Read Online Hold Me Tight and Tango Me Home by Maria Finn - Free Book Online
Authors: Maria Finn
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Gladys Beattie Crozier published the book
The Tango and How to Do It
. Her slim book is filled with gems on various ways to arrange tango teas in your own home. She advises scheduling the tea between 3:30 and 7:30 and having it on a Saturday so that men can attend. One should choose a room in the house and clear it out — if the dancing room is too small for serving tea, set up small tables in an adjoiningroom. In the introduction Crozier writes, “Fashions, like waves, sweep over continents. Sometimes it will be a dance, sometimes a food, sometimes a song, sometimes a freak of fashion, sometimes a game; but the year of 1913 might be called ‘The Tango Year,’ for the dance has provoked more conversation and evoked more clothes and teas and music than anything else.”
At one point, publishers in London blamed poor book sales on tango teas; however, they claimed that poetry sales went up in that same period. Maybe dancing tango readies people for poetry? When the craze hit Berlin, one of the city’s largest department stores started offering tango teas to draw in shoppers. Tango teas were held in the Prussian parliament, and the king of Denmark sent dispatches to Berlin, asking for the music from the operetta
The Tango Princess
before it had even been performed.
Peter and I went in to watch Dario’s workshop. When the students began dancing their second number, Peter leaned over, pointed at the Hipster, and whispered to me, “You think he’d like to dance gay tango with me?”
I laughed and said, “Don’t count on it.”
“Oh, I bet he would,” Peter said.
We got shushed and then slipped out into the hallway. We watched the rest of the performance through the windows, whispering to each other about the men we thought were cute. Along with the Hipster there was the Martial Artist, a man who took up tango because his sensei told him that he was too heavy and needed to find more levity. With dark hair and dark eyes,he was handsome, and he danced and spoke in a measured, deliberate way. He didn’t seem to have transformed his gravity, but rather he had translated it into his tango style.
“Maybe I’ll cast him, too,” Peter said.
We left together and went to a Spanish bar nearby and ordered olives and glasses of Rioja. Peter told me the protagonist in his film was a journalist who goes to Buenos Aires to report a story. His mother has just died; he and his father were always distant. He starts taking tango lessons at a gay guesthouse. From there, the romance and intrigue begin.
The love life of the main character was suspiciously similar to his own and the description of his film dovetailed with personal details of his life, and I learned about the man he had been with in Buenos Aires. “Marco stopped seeing me, stopped returning my calls,” Peter said. “I tried to get an explanation, but he said, ‘You are leaving, going home, why bother?’”
“Were you leaving?” I asked.
“Yes, but I was coming back,” Peter said. “And then he accused me of sleeping with everyone I cast in my film trailer.”
“And?” I asked.
“Well, not everyone,” he said. “Besides, it was before I met him.” Peter had become enmeshed in the gay tango scene, and he confessed that he didn’t want to be promiscuous. He swore that finding sex was easy, but he wanted a boyfriend.
I told him about my upcoming trip to my friend’s wedding in Montevideo. I was set to spend a week in Buenos Aires beforehand with friends.
“You have to go to the gay milonga,” he said. “It’s the best in town. And take lessons with Marco.”
I added his suggestions to my list, which was starting to grow as I told people about the trip. There existed a network among tango dancers: I found out where to dance, the best places to buy shoes, and which instructors to seek out. Peter and I paid our bill and found our way to the nearest subway, where we parted. It was an odd moment, as if we had just gone on a first
The Tango and How to Do It
. Her slim book is filled with gems on various ways to arrange tango teas in your own home. She advises scheduling the tea between 3:30 and 7:30 and having it on a Saturday so that men can attend. One should choose a room in the house and clear it out — if the dancing room is too small for serving tea, set up small tables in an adjoiningroom. In the introduction Crozier writes, “Fashions, like waves, sweep over continents. Sometimes it will be a dance, sometimes a food, sometimes a song, sometimes a freak of fashion, sometimes a game; but the year of 1913 might be called ‘The Tango Year,’ for the dance has provoked more conversation and evoked more clothes and teas and music than anything else.”
At one point, publishers in London blamed poor book sales on tango teas; however, they claimed that poetry sales went up in that same period. Maybe dancing tango readies people for poetry? When the craze hit Berlin, one of the city’s largest department stores started offering tango teas to draw in shoppers. Tango teas were held in the Prussian parliament, and the king of Denmark sent dispatches to Berlin, asking for the music from the operetta
The Tango Princess
before it had even been performed.
Peter and I went in to watch Dario’s workshop. When the students began dancing their second number, Peter leaned over, pointed at the Hipster, and whispered to me, “You think he’d like to dance gay tango with me?”
I laughed and said, “Don’t count on it.”
“Oh, I bet he would,” Peter said.
We got shushed and then slipped out into the hallway. We watched the rest of the performance through the windows, whispering to each other about the men we thought were cute. Along with the Hipster there was the Martial Artist, a man who took up tango because his sensei told him that he was too heavy and needed to find more levity. With dark hair and dark eyes,he was handsome, and he danced and spoke in a measured, deliberate way. He didn’t seem to have transformed his gravity, but rather he had translated it into his tango style.
“Maybe I’ll cast him, too,” Peter said.
We left together and went to a Spanish bar nearby and ordered olives and glasses of Rioja. Peter told me the protagonist in his film was a journalist who goes to Buenos Aires to report a story. His mother has just died; he and his father were always distant. He starts taking tango lessons at a gay guesthouse. From there, the romance and intrigue begin.
The love life of the main character was suspiciously similar to his own and the description of his film dovetailed with personal details of his life, and I learned about the man he had been with in Buenos Aires. “Marco stopped seeing me, stopped returning my calls,” Peter said. “I tried to get an explanation, but he said, ‘You are leaving, going home, why bother?’”
“Were you leaving?” I asked.
“Yes, but I was coming back,” Peter said. “And then he accused me of sleeping with everyone I cast in my film trailer.”
“And?” I asked.
“Well, not everyone,” he said. “Besides, it was before I met him.” Peter had become enmeshed in the gay tango scene, and he confessed that he didn’t want to be promiscuous. He swore that finding sex was easy, but he wanted a boyfriend.
I told him about my upcoming trip to my friend’s wedding in Montevideo. I was set to spend a week in Buenos Aires beforehand with friends.
“You have to go to the gay milonga,” he said. “It’s the best in town. And take lessons with Marco.”
I added his suggestions to my list, which was starting to grow as I told people about the trip. There existed a network among tango dancers: I found out where to dance, the best places to buy shoes, and which instructors to seek out. Peter and I paid our bill and found our way to the nearest subway, where we parted. It was an odd moment, as if we had just gone on a first
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