Taxi Note

It's been a few days, I've been busy. Why?

Oh, it's the stupid work. But I need not talk about it. Only that it's over. And now I can do what I want and not what I have to.

Have to?

Obligations. What does that really mean? I have to do my laundry, which I did today. Weird experience. I ended up having someone else do it for me. I went to the lavanderia and next thing I knew someone else was folding my dried clothes and asking me to pay an equivalent of $3.75. Not too bad, though it's exactly how much I pay in my own apartment.

More obligations: taxis.

Taxis, that friend and foe of the tourist. I have had to take taxis to come home the last few nights because I waited 15-20 minutes for the dumb bus that didn't come. So I valued my sleep time enough to pay three dollars plus change. So I had to go home.

But the "taxi" I want to talk about here is something else. Two nights ago I went to a nice place for dinner with a new friend. She knows all these "dives" and the one she introduced me to was definitely worth returning with a camera. The place is tiny, the ambiance is like from some old movie anywhere. Dark, decorated with lots of random stuff you'd find in an antique shop, the wall is unpainted and exposed brick (but not the "chic" way). The food was great and I had "locro", this stew of pig skin, pig fat, and lots of veggies I couldn't identify. After that we went to El Yeite, a relatively new place. (I went to the restaurant by bus, by the way).

El Yeite is some tiny theater that was rearranged for a milonga. There are three big masks of different sizes hanging on the wall where the bathroom struts out. The bathroom has no doors, though the fact that the path into it snakes in prevents you from seeing what people are doing inside. Still, weird to have a bathroom strutting out into the dance space.

I didn't get to dance much there, but it's all right. I am enjoying a lot the different atmospheres of the milongas. I've been here for a week now and I haven't felt a huge need to get my best dances in the universe. El Yeite was weird. But weirder one yet was last night. That's for later. It was at El Yeite that my new friend told me about "Taxi Tango". I could not for all the broad imagination I brag to have guess what that meant. She then explained that you could hire someone to dance with you the whole night. She has noticed some really good dancers showing up on nights and dance only with one person, usually old or bad, etc, and she said, "I guess he's working tonight."

Why so shocked?

I don't know. I realized quickly that it wasn't so novel, wasn't so creative. Why not? There's so much drama in tango, so much frustration regardless of your level, your background, your expectations. At least some of the time. So if you want to have a good time, simple as that, why not pay someone to dance with you the whole night? We dance tango to have fun, ¿verdad?

Do we really know why we dance tango? To touch someone, to feel connected to someone, and not just one person (I feel sorry for couples that want to dance only with each other). It's a way to be with someone. Have you noticed it's so complicated and hard to be with another human being, especially one of opposite sex? "Being" meaning just to feel you are with this person. Most people don't even know what that means.

So I wonder if the hired taxi dancers can make their clients feel like this. Or maybe, like different kinds of prostitutes (as I imagine since I have never taken up the service of one), there are different degree of connection. And like hiring a prostitute, I want to make this huge leap of a point that people are paying big money to feel connected to someone else, to stop feeling so lonely. Maybe that's why I was shocked. I am too cheap to understand the world of money.

In other news (we are making this short because I need to run to a concert now):

• After Yeite I went to my first milonga at Canning. Not as interesting but very beautiful. A classic hall for dancing. But the tandas were weird! Five or even six songs to a tanda, separated by a very long rock n' roll cortina!
• Last night that new friend took me and another friend to another place, where I had my first real steak. Wow, best steak, ever!
• Last night was three milongas, all of which were pretty empty! First was this bizarro place called La Catedral, where people were more interested in chatting, smoking cigarettes (and supposedly plenty of pot was available), drinking, and listening to impromptu music. The tango music was really pathetic, and the floor is arguably the worst in the world! After that we went to Practica X. Dead as a deadzone. But very interesting, very cold and nuevo. After that was back to Canning where a competition had been taking place and was wrapping up. Overall, fun, but it was strange to see such sparsely populated places. Buenos Aires milongas are supposed to be packed packed!