Hold Me Tight and Tango Me Home (22 page)

But still I waited; I looked available, ready to return eye contact, but tried not to appear desperate — no smiling at a man first. I sat by myself until a man sat down next to me, introduced himself as Max, and struck up a conversation.

“Are you new?” he asked.

“No, I’m visiting from New York City,” I said.

He perked up and asked me to dance. Nuevo music played and Max started stepping faster, challenging me with improvisational steps. He got one foot stuck between mine, so I back-led a bit, sweeping his foot with an arrastra, then stepping over it and giving him a quick gancho.

“Thank you for getting me out of the tight spot and making me look good,” he said. “I should just ask now — will you marry me?”

He invited me out to eat afterward, and we went to an all-night diner. A woman with very dark eyeliner and lots of tattoos served us cheeseburgers. Max told me he knew if a follower would be good — in the first three seconds, in fact — by the way she placed her hand into his.

“Impossible!” I said.

“Wipe your hands,” he instructed.

I reluctantly put down my juicy California burger and picked up my napkin. When my right hand was less sticky, I placed it in his.

He concentrated for a second. “Gentle, balanced, comfortable on her own axis.”

“With a hint of green chili and cheddar juices?” I asked (though I was pleased with the assessment).

Max continued, “I expose my chest, offer my hand for embrace. When she embraces me, I take a breath. If she doesn’t breathe, that means she’s not responsive. If she does, we’re in sync. Then I shift my embrace and expect her to do this, too. It means she’s understanding the reciprocity of the embrace.”

“Quite a system you have worked out,” I said. “Are you ever wrong?

“No,” he said. “And by the way, you didn’t breathe or shift.”

“So was it a bad dancing experience?” I asked.

“Not at all,” he said. “It was great.”

“Sooo?” I asked.

After eating he walked me out to my car, and as we chatted, he slowly started moving closer to me. I laughed and slipped into my car.

He leaned in the open driver’s side window. “Can’t you stay here in California longer?” he asked.

In Cuba I stopped into the Casa del Tango in Old Havana and danced with a man who had long arms and elbows that jutted out like a cricket’s legs. He had the gnarled hands of a person who once worked very hard. As we danced he whispered, “
Hay que rico
” (loosely, “how nice”) into my ear. Later an old woman, wearing a vintage evening gown and blue eye shadow that glittered behind her false lashes, lectured me about men.

“There is the right man out there for you,” she said. “But you might not meet him for a little while. Until then, have fun. Date them all, the old ones and the young ones, and when it doesn’t work out, dry your eyes and move on.”

I met up with friends in Albuquerque, New Mexico. One man I knew there, Mike, tangoed, so we went out to dance. My friends Ben and Marisol joined us; they were swing and two-step dancers. After an hour or so, we left the small group of tango dancers for a country-western bar filled with hundreds of twosteppers, where we all took turns dancing with one another.

During riffs in the music, Ben would start spinning me in turns, pretzels, swings. At times I looked up, trying to soak in the energy of the crowd. The faces were smiling, laughing, the movements determined and yet spontaneous, and I felt that vibration just like on the crowded floors of the salsa socials or tango milongas — when people are connected with each other and the music wraps around them. There’s nothing like dancing.

The next day I headed south to the Bosque del Apache wild-life refuge. The Rio Grande had been released to create wetlands for the thousands of sandhill cranes and snow geese. I parked the car and walked to a dock bordering a pond. A crimson sunset spread over the horizon, creating a dramatic backdrop to the camel-colored mountains. The cranes started flying back to the pond to roost for the evening, and the crooked line of birds in flight looked like notes of a musical score. When they landed they stretched and squawked and batted their wings. Then some started dancing, wings lifted, neck arched, and body bowed. They tossed sticks and grass into the air as they pranced.

Nobody knows for certain why cranes dance. It’s not for mates or for territory. Some people believe they dance to greet each other, to get to know each other again after a separation,
and to align themselves with the universe. Perhaps that’s why we dance, as well. As the birds continued to alight on the shallow pond, the setting sun bleeding poetry and drama across the curves of the ridges and rivers, the outlines of mesquite and tamarisk trees, I sucked in my breath and murmured, “Wow,” at the unabashed beauty of it all.

I had decided that I wanted to specialize in creating gardens with wildlife habitat for birds, bees, and butterflies. I bought books and studied the best plants for this; there are many, I learned, that are natives to the New York area. I sought out artists in my neighborhood who could make solar-powered water fountains and bat boxes. I found stylish bird feeders and Bauhaus-style modern birdhouses. As for the business side of things, I spent a lot of time on the phone with the state tax department, trying to understand why some services were taxable and others weren’t. I was regularly fined for double-parking while I unloaded plants. I had to haggle with clients over money, and at first it made me almost physically ill. I would often toss and turn at night in a cold sweat. But I knew that I was facing my discomfort, and each time it got a little easier.

That first year of my business, between the road trips and the gardening season, I couldn’t dance with my usual crowd very often. Still, I tried to make it to the milonga on Sunday nights at the South Street Seaport. Claire was seeing a lot of Xavier, but she also made room for this particular milonga. One balmy evening in midsummer we headed together down to the pier. The enormous masts on the
Peking
rose above the docks like religious
symbols, dramatic in the fading light. As twilight spread, a patch of peach sky cut through the gray-hued horizon and the chalky blue river. Lights flicked on, outlining bridges and illuminating rows of rectangular apartment buildings. Tango music drowned out the squawking of gulls, and the port was transformed. The milonga was in full swing.

Claire and I joined a table of people from our studio. Marcel was holding court, pouring beers from a pitcher. One man I had wordlessly danced with very early on, I had learned over time, drove a cab. I liked to tease him when he asked me to dance. “Are you going to be cutting off people and cursing at them on the dance floor?” He always laughed.

“Hey,” he asked me. “I’ve been trying to grow some grape seeds in cups on my kitchen table. Can you give me some advice?”

We all assumed that anonymity made the intimate experience possible, but I loved learning about these people. A man with short-cropped hair with whom I sometimes danced finally told me why he learned the tango. He liked to hang glide but one day flew straight into a tree and broke both his legs.

“It changed me,” he said. “I’m an entrepreneur, and now I weigh out all the risks before jumping in. I’m actually a better businessman for it.” Immobilized by the accident, he had slipped into a depression. He had been a skier and mountain climber, and he now found his life so unstructured, so unfamiliar that he needed a plan to find his way out of that place. The steps, the music, helped him pull his life back together.

Couples tangoed by us. Dominatrix was kicking ganchos;
Tango Whisperer guided his long-legged partner. The man who had offered to be my sugar daddy danced past with a beautiful auburn-haired woman in his arms. Martial Artist pivoted around his partner. Irish Guy stood off to the side by himself, and Ear Licker had found a platinum blonde to dance with.

Claire and I ordered margaritas. Marcel insisted on paying for them. The spirit was celebratory. A couple who had met at tango lessons had recently married. Also, Dario’s wife was pregnant, and he had successfully choreographed and staged a show that mixed modern dance and ballet with tango. Hipster, who had performed in the show, was preparing to move to Buenos Aires and become a serious tanguero. People proclaimed their envy, but he seemed a little sad and protested, “It’s not New York. What could be better than this?” He gestured at the ships, the people dancing, the distant lights framed by skyscrapers.

While the music poured out over the dancers, the people at our table laughed and clinked glasses and I realized that I didn’t hear only heartbreak in the tango music anymore. There was also intrigue and opportunity, romance and friendship. An upbeat, playful milonga started. I scanned the crowd. Marcel noticed me.

“Peter’s not here anymore,” he said. “Will you be open to dancing with new people?”

“I’m trying,” I said.

“You want to dance with me?” he asked.

“Always,” I said. The dj played an even quicker milonga with a crisp 4/4 beat that tapped like the rhythm of a hopeful heart.
We stepped together quickly. The song ended and a faster one began. A man sitting on the side clapped his hands together and shouted encouragement to the dancers, “Yes, do it!”

Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges lamented the changes in tango, once full of bravado with lyrics about sexual prowess and knife fights, to the music of heartbreak, or as he put it, when it passed from a display of “braggadocio to sadness.” He liked the inherent dueling in the music and dance and believed that milonga music and dance let dancers live the fantasy of bravery and valor. Borges wrote, “I would say that the tango and the other Argentine dance, the milonga, express something directly that poets have often tried to say with words — their sense that a fight can be a celebration.”

This place marked my change. I didn’t quite recognize myself. I was no longer the lonely, heartbroken woman who had watched this milonga one year ago. In the beginning I needed tango to assuage my pain. During bad times we can choose desolation and become lonely and bitter, or we can choose consolation and reach out to other people. I found consolation in tango, and through it I had dead reckoned myself to a much, much better place.

A cortina interrupted the music, and everyone changed partners. I danced with a man I had never met before. We stood parallel and aligned our feet. I felt the coarse grain of the planks beneath my feet and smelled anchors and rust and barnacles. Seagulls shrieked. The scents of the river and boats mixed with the earthy smells of his hair and skin and sweat. Tango music
played and we started to step, hitting half-beats, dragging out pauses that were pulled by the violin and then cut off by the bandoneón. The music engulfed us like a fog, and I found the pulse of his heart as my own softened to match it.

Passersby stopped to watch. Their faces were bemused, impressed, or even a little uncomfortable. Some women nudged their boyfriends, as if daring them to learn. Tourists formed a semicircle around us, and at times I looked up and noticed them. Someone was filming us; someone else snapped shots with his cell phone. Others rushed by, pretending not to notice the hundreds of couples clutching one another.

And every once in a while, I saw a person standing alone — curious and not exactly knowing when or why, but sensing that one day, she would find herself in the arms of strangers, welcoming the warmth of their embrace and learning to dance tango.

abrazo
(from
abrazar
, to hug) The tango embrace.

bandoneón
An accordionlike musical instrument used by tango musicians that originated in Europe.

boleo
(from
bolear
, to throw) With the knees together, one leg swings with a whipping motion.

cabece
(from
cabeza
, head) A wordless invitation to dance at a milonga: Eye contact is made; a slight nod of the head follows. If the follower accepts, she nods back, if not, she turns away.

cadena
(chain) When steps are done in a repeated sequence; the couple usually moves rapidly around the floor.

caminita
(from
caminar
, to walk) The tango walk is both backward and forward, with both partners balancing their weight with one another.

candombe
Afro-Uruaguayan music and dance; some historians believe it was an influence on or early precursor of the tango.

castigada
(from castigar,
to punish
)
When the follower
slides her foot down the leader’s pant leg, giving him a flirtatious caress.

cortina
(curtain) Nontango music played between tandas at a milonga.

entregarme
(to surrender oneself) The follower gives herself up to the leader.

gancho
(hook; sometimes used as a verb) When a dancer momentarily hooks a leg sharply around or through the partner’s legs.

lapiz
(pencil; used as a verb) Making circular motions on the floor with one foot while at a standstill.

Lunfardo
A type of slang in Buenos Aires that has heavy Italian influence. It was once the language of the underworld, and some claim it was used so police officers wouldn’t understand what was being said. Many terms are still found in tango lyrics.

milonga
A social dance, a precursor to the tango, where people gather to tango or dance to a type of lively music written in 2/4 time.

milonguero
(fem. milonguera) A person who frequents milongas and for whom tango is a way of life.

molinete
(windmill; wheel) A step in which the follower walks in a grapevine pattern around the leader, who pivots at the center.

ocho
(eight) Figure eights: a crossing and pivoting figure from which the fan in American tango is derived. El ocho is considered to be one of the oldest steps in tango and refers to a time when women wore floor-length skirts and danced on dirt floors. The quality of women’s dancing was judged by the figure eight their skirts left behind in the dirt.