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."