The Love Spiral

My arms started the spiral that flowed to my waist and down, down my legs, finally turning my feet. The hard soles of the red shoes make it one liquid, perfect movement, a movement where time and thought hold their breath. After the sighing stop, I drop my arms, and I am grateful to be in this body and to have this gift.
I got an e-mail from a woman who prides herself on her church-going faith. The note said we should throw all Hispanics out of this country. The note was filled with hatred. She has taken to her breast a pale, chill comfort and missed the perfection of movement; she has not opened herself to warmth and joy. She feels Hispanics should all speak English, that treasuring their own soaring language is an affront.
This hatred has drawn scratches on her soul, and she bleeds one drop at a time.
I raise my arms and begin another ocho, a perfect one with healing power. If this woman were to let the thump and heartbreak of the bandoneon enter her and carry her off, she would fall in love, and her soul, her wounded soul, would heal.

The 3-Inch Lead

The woman looked up at me, and my only thought was, She doesn't blink. She was dancing in blue jeans and heavy white socks and had a silver nose ring and lacy tattoos up her arms. The soft helplessness of her belied the aggressiveness of her skin art. The hardest thing for a woman to do, I told her -- she didn't blink -- is to follow. Find a stillness as you wait for the man. You will find it in long stretches of split seconds. She nodded and was game to try. The second hardest thing, I said with a laugh and looked down, is to lead wearing 3-inch heels.

The Suede Salida

He approached the salida like a panther, hunched, poised, breath held, and then the music rose up into its hook and pulled him to my side. He smiled, and the happiness radiated out of him like the sun. He looked down, and my eyes followed his leg to the floor. I have new shoes, he said, and he pointed his toes, showing off the black, flexible suede.

Sole Embrace

Bands of leather criss-cross on the front of the red shoes, folding over in an embrace that leads all the way up to the man's arms.

Butterfly Man

The man was a beginner and his touch was light, butterfly death throes on my back. He was stumbling,
losing his way in the middle of an ocho. His walk was hesitant. He was still afraid of entering my
space. He knew he wasn't getting it, and his mouth was disappearing in a hard line. I stopped and for a
split second inertia carried him, and then he realized a fundamental fact of tango: If the woman refuses
the invitation, the dance stops. I held him in front of me, and I said, The steps you're learning are a
pattern, and it's good to get started this way and see how things flow together. But tango is a language,
and it is how you talk to a woman. But instead of words, you have only your body. Think of these steps
-- the ochos that flow into a circling molinete -- as a few words. Each time you dance, you learn a few
more words, and when you've learned a dozen or so words, you can put them together in sentences that
just keep going. And the day will come -- and it will take you by surprise -- when you will hold a woman
in your arms, and you will suddenly say to yourself, "Damn, it's good to be a man."

Red Shoes and Rain

The door is ratty, the dancers outside the door smoke cigarettes and wear torn leg warmers, but upstairs ... oh, upstairs at Worldtone on 7th Avenue is the mecca, the East, the end of the Silk Road, the only place where you can actually try on the tango shoes you love. It always takes at least two hours, and you can't practice ochos by steadying yourself on the racks, or you will bring them down on top of you. The smell is leather and sweat. What could be sweeter?
Outside the second-story windows was a downpour to chill the head and soak the feet, but inside, the red tango shoes with the 3-inch heels were all mine.