New Comer

I got another private lesson, this time with Vilma Somebody. She's really cool. We only spoke in Spanish, and so it was like a Spanish and Tango lesson in one! She pointed out a lot of things that I either didn't even know I was doing wrong or that I had been ignoring because they were too simple and too difficult to improve. Well worth the money.

Afterwards I was hungry, so I had more, yup, you guessed it!, empanadas. This time they were fried. I just walked into the nearest place. It was a dinky little place in the middle of the touristy and expensive-looking St. Nicolas. The people there were interesting. All men, all looking tired and jaded, all but the waiter was old. I had a grapefruit "juice", which is just water plus sugary artificial grapefruit flavor.

The next step. Well. I wanted to decompress, by that I meant, take a break from everything and be with myself, for myself, by myself. There's so much information collected the last nine days that I need time to process. By "information" I don't only mean things I saw or heard or touched or smelled, but also the thoughts and sensations that come from these pieces of primary information.

But I told a new comer, a tanguera "friend", that I would meet up with her at Confiteria Ideal down the street. She had just arrived this morning. I was not completely willing to meet, but I said I would be there at 5:30 while I hadn't heard from her if she really would be there.

So I went down the block and went upstairs. Unlike the previous time I was there, the place was packed (with old people, of course, who don't have to work on a Friday afternoon). I got permission to go in without paying so I could see if she was there. Nope. I was a little relieved. She was probably too tired. So I went downstairs and saw heard someone asked in English, "Do you speak English?" I turned and saw an old couple, looking lost. No one was working downstairs that was available. They just wanted to know what "UNITANGO" meant, and I said it was probably the name of the organizer. The woman had a sweet Southern accent (for those who don't know, I am quite enamored with Southern accents, and would love to be able to speak like that without insulting anyone). Instead of moving on, I asked who they were and if they wanted to know anything else. I explained to them about "La Viruta". I didn't see them there later tonight, though.

Then the door opened, I turned and saw my friend.

She wasn't really a friend. She was someone I danced with once in New York, at Tangoloft. I really enjoyed dancing with her then, we danced three tandas and then another one later. I thought we liked dancing with each other.

I thought we were good together, to put it really cheesy and borrowing real life's empty romanticism.

But in Houston, after I saw her again and got really excited, I asked her to dance and she didn't.

My ego was crushed (it's really easy to get crushed, by the way). Though it didn't ruin my night, as it would have been if I was starting out in tango, I couldn't forget it.

Thin ego, hollow, but not abnormal for a male tango dancer.

In any case, she found out I was in Buenos Aires and she told me she was coming. Strangely, I didn't care about Houston. But I didn't forget it either. I wanted to help. But a deeper reason was I wanted my bruised ego (and it's bruised so many times, thanks to its own hollowness) to see who this woman was. She had just graduated from college a few weeks ago. She was coming to Buenos Aires for the first time after having danced tango for under two years.

She was noticeably excited to see me, a familiar face. I was excited to see my two friends here nine days ago. It's so helpful to know someone, and even more helpful if that someone is welcoming and helpful. She immediately declared that she didn't know Spanish. Big problem here most people don't speak English.

We talked for a while without moving. How do you do that if you aren't even friends?

Friendship is just one way to connect with someone.

I had a lot to share with her. She was amazed how much I knew in nine days, and from this context I realized how much I have gotten to know this place. How much "information" I have gathered. For the first time, I felt I have been "living" here.

We finally went up stairs, and she was super nervous. She was without words, impressed by the Confiteria, a legendary place she had only heard of, and she was intimidated by the cabaceo, something many North Americans find weird because they don't like eye-contact.

We talked more and more. Finally, before leaving, I asked if she wanted to dance. It was fine. She was a little jittery the first song, but then she started being playful by the third vals.

I didn't end up going to the folkloric class at 7PM, even though I really wanted to understand zamba. I didn't go home to take a shower before a long night of dancing (or at least, long night of being among dancers, big difference). Instead, we walked around, went to a shoe store for me to get more information, took the subte, going the wrong direction and then getting off at the wrong station, again (same subte as yesterday's error). So we just walked to this place where the New York friend I made took me to, the crazy pudgy man and his tiny, idiosyncratic dive. The man didn't ask me how my other friend was, and I didn't realize why until later, when I thought, he was being tactful in not asking me about "the previous woman" in front of this "current woman." I thought it was funny (whether that was his reason or not). I recall in that party the previous night this guy telling me what a wonderful time he had in a park the previous Sunday with a friend (a woman). They were just lying there with a bottle of wine, one reading poetry, the other, a professional tango singer, singing tango (not at the same time). After that, he just sent her on a colectivo. He realized that the beauty of that afternoon lay in the simplicity of connection. In a different story, he would have tried to seduce her, got her to go in a cab with him, and you know the rest of the story. But it's like tango, there are 12-15 minutes of getting to know each other, connection, and then, a farewell. So the point here is that I was enjoying with this this new friend, doing simple things (including making double mistakes on a subway line that I had already made a mistake in the previous night!). I think romance has always been overrated for as long as human beings have gained consciousness and connected it to unfulfilled wants. A romantic connection is among the hardest things to get in life, and we have a tendency to run after that which we are made to believe we can't have, and in the process, we forget every other connection, and even after we achieve what we thought we couldn't have, we find it so depressingly empty.

After my rabbit and her chicken had gone in the respective stomachs, we walked around Palermo and then went to Canning. It was packed, but she was super nervous. I wanted her to keep her expectations low. Unfortunately my warnings came true. She had really bad dances with Porteños. (Though from the smile on her face, I think she enjoyed dancing with me, after rejecting me in Houston, hah!)

I, on the other hand, was not really in the mood to dance. I was tired.

I missed my "decompression" today. My body was not happy, and my soul was not ready for a connection, perhaps because I had exhausted its energy on this young woman.

We went to La Viruta later, just in time for a live band. A Porteño named Guillermo hollered to us, got us a great table. I felt so welcome, myself. My new friend couldn't dance anymore, because she was quite exhausted having missed sleep on the flight, and her new walking shoes was bleeding her ankles. But we stayed through the concert, to which others were dancing. It wasn't so good. Too much emotion in the bandoneon and the vocal. Tango need not be screaming broken hearts. It could be Fresedo's pleasurable remembrance and salute to love.

So I didn't dance much. But that's all right. I can't be dancing all the time, and I was conscious of my body's message to me that I must rest. Which is what I will do next: sleep, rest, time for myself.

But I don't see this fatigue, both in body and soul, the fault of spending time with this new comer. It's part of me to help people, and I did exactly that. She needed someone to start off her 4-week trip here, especially someone speaking Spanish. And by connecting with her, I felt also a little connected with myself, not only by revealing to myself as well as to her how much I have gotten to know this place, how much I have connected to this place, but also anytime I listen to someone, I feel connected with my environment, which is the world.

So I don't regret my plans changing, and I don't see myself having sacrificed anything. Life is as it is, and we take it without too much planning or we just trip on our own schedules.