postcard story

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The nature of tango forces us to protect ourselves in subtle ways from the vulnerability it involves. We press ourselves against a stranger and move as one with their body. We can feel under the skin of the other; we can smell them; our perspiration mingles – on our hands, our brows, our backs. In any other situation this might be too close for comfort. How does it become ‘comfortable’ on the dance floor? We adopt an internal protective attitude. We close our eyes. We try to surrender.
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But, for her, with him, it was different. They had agreed to be unprotected in their humanness with each other. Virtual strangers, they had chosen to be lovers. To dance a delicious forbidden tango.

They agree to meet in the afternoon. Enough words had been exchanged; it was time to feel. Nowhere but Bueno Aires can you dance tango in the middle of the day. That it is why it is called Ideal: the ideal confiteria for a lovers’ tryst. A venerable restaurant and dance hall built in 1912, it has dark wood paneling, large columns, a stained glass domed skylight, huge mirrors and a formally attired nonchalant waiter.

She arrives first wearing a vintage linen dress in a style of the 1940s. A pale golden color with ivory trim on the fitted v-neck empire-waist bodice and an A-line cut skirt – it allow her legs freedom for dancing. Had she accessorized with an an appropriate hat and gloves it would have completed the fantasy. She chooses a table, changes her shoes, and orders a drink. Against the dark wooden panels of the confiteria she is glowing.

A few minutes later, she watches him stride in and over to a table on the other side of the room. He doesn’t want to sit with her. He wants to play. She pretends to not be interested; to not want to look; to not want to dance. She can’t. He is too beautiful and he wants her. She is drawn to his eyes like a magnet and they coquettishly go through the motions of eye contact, nod, rise, meet on the floor.

He invites her into his embrace. For a moment they stand together, close, motionless, breathing in each other’s scent. She feels him move and she goes. He goes with her. She only wants to go where he wants her to go. His hold assures her he will not let go – at least not for this song, not in this moment – and this moment is all they have, all that matters to them. He turns her and his hand edges close to where her flesh leaves her ribs and rises. Her breath catches, becomes shallow and quickens. Her breasts are pressed against his chest. She hopes that the thumping of her heart doesn’t distract him from the beat of the music. Her temple against his – she hopes that her thoughts don’t distract him from the lyrics of the song. He is so close now. So close she can feel his past, present and future. She can smell his desire. Her thigh brushes against the front of his trousers. His breath is on her neck, in her ear, surrounding her disconnected thoughts.

Between songs they separate, maintaining a publicly approved intimate distance and gaze into each others eyes. Searching for understanding.

“You look stunning”, he says, and she knows her recent purchase has been worth that one compliment – even if it is chamuyo.

During the cortinas they sit together, no longer willing to waste precious little time playing games across the floor. Still, they speak very little. They dance a couple more tandas and it is time for him to slip away.

She bends down to change her shoes and you cannot see the tears welling up in her eyes. This is the last she will see of him and so much is left undone.

He didn’t hear his Blackberry alarm at 8 am. It wasn’t supposed to be an invasive sound, like a regular alarm clock, because he was usually semi-awake by the time the morning light introduced itself to his eyelids through the only window in his otherwise dingy studio apartment. He had been looking forward to this morning’s destiny-shaping meeting with his lawyers that, if all went well, would allow him a new life and a way out of this shithole. On bad days he was only partly successful in distracting himself from the fear that his freedom would be denied. This morning he didn’t hear each of his neighbors leaving their apartments for work – the elevator clunking up and down; he didn’t hear the dogs barking in the courtyard; he didn’t hear the endless cacophony of traffic. The small bones in his ears had stopped responding as rigor mortis set in.

It was one of those dreaded ‘middle of the night’ phone calls: “Can you come to the hospital with me?”. He’d had a major heart attack a year earlier and was currently experiencing familiar symptoms. I hailed a cab outside my building, picked him up, and headed to the hospital of his choice in the undersirable La Boca area of Buenos Aires.

Now, I want you to erase any thoughts you may have about what a hospital experience in a Latin American country, in the worst section of the inner city, in the middle of the night of a full moon, might be like; it was nothing like that. After walking into an empty waiting area and explaining the problem we were immediately ushered into a private room and my friend was attended to, efficiently and thoroughly, in fluent English. Not such a long time after what turned out to be a ‘pleasant’ experience (dare I say even ‘fun’ – because my friend, an ex New York City comedian turns every experience into fun), we were escorted to the exit, cautioned to take care out there in the street, and released without even so much as a request for payment.

My therapist, believing that I might be interested in dating, asked me what I thought of Argentine men. I don’t like them any more or any less than any other kind of man I told her. But, I said, if I am not communicating at the level that I would like to communicate at with men of my own demographic, why would I want to add another barrier to that? Why would I want to share a man with his wife and his other lover? It’s true that the likelihood of (temporarily) fulfilling the tall, dark and handsome Latin lover fantasy is highter here than in the frozen north but I’ve been disappointed enough to know that fancy packaging has little to do with the gift inside. I’d rather hunker down on the couch and cuddle with my very own less than perfect soulmate and watch Antonio Banderas movies.

The taxista has just asked me a question to which I have repsonded with a head nod and ’si’ before he has even finished exhaling. I quickly realize that I don’t know what I have just agreed to. He may very well have asked me if I would come back to his place with him and I, like a dumb gringa as unfamiliar with the streets as I am with the language, could end up a meaningless statistic in a foreign country. Pulling the reigns back on my overactive imagination I settle on the likelihood, given the limited context and his intonation, that I have just participated in some basic form of effective communication. My assumption is confirmed when I am efficiently driven to, and arrive at, my destination in the same condition as when I entered the taxi – albeit somewhat wiser – and our monetary exchange seems fair. But, the experience starts me wondering just how often, with people of our own native language, do we respond without having really heard and understood the other peron; how often do we assume that we’re communicating effectively when we’re really not.

Recoleta Cemetery

At 1800 hours the bell tolls and the gate to La Ciudad de los Muertos is closed. They lock up the dead. They put chains and padlocks on the door to each eternal home – to keep . . . someone . . . from getting out – or . . . someone . . . from getting in. Buried in compartments, surrounded by apartments – the dead are discontent. In this city within a city there is little peace when the living come to ogle as if at a zoo. So, the question that I ask of you is ‘who is watching whom?’

I thought I was rid of her. After all, winter was closing in on Buenos Aires and I was living in the middle of the concrete jungle, seven floors above the street, in an anonymous building. Accustomed to the constant clamorous street sounds I left the window open just a crack to allow for a little of that ‘good air’ to flow through my tiny apartment.

Last night, I twisted up a lather in my sheets trying to escape her tortuous high-pitched whining. I averted her assault by hiding undercover until, nearing oxygen-starved panic, I was forced to come up for a cool full breath.

One mosquito can ruin your whole night.

After my massage Christina led me quietly to the hydrotherapy room. I sat my skinny naked body down in a plastic chair facing an 8 x 8 empty space – with a white tiled wall and grey floor older than me – while the plate-sized shower head above me began pounding out a cool and uncomfortable spray. Behind the plastic curtain at my back, my masajista adjusted levers and dials, controlling temperature and pressure, on her console like the little man in The Wizard of Oz. I squirmed around in the chair to surrender each muscle of my back to the force while imagining myself as fragile as a prisoner at Auschwitz alone in a water chamber that was cleansing me of my sins. These and other images tortured me as I neared a sort of death of the past 50 years on this pivotal birthday. And then, I focused in front of me on the blank white wall of possibility.