All Over the Map - Laura Fraser [55]
But I’m not going to practice by dating online. That chapter is over. I swish around in the bubbles and decide I need to try a completely different approach. I somehow need a forum where I can learn about receptivity on a deep level, without the fear of rejection and hurt that always accompanies dating, someplace completely safe. I need to practice being approachable and responsive, like being led in a dance.
I lie there soaking, listening to the music, a group called the Gotan Project, some modern tangoish music, and then drain the tub. I jump up and grab a towel. I am going to learn to tango.
THE IDEA BEHIND taking tango classes isn’t quite as straightforward as hoping I will run into the man of my dreams at a milonga, though that could certainly happen; I love a man who can dance. I’m thinking of it as part of my self-improvement effort, which might help me develop the right kind of energy to attract the right man—hopefully, by the time I turn forty-five.
Tango, for the woman—or for the follower, anyway, because in San Francisco, of course, men can be followers and women leaders—is all about playing the traditional woman’s role: passive, responsive, flirtatious, tempting but even more erotic in its restraint. It’s fun and full of frisson. Maybe a little tango could teach me something about letting go of control, allowing myself to be led. As ridiculous as it seems to try to realign the basic way you relate to men in your forties, I figure a little tango couldn’t hurt.
So I buy some sturdy jazz heels and a flippy black skirt and sign up for classes.
From the first session, I realize it’s not going to be easy. For one thing, it’s obvious that I am not built like most women tango dancers, who tend to be delicate and lean, wear slinky dresses slit up to the thigh, and have disproportionately long legs. My physique is better suited for African, Brazilian, or salsa dance, by which I mean I was born with a rather steatopygic derriere and sturdy, muscular legs. (When I was dancing at a party in Kenya once, a local gentleman remarked, “You are very unusual for a white woman,” which I took as a compliment, and, were I not planning to be cremated, I might have etched on my tombstone.) Since tango is all in the leaning torso, flicking legs, and coquettish footwork—not in the grooving hips—I do the best I can.
I’m a pretty good dancer. I’ve taken hundreds of dance classes over the years, but almost always dancing solo in groups. I get jittery dancing with a partner. It makes me feel like I did in third grade, at a piano recital, suddenly so self-conscious I blanked on the music. It’s as if when someone is holding my arms I can no longer feel the rhythm in my feet. At tango class, I learn the steps, but my constant challenge is to trust my partner to hold my weight and to wait for him to move, not to anticipate or lead. At one point a partner steps back, crosses his arms, and, when I finally notice him, asks me when I am going to stop twirling around by myself. They’re difficult lessons.
But I keep going to class and then to milongas and realize that you can dance tango every night of the week in San Francisco if you like, and a lot of obsessed people do. I sit there and wait, as if at a high school dance, for a man across the room to nod to me, so I can nod back, and he drifts over and offers me his hand. Often it is a little too much like a high school dance, where I just sit there, pretending to find something fascinating at the bottom of my drink. But sometimes I spin around the floor and, for a few