I feel I should warn you, my women friends. Don’t dance tango if you love men. If you’ve always had a soft spot the size of Jupiter for our heterozygote companions. If you’ve always enjoyed male company and friendship and love to hear a masculine point of view. If you are a committed feminist at least partly because you have complete faith in men’s ability to act fairly towards women, to overcome prejudice and discrimination and be our equals, friends and allies. If you hold them to high standards because you know they can meet them. If you don’t believe in “women and children first” because a male life is worth as much as a female one — but are delighted when you receive piropos and have doors opened for you (though you don’t require it, by any means). If you’ve always been boy crazy, like me — don’t dance tango.
Because you will spend nights like this one: nights when every man embraces you tenderly and warmly; when you know that those lovely smooth giros were the result of many hours of practice and now you are the beneficiary of all that care and effort; when you feel their cheekbones lift in smiles as you decorate and play because they are delighted by your responses, because they intuitively understand how you love to express the music; when you feel the whooshiness of a step that ends just just when the music suggests — boom! — and you know that they are listening intently, carefully facilitating your both landing on that beat exactly with the music and together; when every part of their dance is focused on the quality of your pleasurable joint experience; when they are sad because their team lost and they convert that mild sadness into a lovely tender melancholy which perfectly suits this Di Sarli.
If you love men, stay away. Don’t come to El Beso on a Sunday night. Don’t embrace those Argentines (and a few lovely foreigners). Don’t dance tango. And then you’ll be safe. You’ll be heart whole.
This post first appeared in Sugar Mountain Land.
