Written Sunday, July 15, 2007
From Seattle, Washington, where it’s warm, clear, and summer

TANGO

Remember the film, Saturday Night Fever? Remember the way John Travolta pranced down the street? Remember how he walked onto the dance floor? Electric, alive, a stud horse with flaring nostrils! The men stood back. The women breathed heavily, twitching with eager rhythm, drops of perspiration on their brows. The music cranked and the crowd went wild when John went into his disco moves. The man could dance!

Tango is not disco. But that’s the feeling I’m after in taking up the Argentine tango challenge. It’s the impression I want to make. I want attitude you can smell. When I walk into a club, and put on my shoes, I want people to stand back in awe and fear. He’s here! Senor Fuljumero! The man can dance! Women will stand in line to be asked. Take a number.

Fat chance, you say. A white-haired, seventy-year-old man whose pot-belly shows no matter how hard he tries to suck it in. A murmur will go up from the crowd. “Ohmygod, why is he here again?” Men will smirk. Women will leave en masse for the ladies’ room. Bartenders will call 911.

Go ahead, mock me. Senor Fuljumero, Classico Tangoista is on the move.

Well, OK, so far I can flare my nostrils pretty well. And I have the suit, the shoes - even the hat. The lessons are coming along nicely. And nobody actually runs when I show up for an evening milonga. Looking like you might know what you’re doing is essential, and I can at least look that way. Women have actually asked me to dance. Well, OK, one woman. The beauty-impaired, sequined-up old lady with toxic breath who seems to show up wherever I go to dance. Maybe I’m overdoing the nostril flaring.

Tango is not for wimps. Tango training requires stamina, fitness, and the ability to make quick, graceful moves without falling down. The dancing doesn’t start until 11:00 at night and goes to 3:00 in the morning. Shifting to being a night-owl is a new zone. Like having musical jet-lag.
My children are embarrassed by my activities. They don’t talk to me about how I’m spending my time. They know. But they are all middle-aged. They can only imagine, and they never ask for details.

“What’s your old man doing this summer?”
“Well, he’s obsessed with the crows in his yard and tango dancing, and he’s out on the town until three in the morning four nights a week.”
“Wigged out? Senile?”
“We’re not sure - but something’s loose.”

So? So? What’s wrong with being loose? Loose is not immoral or illegal.
So they have to come and get me in Buenos Aires because things got so loose some of my parts came unhinged? Or so what if I die some humid night dancing in a basement waterfront dive with a smoldering Latina wrapped around my body like an anaconda. So?

Read this:

Tango: The vertical expression of horizontal desire. Born as an expression of longing, lust, passion, loneliness, and conflict. It lives on as a dance that arises at the center of the soul to meet the dancing soul of another.

Often referred to as a three-minute love affair, tango is an exchange of mutual pleasure - sensual, without intimacy. And it’s forever true: it takes two to tango.

In tango we dance our emotions rather than speak them. The dance floor becomes a canvas, and our hearts become palettes. Feet and bodies paint sensuous emotions in sweeping strokes. With a dab of desire here and a shading of sorrow there, the tango comes to life. We dance tango because we have secrets.

Got it? This is not stamp collecting or golf. It does not describe life in a nursing home, either.

A longtime friend asked me if my tango-mania wasn’t a little over the top.
“Tango? At your age? You must be out of your mind.” Perhaps. Silly to some. Comedy to others. Serious to me.

The blustery macho noises I make about tango disguise a fearfulness. I fear the shrinking of life that goes with aging. I fear the boredom that comes with not learning, not taking chances, not getting out on a limb of some kind - where the fruit is. I fear traveling around as a senior spectator just looking at stuff without being involved in it. I fear the dying that goes on inside when you get up from the game to sit in the waiting room for the final checkout line. No.

I want the sharp pleasure of the anxious edge that comes from beginning something new that calls on all my resources and challenges my ego. I long for the excitement that comes from being able to say to a dancer, “I admire that. I want that. I do not know - teach me. I’ve come to learn.”

A dear friend died last week.
Died, as we say, peacefully in his sleep after a long life and a quiet retirement. His files were organized, his basement and garage clean, and all his dues paid up. A tidy end.
Not for me. My goal now is to dance. All the dances. As long as I can.
And then to sit down contented in a chair after the last elegant tango some sweet night and pass on because there just wasn’t another dance left in me.