All Over the Map (17 page)

Even Kathy, I can tell, suspiciously quiet on the trail, is tempted.

At home, I heard from the artist, when he was in airports or checking into hotels. We saw each other a few times when he passed through San Francisco. Often, he would say he was coming and then forget or cancel. He’d apologize but say that’s just the way he is, he does that to senators and wealthy art collectors, too, and then he’d tell me again how we were meant to be together.

Kathy groans.

“I know, he can’t be trusted, not even to show up,” I say. “When he left me waiting at one of San Francisco’s best restaurants, me pretending I had planned all along to enjoy a five-course tasting menu by myself on Valentine’s Day, I finally called and said that’s not how my friends treat me, it’s a matter of the most basic respect, and being rich and famous doesn’t make up for bad manners and he could go fuck himself.”

“It took you long enough,” Kathy says.

“I was never serious about him,” I said. “The truth is that I really didn’t like his art, so that was a deal breaker.”

“That and the fact that he had no respect for you.”

“Yeah.”

We walk along quietly for a while. Clearly, I tell Kathy, I haven’t figured out how to find a man who can take care of me, and vice versa. It is a mystery to me how other women attract men who wait in the car when they drop them off to see that they’re safely in the house, pay for meals, get up in the middle of the night to bring them a glass of water, and inquire solicitously
after their needs. I find guys who want to be buddies, split the check, and figure I can make it home fine by myself.

I always appreciate Kathy’s advice, because she’s so sensitive and smart, but I never know quite where it will come from. Each time I see her, she’s passionate about some new diet, spiritual practice, twelve-step program, exercise regimen, or Eastern philosophy. Now she tells me she’s into
The Rules
, the popular book of retro advice on how to get a man to love you, it seems to me, by being aloof, falsely helpless, and manipulative. This shocks me, because Kathy is usually more likely to extol the virtues of Merleau-Ponty or Thich Nhat Hanh.

“I know, I know, it doesn’t seem feminist,” Kathy tells me. “But if you think about it, it really is. It’s about getting respect from men. Make them work to get you. It’s your job to be as pretty and interesting as you can be, then sit back and let them respond to you.”

“Ick,” I say, even though I’m trying to listen to her and not just be automatically appalled. “It’s too much of a game.” I am not, for instance, wearing mascara here on the trail just in case we run into the man of my dreams. Nor, if some man contacts me, am I going to wait until he badgers me three more times before I respond; that doesn’t seem friendly or polite, not to mention real. “If you can’t be your real self with someone, what’s the point?”

“Why is it being your authentic self to run after men, to send them e-mails first, pay for dinner, and not let yourself be taken care of once in a while?” asks Kathy. “Men are hunters, they want to go after you.” I cringe thinking about buying dinners for Gustavo when he was broke, telling him I was on an expense account,
which is probably not something you should do with a Latin male. I suppose I was trying too hard. Still.

“I don’t like feeling like prey,” I say. All those years of female liberation, uneasy as they may have been, and we’re back to this. “Nor do I want to go into a hut once a month when I have my period or get thrown onto a funeral pyre with my dead husband.”

“It’s not about giving up power, it’s about keeping your power,” Kathy says. “You’re always telling me about jumping into bed with men and then feeling disappointed that it doesn’t work out. You want men who respect you.”

I’m regretting telling her about a couple of those episodes. “Respect, sure,” I say. “But the rest is phony. I’m not some passive-aggressive creature trying to trick a man into marrying her. I want a funny, intelligent guy who likes me, who has chemistry with me, and who is, you know, different but equal. I’m a confident grown-up woman.”

“Sure,” says Kathy. “Real confidence is sexy to men. But there’s a difference between being confident with men and being aggressive, which isn’t sexy. There’s also a difference between being receptive and being passive.”

“So what’s the difference?”

“Fear.”

“And so how can you manage not to be afraid, especially with that whole hunter-and-prey dynamic?”

“Real strength comes from being able to show your vulnerability but hold on to yourself. You can attract men by being receptive but say no to them until you get to know them and trust them.”

“Maybe, but you can’t do that by following some ridiculous ‘Rules.’” And I don’t want to trap everyone I sleep with into a relationship. “This isn’t the 1950s.” You just have to understand the reality of the situation so you don’t feel disappointed. I mean, that one takes a little work sometimes (i.e., Gustavo)—but still.

“Okay,” says Kathy, sighing. “Forget the ‘Rules.’ Think of it instead as ballroom dancing.” Now she has my attention. “In order to dance, you have to be able to follow, to be receptive to a man’s touch. To do that, you need to hold yourself in your own space, not be draped all over him, and give him pressure back when he pushes you. You have to be strong and confident enough in your own body to be receptive to his.”

“That makes more sense.”

We stop talking as we hike through the trees to a big vista of the Pacific Ocean. Sometimes, when I’m hiking around Marin, I wonder why I need to travel so far away to be awed.

W
HEN
I
GET
home, put on some music, and run a bath, I consider our conversation. There is no doubt that whatever I’ve been doing, with regard to men, hasn’t been working. I keep thinking it has to do with luck, with running into the right man, but perhaps there’s more to it than that. There is a certain amount of fear, after my marriage and my experience in Samoa, which I try to cover up by being tough, clever, reserved. But what Kathy said about being more receptive to men while holding on to your power and your own space made some sense. Being receptive is a good practice for anyone, male or female.

But I’m not going to practice by dating online. That chapter is over. I swish around in the bubbles and decide I need to try a completely different approach. I somehow need a forum where I can learn about receptivity on a deep level, without the fear of rejection and hurt that always accompanies dating, someplace completely safe. I need to practice being approachable and responsive, like being led in a dance.

I lie there soaking, listening to the music, a group called the Gotan Project, some modern tangoish music, and then drain the tub. I jump up and grab a towel. I am going to learn to tango.

T
HE IDEA BEHIND
taking tango classes isn’t quite as straightforward as hoping I will run into the man of my dreams at a
milonga
, though that could certainly happen; I love a man who can dance. I’m thinking of it as part of my self-improvement effort, which might help me develop the right kind of energy to attract the right man—hopefully, by the time I turn forty-five.

Tango, for the woman—or for the follower, anyway, because in San Francisco, of course, men can be followers and women leaders—is all about playing the traditional woman’s role: passive, responsive, flirtatious, tempting but even more erotic in its restraint. It’s fun and full of frisson. Maybe a little tango could teach me something about letting go of control, allowing myself to be led. As ridiculous as it seems to try to realign the basic way you relate to men in your forties, I figure a little tango couldn’t hurt.

So I buy some sturdy jazz heels and a flippy black skirt and sign up for classes.

From the first session, I realize it’s not going to be easy. For one thing, it’s obvious that I am not built like most women tango dancers, who tend to be delicate and lean, wear slinky dresses slit up to the thigh, and have disproportionately long legs. My physique is better suited for African, Brazilian, or salsa dance, by which I mean I was born with a rather steatopygic derriere and sturdy, muscular legs. (When I was dancing at a party in Kenya once, a local gentleman remarked, “You are very unusual for a white woman,” which I took as a compliment, and, were I not planning to be cremated, I might have etched on my tombstone.) Since tango is all in the leaning torso, flicking legs, and coquettish footwork—not in the grooving hips—I do the best I can.

I’m a pretty good dancer. I’ve taken hundreds of dance classes over the years, but almost always dancing solo in groups. I get jittery dancing with a partner. It makes me feel like I did in third grade, at a piano recital, suddenly so self-conscious I blanked on the music. It’s as if when someone is holding my arms I can no longer feel the rhythm in my feet. At tango class, I learn the steps, but my constant challenge is to trust my partner to hold my weight and to wait for him to move, not to anticipate or lead. At one point a partner steps back, crosses his arms, and, when I finally notice him, asks me when I am going to stop twirling around by myself. They’re difficult lessons.

But I keep going to class and then to milongas and realize that you can dance tango every night of the week in San Francisco if you like, and a lot of obsessed people do. I sit there and wait, as if at a high school dance, for a man across the room to nod to me, so I can nod back, and he drifts over and offers me
his hand. Often it is a little too much like a high school dance, where I just sit there, pretending to find something fascinating at the bottom of my drink. But sometimes I spin around the floor and, for a few minutes, feel light and sexy, my body responding to whatever move the man desires.

T
HE TANGO LESSONS
seem to work a little magic when I have my first date with Evan, a college friend of a friend I meet at a dinner party. I let him decide where to eat, even though, in picking restaurants and ordering dishes, I’m usually what my friend Anne calls a “restaurant top.” Instead, I try what he suggests—the Korean barbecue is wonderful—listen to him and respond, and squelch the impulse to take over the conversation, to tell stories and entertain him, which is what I always do when I’m uncomfortable. He takes me to his favorite bar in Oakland, Cafe Van Cleef, which is my favorite bar in that town, too. It’s the kind of place where, after a couple of drinks, you can show someone how to hold you in a tango embrace and no one glances your way. His goatee tickles me. “I like that,” he says, his hand lingering on my waist. “We should go dancing sometime.”

But I am actually leaving in a couple days to go to Buenos Aires to study tango and its feminine wiles more seriously. That news seems to lend some urgency to our date. On the way back to the car, Evan pulls me into an alcove on a deserted downtown street and kisses me.

“You’re so pretty,” he tells me. “Do people always tell you that?”

“Not
always,”
I say with a little smile. Like maybe not since the Reagan administration.

We go back to his house and play on his couch for a while, but when he wants to have sex—“Why not, do you think we’re going to get married or something?” is a revealing comment—I have the good tangoish sense to insist on going home after a little more kissing and general appreciation of my body. “Here’s to full-bodied people,” he says, as if we are just that much more full of life. I move to get up from the couch, and he holds me down with his beefy arms, looking me straight in the eyes with his bright blues. I have a leap of feeling and for a moment think it’s fear or panic. Then I close my eyes and breathe; I remember this feeling, it’s not fear, it’s excitement; it’s feeling hot.

“Open your eyes,” he says. “I want you to think about this in Buenos Aires. This is exactly how I’m going to fuck you when you get home.”

That leaves quite an impression on me, but I have a plane ticket and am on a mission. Never mind that I seem to have a habit of meeting promising men and then leaving on a trip; I am on a campaign to learn how to be better in a relationship. Plus I’ve landed an assignment writing about being a
turista tanguera
in Buenos Aires, so it’s a work gig.

W
HEN
I
STEP
out of the taxi in Buenos Aires, I am infatuated. The town is a faded beauty, with elegant, decaying European architecture wearily trying to ignore the brash new concrete neighbors. Intellectual, poetic Argentines have weathered unspeakable
political and economic tragedy, which partly explains why there are more psychologists per capita than in Manhattan. Buenos Aires is sexy and the one place where I can speak my combination of Italian and Spanish and everyone will understand me. It could even be a perfect place to find a man who has read Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar, backward and forward, has a nice cellar full of Malbec, and can sweep me off my feet dancing tango.

I stay at the Tango Academy in San Telmo, the neighborhood where the dance was born—in its brothels, as a kind of foreplay, before it became more respectable and stylized—and still thrives in late-night corner bars. I want to take lessons and slide right into the scene. The hotel proprietors make me feel at home amid the worn velvet drapes, spiral staircases, wrought-iron balconies, and high chandeliers, and I love the cheap glamour of the place.

The first evening, I go to a tango lesson at the hotel, where I meet other turistas tangueras (many of them American couples whose wives aren’t thrilled to have their husbands trading partners) and locals who are willing to twirl a beginner around the floor. Anders, a handsome Swede, though too young for me (barely drinking age), is a perfect partner, leading me assuredly across the dance floor. I also meet Claudia, a forty-two-year-old Mexican film location scout, who drifts with me from tango practice to late-night milongas, stopping to drink a glass of cheap Bonarda wine and eat succulent grass-fed steaks when our feet are too sore to dance.

Claudia has thick dark hair and big eyes; she’s attractive and accomplished in a creative field. Like me, she is divorced with no children and wondering what’s happening next. She also loves to
travel and is considering a move to Argentina. She is fed up with Mexico City because there are no men there, the way I am fed up with San Francisco, the way urban women in their early forties are fed up with cities in the entire postindustrialized world. She seeks solace in tango, when she can drift in a man’s arms and feel him leading her and then move on to the next encounter. Her relationships are like that, too; last night she met a gorgeous man in his early thirties, said good-bye to him before coffee, and now rolls her eyes at his text message on her cell, though she’ll probably meet up with him again later on. Claudia has stopped having any expectations of men except to dance with them, and sleep with them when it’s convenient and fun. She seems pretty happy with this arrangement; it’s one that has made me happy, too, at times, just not necessarily the next morning. She’s focusing on her career and her move and isn’t worried about having a partner, though her family in Mexico thinks she’s crazy, an old maid, ruining her last chances.