldn’t stop. This phrase is also used when friends disappear, as in “Have you seen Fred lately? No, he’s gone into the Tango Hole.” The tanguero, no longer interested in dinner parties, cocktail hours, and theater tickets, goes dancing every night.

Some friends understood. When I started salsa, I took a balanced approach. I saw my friends on certain nights, danced a
few times a week. And I advanced much more slowly because of it. This time I’d be available for weekend brunch with nondancers, but not much else.

At Eighth Avenue, Claire and I got off the subway and started walking toward a brick building shaped like an isosceles triangle and wedged into a corner of a busy intersection. Traffic flowed on all sides of it. The meatpacking district didn’t smell of animal offal as it once did, and the catcalls of suspiciously large-boned ladies-of-the-night no longer filled the air. Rather, Hummer limousines dropped off bar hoppers, and beautiful people stomped down the streets in weather-defying fashions. Glancing through windows of dimly lit restaurants, we saw well-heeled customers pick at small platefuls of food. This did not concern us.

We rang the bell, and when someone answered the intercom we both yelled, “Tango!” We climbed the three flights of stairs to the dance studio, Triangulo, which had been named for the building and the dance as well — the steps, at least in essence, outline acute triangles. Glints from strings of white lights hung along an exposed-brick wall reflected in the mirrors on the opposite wall. The windows overlooked the busy streets and sidewalks, and sometimes the air of intrigue, the thrill of the night, floated up to us from the partyers below. On Fridays we were a small, insular crowd, tucked away in our private little boomerang-shaped corner.

Peter came hurrying toward me. “Where have you been?” he asked. “Nobody wants to dance with me.”

“Who did you ask?” I answered, surveying the room.

“That guy over there,” he said. He pointed to a large, burly Russian man.

“I wouldn’t take that too personally,” I told him. “Ask a woman.”

As I changed shoes, I noticed the couple we most enjoyed watching. Their dancing bordered on the violent; every step, every kick, every spark of contact smoldered with lust.

“Their ganchos are so high, some places ask them to leave,” Peter had told me.

The woman wore a plaid super-miniskirt and wielded her salmon pink, spiked dance heels like a martial artist. Her partner twirled her once, and when her back was to his stomach, she whipped her leg up between his and we could hear it make contact with his back. We all winced a little at the thump of impact. They both began to kick ganchos; their legs hooked, then they spun together. In a very untraditional move, they went from face-to-face to grasping the pole in the center of the room and swinging around it.

“The gossip is that she’s married but they are having a torrid affair,” Peter whispered to me.

“Wonder what she is telling her husband when she’s leaving the house dressed in that getup?” I mused.

By this time she had tied up her tank top to reveal her lean torso. She was a flurry of legs, stomach, and breasts, spinning around her partner, as if she were the flames of a fire and he were tied to a stake in the center of it. Oh, but he looked like he was enjoying himself. At first we laughed but then stopped and
stared in respect. They turned in a smooth arc, her body as stiff as a plank when she faced away from him.

Allen joined us. “I asked her to dance once.”

We didn’t mean to hurt his feelings, but both Peter and I started chuckling. We couldn’t imagine Allen with such a partner, and in fact, he had learned that she danced with only one man. They had become this singular phenomenon. Over the course of the evening they spoke to no one else, acknowledged no one else. Still, we respected Allen for trying out his newfound boldness by approaching Tango Dominatrix.

“Ambitious,” I said. “And kind of punishment-seeking.”

“I hadn’t seen her dance yet,” he admitted.

Just then she spun, whipped her leg up through her partner’s spread legs, and almost whacked him on the back with her foot.

“Enough watching. We’ve got to learn the
volcada
,” Peter said, and took me out to the floor.

I once considered this “falling step” to be my Holy Grail, a movement so achingly beautiful I thought I would be content to just know it. The man steps backward, pulling the woman off her axis, and her full weight presses against him; her free leg extends and searches, making a sweep of the area where he once stood. There is something so vulnerable and touching in that moment; the yearning it expresses was almost unbearable to watch.

Neither Peter nor I had been formally taught the volcada in class, so when he stepped back and pulled me off my axis, my lower back jackknifed and I gasped in pain. It didn’t feel poetic,
just wrong. But I sucked in my breath and we tried a few more times, until he finally said, “Stop grimacing.”

“We can’t be doing this right,” I said, “or followers would all be in back braces.”

We noticed a couple who took the tango very seriously. They were always practicing and working on one step or another. Peter knew them and asked the guy to demonstrate. The man led me through the step, and when my back buckled, he said, “You have to engage your abs for this. Really engage.”

Afterward Peter spoke with the man, who said: “We’re going to the tango festival in Buenos Aires. We registered for four classes a day. It’s not going to be a relaxing vacation; we know it’s going to be a lot of work but worth it.”

When he danced off, I commented to Peter, “Oh, brother, they aren’t even professional dancers. ‘A working vacation . . .’? That’s crazy.”

“It’s about being the best at what you do,” Peter said.

“Such a New York City attitude to life,” I said. “Even at hobbies everyone is so ambitious.”

Peter replied, “Come on. We need to get ready for the Gay Olympics. I’m sure tango is considered a sport there.”

I laughed and we made our way to the floor and into the line of dance. During the volcada Peter slid backward, as his shoes had no grip, and since I was off my axis, I couldn’t help right us. We started sliding to the floor, our chests connected, our legs slipping out behind us. At the last moment, Peter caught a pole with one hand and slowly walked us back to upright.

“Whew,” I said. “That was close.”

Then I spotted a man with whom I loved dancing and noticed that his girlfriend wasn’t around. He was like my tango secret lover: We were having an approximation of an affair at the milongas. When she hadn’t shown up yet, or had gone to the bathroom or danced with someone else, we sought each other out. He danced close embrace, with steady steps broken occasionally by long strides; then he walked in a quick, syncopated pattern. Slightly shorter than I am, he had a round chest that was easy to lean into. His blond hair stuck out in stiff strands, and by this time in the evening he usually had to mop the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. His girlfriend certainly had nothing to worry about off the dance floor, but each time I leaned into his chest and he wrapped his arms around me and started to walk, I felt like I was falling in clandestine love anew.

“Here, try the volcada with me,” he offered. “I have a strong upper body.” Since we were in close embrace, he stepped back just a little and I engaged my abs and let my foot make a tiny sweep, then brought it back and crossed it in front of the other one. He walked me through the room and I closed my eyes, oblivious to other dancers, shutting out his girlfriend, who now stood against the wall, arms crossed, staring at the dance floor with a grim expression on her face. I breathed into his embrace and felt all the tingling, the warmth, the danger and pleasure of love. When the tanda ended, he bowed slightly and kissed my hand.

Another man asked me to dance. I tried to relax into his
embrace, but he had me too close and when he made turns or pivots, his crotch rubbed against me. During the second song, he turned his head and licked my ear. I froze, pushed myself back from him with both hands, and ran to find Peter, who was having his own problems. His archenemy and rival, Jorge, the man who had started dating his ex-boyfriend in Argentina, was here. Peter grabbed me and pulled me to the dance floor.

“He’s not a bad dancer,” Peter said. “But he’s not cute at all.”

We watched Jorge travel over the floor in a smooth glide. He was slight in stature and his dark hair was slicked back. He had an air about him that made him look untrustworthy — though I was biased — and, although not classically handsome, he wasn’t ugly. I didn’t tell that to Peter.

“You’re right,” I said. “Not cute at all.”

I was privy to the Buenos Aires drama, as I had read Peter’s screenplay. I was confused at a few points while reading it, so I’d asked him, “If the characters in the gay tango community in Buenos Aires are really after intimacy and love, why do they keep having sex with pretty much anybody?