Hold Me Tight and Tango Me Home (6 page)

At Angel Navarro’s Mambo Unico I stood behind the other dancers, concentrating on the instructor’s feet and counting to myself, “One, two, three, pause, five six, seven, pause.” Trying to move my hips and shoulders at the same time made me look like I had some sort of nerve disorder. I still don’t know how I stuck with the classes. I suppose the encouragement of the other students and the handsome brown-eyed Latino partners in the classes kept me going. I endured the awkwardness because I believed, or in some way knew, that learning to dance would be worth all that.

The first six months proved humiliating. Nervous, I could barely keep up with the basic steps, and you can forget about moving two body parts at the same time. I attended Saturday afternoon styling classes to learn body rolls and how to shimmy my shoulders and rotate my hips. I started to become more comfortable with following. The difficulty of following is often more psychological than physical. Women of my generation were taught to fend for themselves and to be independent. It takes a while to relax and realize that if a leader respects his responsibility, it can be a very good experience for a follower.

I learned to step on the beat, or on the off-beat if I wanted to, and to spot myself on turns. Then I started going out. At the dance socials, the floor became so crowded with whirling couples that heads banged and ankles and feet became bruised and bloodied by the stiletto heels flashing on the dance floor. But no one slowed down or stopped. Pure exhilaration emanated from the crowd around me — nobody held back while the trumpets and drums called out their irresistible rhythms. The dancers, drenched with sweat, didn’t stop until the music ended. We shimmied and swiveled until our hearts raced and our hair matted. The remnants of my sexually repressed Catholic upbringing were mocked and trampled. I realized that this is how life should be lived.

I met my Cuban husband through salsa dancing. He was a perfect lead. Gentle yet in control. He had an excellent sense of rhythm; he kept the beat and wasn’t boring. He transitioned from stepping to turn patterns in response to the music. He
maintained a polite distance, and at first it was just about the dancing. Then it became a conversation: humorous, amorous, bold, then timid, expressed with our hips, shoulders, and feet.

A salsa band played at our wedding. The claves, drums, and trumpets played songs of seduction and betrayal, yearning and love and disappointment, but most of all, the music spoke of joy. Salsa taught me about seduction — both the wonderful and the dangerous elements of it. There was something more profound to be learned about relationships from the tango.

For me to feel better, I needed to be physical. This was my form of prayer. When I was stressed out or upset in Alaska, I hiked up mountains or kayaked rocky shorelines. Exhaustion always brought me peace, and the natural beauty offered transcendence. In the Bible many dramatic events happen in nature: Moses receives the commandments on a mountaintop; Jesus spends forty days in the desert being tempted by Satan; John the Baptist dunks people in the river to baptize them. In Ancient Greek times women danced ecstatically over mountainsides and through forests, following Dionysus — that is how they found catharsis and renewal. How had humanity shifted so drastically that we expected children to sit in little confessionals trying to remember how many times they lied or cussed? I had been taught this Catholic version of catharsis. It just didn’t work for me. How did the body become disconnected from the spiritual self?

In New York it was too hard to make it into wilderness. I had tried and ended up trekking along highways for hours just to get
to a trailhead. I attended a small, liberal Episcopalian church, but really it was dancing that filled my spiritual need. Something about music brought wilderness to the city so that I could experience it as a form of prayer. Cultures around the world have danced to communicate with their god or gods. The Hopis danced on mesas as a prayer for rain. The Athabascans danced on hillsides in Alaska, asking the caribou to come. Buddhist monks in Tibet danced to ward off the devil, and in Africa men danced to train for battle, to entice and distract their enemies, to find a mate, to celebrate, and to mourn. It’s commonly said that
mambo
once meant “talking with the gods.” So the dance floor became the place where I looked for connection and transcendence.

I had put my time into learning salsa, yet now I wanted to be good instantly at tango. I swore to do better each time I made a mistake. I pledged to myself to take more classes, practice the tango walk at home with a book on my head, hold a glass of water in my hand and move my legs to learn to isolate my body parts. I concentrated and tried to balance, relax, stay on my axis, push into the floor. My mind was in a jumble with so many instructions. The dancing didn’t tire me, but the persistent disappointment in myself did.

After class some of the more advanced women dancers congregated in the hallways. I spotted Marcel’s girlfriend, Angela, and chatted with her about my impatience.

“Six months,” she told me. “We were incredibly frustrated for the first six months.”

“It’s hard, because you have to go to practicas,” I said. “But if
you’re a bad dance partner, some of the leaders won’t ask you to dance again. As in, ever again in your whole life.”

“Even when you improve,” a woman interjected. “The woman always blames herself. And the man always blames her, too.”

Several other women laughed and nodded in agreement.

I stepped into the room where the practica had just started and watched Allen leading a fairly advanced dancer around the floor. It couldn’t be easy for men, either. Earlier, during class, Dario had asked, “When the woman doesn’t know to go into a forward ocho, whose fault is it?”

No one answered, so he called on Allen.

“It’s always the leader’s fault,” Allen had responded, and we all laughed.

“Brown-noser,” I whispered to him.

“Very good, Allen,” Dario said.

Going to the practicas after lessons was critical for improvement, but they could be oh so painful for a beginner. At the practica that afternoon, I sat on the metal folding chair and pretended I didn’t notice when men avoided making eye contact with me as they whisked by and asked other women to dance; once, Irish Guy neared and my spirits rose, only to watch him lean over and invite the woman sitting next to me to dance. The term for women who aren’t asked to dance and who sit all night is
la planchadora
— literally, “the ironer.”

Typically, you danced a tanda of three to five songs with one partner. Then a short interlude of nontango music played — a
cortina
— and you found a new partner. Unless the experience
was particularly bad, then usually one person — whoever suffered the most — excused him- or herself. While
milonga
is a term for a social gathering where people dance tango, it’s also a faster, more upbeat song and dance than the tango. It’s thought to be a precursor to tango, but dancers learn it after they know the tango. While the milonga played, a very tall, thin man with brittle blond hair extended his hand to me.

“I don’t know how to dance a milonga,” I explained.

He insisted.

Did he think I was being modest, claiming I couldn’t dance, in order to blow him away on the dance floor? We don’t live in that kind of culture: I remembered a Chinese student in my freshman writing class. One day she told me she had just interviewed for a job in the school’s math lab. When the interviewer asked her if she was good at math, she answered, “No, I’m very bad.” In China, where humility is the custom, this means, “I’m excellent at math.” I laughed, then explained our way of promoting ourselves. I suggested that she go back and tell the interviewer that she was indeed good at math. This made her so uncomfortable that I proposed she at least go tell them about the Chinese custom as she had told me. They hired her.

The blond guy wasn’t Chinese, so “I don’t know how to milonga” should have been straightforward. But he didn’t slow down, make his lead clear, or release me into open embrace. He kept me pulled tightly to him and slung me around like a stuffed animal in a dog’s jaw. After one song of mutual misery, he strode off and not only never made eye contact with me again but quickened his pace, darting by whenever he saw me.

I wanted to follow him, arguing, “I told you I didn’t know how to milonga.” But I never did; I just avoided eye contact, too. The Irish man I had danced with after my first class not only avoided my glance but also turned his entire head in a different direction whenever he caught sight of me. At him, I wanted to shout, “You can say hello. I won’t make you dance with me.”

Another man, with a rigid, erect carriage and straight black hair that brushed his shoulders, invited me to tango at one practica. I explained that I was a beginner, which was both an apology and an explanation. He took it on himself to correct my every move.

“Lean back more, I need to feel the pressure of your back against my hand,” he said. “Stand straighter,” he demanded. “Walk smoother. Your neck should be elongated.” His lead was so subtle and hard to decipher and his criticisms so rapid-fire that I thought for sure he’d abandon dancing with me after the first song; in fact, I hoped he would. Instead, he kept on.

“Your hips are moving,” he said. “This is tango, not salsa.” At the end of the next song, when we broke apart, I rocked on my feet, shook out my arms and torso, and he corrected me, “This is an elegant dance. We do not shake ourselves in tango.”

Enough. I excused myself and got a drink of water. I felt sorry for this man; if he thought withering criticism was teaching, he must not have had an easy life.

Later he apologized. “I’m sorry, I’m just eager for you to improve so I can dance with you.”

I nodded as if I accepted the apology. But I never danced with him again. He never asked.

There is still gender bias when it comes to who asks whom to dance. Women can ask men to dance, but more often than not, men do the asking. It’s kind of like dating. While most women, in theory, aren’t against asking a man on a date, they tend to wait for him to ask. I’ve talked about this with students in my writing classes. While the guys said that they would like to be asked out (I’m sure they are assuming they would be asked out by girls they like, not girls they don’t find attractive), the young women said that they use subtler means of attracting a guy. There’s eye contact, flirting, making yourself available. So it isn’t total passivity on the part of the female — she smiles, she laughs at his jokes, when he asks about her plans she makes herself available, she tells a friend that she’s interested. Rarely, though, do women do the asking.

Especially as a beginning dancer, I didn’t want to ask a guy to dance who didn’t want to dance with me, and so I waited. Thankfully a few men from my class now trickled in to this practica. Allen was a steady favorite. We stood on the shiny tongue-and-groove dance floor and moved into our salida. Soon he stepped back and turned his chest to the side, indicating for me to pass in a forward ocho; when I pivoted to return in front of him, he had his leg blocking me. I loved this. I could step over him matter-of-factly (or trip, if totally taken off guard and moving too quickly), or take my time and caress his ankle with my foot, a flirtatious embellishment known as a
castigada
, or “punishment.” During dramatic moments in the music, when crescendos are rising, some followers slowly drag their leg up the
man’s and then bring it back to their own leg, caress it as well, then step over him. I chose to linger for a moment, with a short, brief rub on his ankle before stepping over his leg.

After the song ended, Allen said he had to leave early. He acted a little sheepish and finally admitted he had a date.

“Don’t you dare mention this to Dario,” he said.

I chuckled, imagining Dario giving him tango-based dating advice.

“Where did you meet her?” I asked.

“Internet,” he said.

“Anything you learned from tango that can be applied?” I asked.

“Sometimes there’s chemistry and sometimes there’s just not,” he said, as he laced up his street shoes.

Allen, Claire, and I had discussed this mystery of chemistry. Allen insisted it was just that: “Literally, it’s phenylethylamine. PEA,” he said. “It’s like a potent amphetamine and dopamine drug cocktail. When another person stimulates this in you, it overrides any good judgment.”

“I think it’s a thing of the spirit,” Claire had argued. “You just know, without even having to talk, that you’re compatible.”

“I would argue for the senses,” I said. “It’s a combination — his scent, the sound of his voice, how his skin feels when he touches you.”

Allen left for his date and then Marcel asked me to dance.

“Hi, gorgeous,” he said. “Will you do me the honor?”

As we danced, he offered suggestions: “Resist a little more.
Don’t take your feet off the ground when I turn.” “Okay, perfect. Does that feel okay to you?” Sometimes he’d align me in front of him. “I’m looking for your heart,” he said. And then he pressed his chest against mine. One time he stopped and said, “You’re holding back. What do I need to do?”

“I guess I don’t want to make a mistake,” I said.

“You know I don’t give a damn if you make a mistake,” Marcel answered.

Ahhh, Marcel!

After dancing with Marcel, I sat on the metal folding chair and noticed a tall, handsome man I hadn’t seen before. When he danced, he took up the floor, heading toward the center of it, laughing with his partner as he made up new steps. Later, I saw him up close and noticed his stunning cornflower blue eyes and sharp cheekbones; when he asked me to dance, I mumbled something about being a beginner.

“It’s okay,” he said.

“No, I really mean it,” I answered. “I just started.”

He dragged me through a few steps and, though I thought I was following okay, after three songs, he frantically scanned the room for another dance partner. But tonight, for some mysterious reason, few women had shown up for the practica. As he swiveled his head and saw me looking at him, I shrugged and said, “Sorry, looks like I’m the only available woman.”