The Muse of Graceful Loss

El Suave was in love that night, wonderfully, spectacularly drunk on the fullness of his heart. But she belonged to another man, and El Suave would never have her. Her heels were needles lightly punching the floor, and every beat was a tear in his skin. Charlo's Olvido leaked out of the stereo.

Pero yo sé que hay que olvidar
y olvido sin protestar.

I know that I must forget, and forget without protest ...

'The goddess of dance is a woman,' he said.
'Ah,' I answered, 'but even Terpsichore's heart knew who loved her.'

Milonga Thighs

The music was ripe with drunkenness and a good time, and, almost as though she had heard the music calling her name, La Fiera snapped out of an enganche and stopped for an instant in front of us, her stiletto heels fairly vibrating with the insistence of the next move.
No one had see her for months.
She had lost fifty pounds.
La Fiera closed one mascaraed eye in a languid wink.
'Oh, honey,' she said with a flip of her hand, 'thinner thighs in thirty milongas.'
Her laugh sailed across the crowded dance floor.

Mojito Sculpture

The spearmint is fresh from the garden, and the limes are ripe. I make the mojitos in a clear glass pitcher, and all of us take a break from practicing and sit on the deck in the hot sun. I turn up the stereo, so we can hear the skipping sounds of Tita Merello's El choclo, and the lyrics make us laugh in the celebration of that underworld that gave birth to this dance we love. El Suave holds up his glass, and we all give him our eyes.
'Tango is a work of art,' he says, 'that the man creates with the woman's body.'

The Lover of La Porteña

It is almost 2 a.m., and the milonga isn't crowded. People talk quietly in the dark, and my eye catches the smooth movement of a perfect barrida. I forget to breathe. He is the man who used to love La Porteña, and I think of the words of Nostalgias and I listen inside my head to the tears in Enrique Cadícamo's voice.

Quiero emborrachar mi corazón
para apagar un loco amor

I want to get my heart so drunk that it extinguishes a crazy love.

Angustia ... de sentirme abandonado ... y pensar que otro a su lado pronto... pronto le hablará de amor...

Anguish. To feel myself abandoned and to think that some other is at your side ... quickly, quickly, he will speak of love to her ...

La Porteña is in the hospital, and this man doesn't know.

The Lonely Pain

I cannot sit politely in my too-delicate wooden chair when the longing strains of Uno make a late appearance at the milonga. I thought Libertad Lamarque was happy and skipping before I spoke Spanish. But now, understanding means that the words are razors to me, who has been left behind. I cannot keep tears from gathering when she laments her lost love.

Uno está tan solo en su dolor...

Uno está tan ciego en su penar....

One is so alone in one's sadness/One is so blind in one's pain.

And I cannot rise from that quaking chair to make the solitary walk to the other side of the room and go to the one my heart cries for.

What of Me?

The voice of Elba Berón stabbed out of the stereo from a time long ago in Buenos Aires, and the man took his partner into a close embrace and forced her down into a low media luna.
The lights were dim, and their glow was rosy, spilling onto the old oak of the milonga floor. The dancers played with the melody of Y a mi qué? as they navigated the space, oblivious to others. Their eyes were hungry on each other. They melted into one as the song's notes bled to the floor.
He no longer knew I existed.
Anguish.

The Tango Maldito

Her heart sang when she first started tango, and no milonga was bright unless she was dancing. Men pursued her. Women envied her. But she became too much like Libertad Lamarque's Maldito tango, and her work went away, her children went away, and, finally, even her friends went away. She thought tango would fill her up, and at the end, it was the very thing that emptied her.
Tango is a conversation that is wordless, a give and take that is purely physical. You have to know when the conversation has ended.

Pawn Captures en passant

'The man leads; the woman follows,' Dark Eyes was saying. He folded the hand of Delight into his own, wrapped his arm around her back, and her body melted into his.
The staccato beat of Osvaldo Fresedo's Después de carnaval leaked out of the speakers, and they swayed, finding the rhythm. When they moved, Delight was a split second behind Dark Eyes, almost imperceptibly following. Tango is like chess; aggression and patience find a balance — and a victory.

Eyes at the Media Luz

The restaurant was new, and the owners named it A media luz. What else could we all do but meet there before the milonga? El Soave brought his Carlos Gardel CDs, and we talked the owners into putting them on, and we all listened, song after song. The polished wood of the floor glowed in the twilight of the room. We sat at sleek tables and raised our flutes of Krug champagne.
'You must give eyes when you toast,' commanded El Soave. Such politeness was a mark of his exotic upbringing, and I thought how disconnected every other toast I'd ever made had been. 'Eyes,' he said again. 'Give your eyes.'

The Lonely Gorgeous

The plaintive notes of Carlos Gardel's Te aconsejo que me olvides floated across the dim dance floor. The strengthening dawn was lightening the windows, and Gardel's words were lonely and pleading in this last hour of the milonga. Gorgeous was poised in a chair, her ballerina body forward and attentive, and no one asked her to dance. Foolish men.

The Laughing Milonguero

El Generoso offers me time for embellishment, and I mistake his generosity for god-knows-what other invitation. I have committed the ultimate sin of letting my mind wander, and I am dangling my foot off by his side somewhere, lost and out of synch with Adiós Nonino. We look at each other, and we are struck by wondrous mirth.
'The rules of the milonga say we can't talk,' I scold mildly.
His eyes are merry, and the right one winks. 'But nothing says we can't laugh.'
And he dances me off into the twilight of the hall and into the quick step of Gardel's Canchero.

The Stab to the Heart

The woman was stabbing the floor with the stiletto heels of shoes the color of steel. The toes of the shoes were open, and her nails flashed blood. The beaten floors of the old dance hall were warmed by the strings of tiny white lights that hung from the ceiling like glowing vines. The man led her in a deep sacada that forced her legs around his. Again and again. It was the urgently longing part of Pasional, and the other dancers opened a space around them. People sat and turned to watch.
'They're dancing as though they hate each other,' I said. "They're furious.'
'Just so,' said La Porteña. 'You can always tell when someone is about to have an affair.'

The Lack of La Porteña

El Suave took the beginner across the dance floor, showing her what the tango was meant to be and finished the last song of the tanda with an elegant rulo. His turn settled as the music ended, and his eyes lifted and met mine.
'I miss La Porteña,' he said.
'The headaches are worse,' I said. And I realized that the last song they had danced to was Jamás retornarás.

The Close Embrace of Dark Eyes

Out of the sea of couples rose two heads like dolphins on a wave crest, appearing, then diving back into the moving ocean of dancers, buoyed by the reedy voice of Carlos Gardel's Esta noche me emborracho. I smiled at the moment. The non-tango world would have been shocked, but here, in this milonga, gliding across the parquet floor with the world at bay outside, Dark Eyes and El Soave were in close embrace. They wanted to take turns wearing the 3-inch heels so each could see what the follower — the woman — would feel. The gaze of Dark Eyes was concentrated and fixed and floated above his forearm as he started his back ocho and our transportation to the Buenos Aires of 1928.

The Effortless Boleo

The roomy body of El Generoso pushed into my stomach, the perfect fit, the tension and compression melt into one, and it is impossible for me to mistake his intent. Boleos are effortless.

The Existential Pine

It rained all the way home from the milonga, hours and hours of spray, with the noisy slap, slap, slap obbligato of old windshield wipers. We were traveling down miles of a corridor formed by pines. They lifted their limbs in an existential contradiction of struggle and sheer joy in the same way a Sunday preacher lifts his arms, heavy with sin and mortal suffering, but finding redemption above. The trees drank their redemption from the sky and spread their arms with thanks.

The Red Shoes of La Aventurera

La Aventurera threw her foot up on the chair and declared that she would spend the next year in Argentina, hiring taxi dancers who are far too young and far too good looking for their own good to squire her to every milonga in Buenos Aires. These are the shoes she bought just minutes before the first tanda.

The Silent Explosion

The boleo is like the exclamation point that comes at the end of a smooth, gliding sentence. El Generoso's massive arms are clear about what they want, and when the reedy, insistent voice of Libertad Lamarque cried for her lover's besos brujos, I answer his invitation with an extravagant flip of my leg, backwards, knees touching, foot high in the air and then letting the weight of my leg take it down into the momentum of a forward flip, my foot coming to rest against the side of the other. After the explosion comes the silence, where I wait those eternal seconds for my next invitation.

The Arm and the Red Enamel

She painted her nails red. Stop sign red. And when her hand rested on the charcoal arm of her partner, the eye stopped dead at her fingertips. She hadn't just colored her nails; she put up a wall that the man couldn't cross.
Men and women were meant to melt together.

When Rules Mean Nothing

La Porteña was laughing about her glasses.
'They're Buddy Holly,' I said, astonished she would wear them to milongas in Buenos Aires.
The eyes must be naked when dancing.
'No, no,' she said. The glasses were aggressively black-rimmed, but they were narrow and the air around La Porteña came from the direction of the Champs Elysées, not Lubbock, Texas. 'They're irresistible. When I'd wear my contacts, I looked like every other woman in the room. But these glasses … ' Her eyes did an upkick, and she gave her hand a quick shake. 'These glasses … the milongueros wouldn't let me sit down!'

Healing La Porteña

La Porteña was having another headache, a massive black weight that darkened and pressed the light that always, always shines out of her. Her partner, Descartes, led her to the floor of the little salon.
Its floor-to-ceiling windows invited a reflection of green and blue from the rolling lawn outside and, beyond, the endless horizon of the water. He folded her up in his gentle arms, she lifted herself on the toes of her dance sneakers, closed her eyes and let herself be swept off into Ojos Negros. As he navigated the small space and spun to face us, Descartes lifted a brow. "Tango therapy," he said with a smile and executed a perfect giro in the splashing sunshine.

The Cat and the Moon

I raised my knee high over the man's hip, and the layers, layers, layers of white chiffon broke like a wave, and the spindrift of material foamed at his waist. He gave me the gift of a smile and then snapped my leg back until my knee brushed the wood floor, my back bending, my face upturned and shining. I felt the muscle of his arm as I gave him some of my weight. I was the half moon, and he was the cat caressing it.

The Incredible Lightness of Being Short

The man was five inches shorter than me, but when he danced, he flung his head back, lifted his arms in an extravagance of ballroom style and squired, yes squired me, across the floor. No talking during a milonga? We were laughing. Some men break all the rules, and the result is pure delight.