Read Online Hold Me Tight and Tango Me Home by Maria Finn - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Maria Finn
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when I missed my husband, I closed my eyes and erased, overexposed, deleted, and shredded him.
To prepare for my first milonga, I went to a discount department store in Lower Manhattan and bought hosiery, sheer onyx thigh highs, fishnets, side-floral sheers, and midnight black with zigzag-stiched back seams so I had plenty of options; then I went to the dress department and bumped right into Claire.
“I’m looking for tango clothes, too,” she admitted.
We decided we should stick with basic black — a splash of red or gold would draw too much attention to our beginner’s fumbling. Forget about my emerald green dress. Also, we agreed to remain with our modest shoes for the time being.
“Yeah, I’m staying low until my balance is more certain,” I said. Shoes give away the level of a woman’s dancing. Practicalblack with thick, sturdy heels, sometimes called a “granny shoe” in dance circles, means that you’re a beginner. As your dancing improves, the heel gets higher and thinner. You have to upgrade. It’s like playing a video game — you take your heels up a level and it keeps getting harder, faster, higher. As you advance, the shoes themselves get flashier too: Silver and rhinestones, red satin, gold lamé on 3½-inch stiletto heels send a signal to potential dance partners: “I dance and you’d better, too.”
Claire and I agreed to brave our first milonga together. We also convinced Allen to go so we’d have someone to dance with.
O N A S ATURDAY night, clean, pressed, modestly shod, and dressed in somber black, we paid to enter the milonga, and then the three of us stood at the entrance to the dance floor and watched. “When I arrived, these little old ladies were inching their way up the steps,” Allen said. “I almost offered to help them. But look at them now.” He pointed out a couple of gray-haired women who were working the dance floor in saucy evening dresses and spiky heels.
When tango was in its heyday in New York City, it dictated women’s fashion. In a
New York Times
article published in 1913, one fashion writer stated, “Well, call it as we will, this new and accepted kind of dancing influenced all the clothes we wear. Gowns are short because of this fashion. Not too short. Their continued narrowness keeps them from being a nuisance . . . It is a waste of time for any person to say at the present momentthat she will not need a certain gown for dancing. No gown is free from such usage. Dancing is now a side attraction to every form of pleasure and exercise. You step a measure while you eat and during many hours when you should be asleep.”
In Paris, gowns were created for the tango teas. The “tango frock” was a simple gown with a short skirt that might also have a brief train falling down the back.
At this first milonga, belle époch styles meshed with those of Old World Argentinean prostitutes and street roughs. It was mostly charming, though some outfits were so age inappropriate I had to do double takes, as was the case when I spotted a tiny senior citizen in a faux python bodysuit. Irish Guy was gussied up like a spry pimp in a bright fire-engine-red hat with matching red suit, black vest, and white dress shirt, and he gilded the lily with shiny two-tone black-and-white perforated leather shoes. Martial Artist had a subdued melancholy ruffian look in a black suit, white shirt, and black tie; some men wore rakish hats and ascots; others waxed more elegant in their pinstripe suits and buffed black ballroom-dancing shoes. Hipster wore cotton cargo pants, a retro dress shirt with an oversize collar, and a cotton bandana around his head, presumably to catch the sweat, but it made him look like a Caucasian sushi chef.
I spotted Marcel, looking a little like a maître d’ in a crisp white shirt and black pants. But my attention immediately shifted to a woman pressing seventy who wore a miniskirt, thigh-high stockings with tiny black bows on them, and a black corset that
To prepare for my first milonga, I went to a discount department store in Lower Manhattan and bought hosiery, sheer onyx thigh highs, fishnets, side-floral sheers, and midnight black with zigzag-stiched back seams so I had plenty of options; then I went to the dress department and bumped right into Claire.
“I’m looking for tango clothes, too,” she admitted.
We decided we should stick with basic black — a splash of red or gold would draw too much attention to our beginner’s fumbling. Forget about my emerald green dress. Also, we agreed to remain with our modest shoes for the time being.
“Yeah, I’m staying low until my balance is more certain,” I said. Shoes give away the level of a woman’s dancing. Practicalblack with thick, sturdy heels, sometimes called a “granny shoe” in dance circles, means that you’re a beginner. As your dancing improves, the heel gets higher and thinner. You have to upgrade. It’s like playing a video game — you take your heels up a level and it keeps getting harder, faster, higher. As you advance, the shoes themselves get flashier too: Silver and rhinestones, red satin, gold lamé on 3½-inch stiletto heels send a signal to potential dance partners: “I dance and you’d better, too.”
Claire and I agreed to brave our first milonga together. We also convinced Allen to go so we’d have someone to dance with.
O N A S ATURDAY night, clean, pressed, modestly shod, and dressed in somber black, we paid to enter the milonga, and then the three of us stood at the entrance to the dance floor and watched. “When I arrived, these little old ladies were inching their way up the steps,” Allen said. “I almost offered to help them. But look at them now.” He pointed out a couple of gray-haired women who were working the dance floor in saucy evening dresses and spiky heels.
When tango was in its heyday in New York City, it dictated women’s fashion. In a
New York Times
article published in 1913, one fashion writer stated, “Well, call it as we will, this new and accepted kind of dancing influenced all the clothes we wear. Gowns are short because of this fashion. Not too short. Their continued narrowness keeps them from being a nuisance . . . It is a waste of time for any person to say at the present momentthat she will not need a certain gown for dancing. No gown is free from such usage. Dancing is now a side attraction to every form of pleasure and exercise. You step a measure while you eat and during many hours when you should be asleep.”
In Paris, gowns were created for the tango teas. The “tango frock” was a simple gown with a short skirt that might also have a brief train falling down the back.
At this first milonga, belle époch styles meshed with those of Old World Argentinean prostitutes and street roughs. It was mostly charming, though some outfits were so age inappropriate I had to do double takes, as was the case when I spotted a tiny senior citizen in a faux python bodysuit. Irish Guy was gussied up like a spry pimp in a bright fire-engine-red hat with matching red suit, black vest, and white dress shirt, and he gilded the lily with shiny two-tone black-and-white perforated leather shoes. Martial Artist had a subdued melancholy ruffian look in a black suit, white shirt, and black tie; some men wore rakish hats and ascots; others waxed more elegant in their pinstripe suits and buffed black ballroom-dancing shoes. Hipster wore cotton cargo pants, a retro dress shirt with an oversize collar, and a cotton bandana around his head, presumably to catch the sweat, but it made him look like a Caucasian sushi chef.
I spotted Marcel, looking a little like a maître d’ in a crisp white shirt and black pants. But my attention immediately shifted to a woman pressing seventy who wore a miniskirt, thigh-high stockings with tiny black bows on them, and a black corset that
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