Read Online Hold Me Tight and Tango Me Home by Maria Finn - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Maria Finn
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could-be-a-new-gay-friend date. He leaned over and gave me a peck on the cheek.
“Are you going to the milonga at the studio this Saturday?” I asked him.
“No, I go to gay two-stepping on Saturdays,” he said. “I’m going to start teaching gay tango classes here and I need to go recruit dancers.”
“Okay, good luck,” I said, and kissed him on the cheek, then went down the steps to the subway tracks. While I waited for the train, I thought about the ocho and how those “beautiful moments” in life, when two people meld into a seamless one, could be so hard earned at times and at other times so natural.
CHAPTER 5
La Milonga Primera
, The First Milonga
T HE LIVELY DANCE known as milonga requires couples to step in a crisp staccato, marking each beat. Milonga the social gathering takes place anywhere: a park, a port, a dance studio with lights dimmed, a Greek restaurant on a slow night, or an old warehouse. You just need a floor that’s more or less level, some music, and dancers.
The official difference between a practica and milonga is that a practica is usually held after class at a dance studio and the dancers can correct each other. During these sessions partners work out steps in preparation for the milonga. At a milonga it’s bad manners to give suggestions or introduce a new step in the middle of the floor; although some leaders like to do this, it is wrong, wrong, wrong. But really, the most striking contrast between these two dance gatherings is the way people dress. People frequently dance in jeans and T-shirts at practicas, butat the milongas, especially ones held on Saturday nights, they dress more formally.
I knew I had to start pulling together an outfit and that the look was totally different from salsa clothing, which tended toward tight, casual tank tops and pants with some stretch and give. For tango, women wore dresses and hose. So I rifled through my hosiery drawer and tossed potentials onto my bed. The black, opaque winter-wear tights wouldn’t work; my one pair of fishnets had a large hole, and I discovered the other stockings had runs, too. My dresses were just as dismal. An old, too-tight black halter-top sheath was the best I could come up with; when I yanked a loose thread, the entire bust bunched. Limping into my first milonga dressed in ratty hose and a dress with dangling threads, I would not have looked like an Argentinean prostitute with a heart of gold, the prevailing tango fashion for women.
I fingered my wedding dress, the exquisite chenille silk, cut tea length so we could dance salsa at our wedding. I wondered if I should one day hem it up and dye it black or green and use it for tango; this I envisioned when I was doing “my forget-my-husband exercises.”
I had bought a self-help book called
How to Mend a Broken Heart
, which I briefly considered reading on the subway to see if people wanted to tell me their stories or would instead move as far away as possible. But I kept it private and read it at home. It included exercises like “The Calm Anchor Technique” and “Return to Sender.” In one, the book instructed visualization of only the bad times with your former love. When you get aclear picture, make it go blurry and then bleach it out like an overexposed photograph. Finally, visualize moving down a hallway, away from the present, toward a happy future. The author encouraged readers to make it vivid, in color, and to try not just to see it but to feel it, as well.
I pictured myself in an emerald green cocktail dress, heading to a stone patio and dancing tango with a handsome man who loved me. Sometimes the dress was black, and sometimes the patio had a fountain, but the fantasy varied little — I put my faith in the persistence of this vision. I painted in details: trees rustled in the nighttime breeze and the faint smell of sweet water perfumed the air. This Hollywood version of love, or at least of romance, was silly; I had nothing to lose. Sometimes,
“Are you going to the milonga at the studio this Saturday?” I asked him.
“No, I go to gay two-stepping on Saturdays,” he said. “I’m going to start teaching gay tango classes here and I need to go recruit dancers.”
“Okay, good luck,” I said, and kissed him on the cheek, then went down the steps to the subway tracks. While I waited for the train, I thought about the ocho and how those “beautiful moments” in life, when two people meld into a seamless one, could be so hard earned at times and at other times so natural.
CHAPTER 5
La Milonga Primera
, The First Milonga
T HE LIVELY DANCE known as milonga requires couples to step in a crisp staccato, marking each beat. Milonga the social gathering takes place anywhere: a park, a port, a dance studio with lights dimmed, a Greek restaurant on a slow night, or an old warehouse. You just need a floor that’s more or less level, some music, and dancers.
The official difference between a practica and milonga is that a practica is usually held after class at a dance studio and the dancers can correct each other. During these sessions partners work out steps in preparation for the milonga. At a milonga it’s bad manners to give suggestions or introduce a new step in the middle of the floor; although some leaders like to do this, it is wrong, wrong, wrong. But really, the most striking contrast between these two dance gatherings is the way people dress. People frequently dance in jeans and T-shirts at practicas, butat the milongas, especially ones held on Saturday nights, they dress more formally.
I knew I had to start pulling together an outfit and that the look was totally different from salsa clothing, which tended toward tight, casual tank tops and pants with some stretch and give. For tango, women wore dresses and hose. So I rifled through my hosiery drawer and tossed potentials onto my bed. The black, opaque winter-wear tights wouldn’t work; my one pair of fishnets had a large hole, and I discovered the other stockings had runs, too. My dresses were just as dismal. An old, too-tight black halter-top sheath was the best I could come up with; when I yanked a loose thread, the entire bust bunched. Limping into my first milonga dressed in ratty hose and a dress with dangling threads, I would not have looked like an Argentinean prostitute with a heart of gold, the prevailing tango fashion for women.
I fingered my wedding dress, the exquisite chenille silk, cut tea length so we could dance salsa at our wedding. I wondered if I should one day hem it up and dye it black or green and use it for tango; this I envisioned when I was doing “my forget-my-husband exercises.”
I had bought a self-help book called
How to Mend a Broken Heart
, which I briefly considered reading on the subway to see if people wanted to tell me their stories or would instead move as far away as possible. But I kept it private and read it at home. It included exercises like “The Calm Anchor Technique” and “Return to Sender.” In one, the book instructed visualization of only the bad times with your former love. When you get aclear picture, make it go blurry and then bleach it out like an overexposed photograph. Finally, visualize moving down a hallway, away from the present, toward a happy future. The author encouraged readers to make it vivid, in color, and to try not just to see it but to feel it, as well.
I pictured myself in an emerald green cocktail dress, heading to a stone patio and dancing tango with a handsome man who loved me. Sometimes the dress was black, and sometimes the patio had a fountain, but the fantasy varied little — I put my faith in the persistence of this vision. I painted in details: trees rustled in the nighttime breeze and the faint smell of sweet water perfumed the air. This Hollywood version of love, or at least of romance, was silly; I had nothing to lose. Sometimes,
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