I Hate Tango ... I LOVE Tango!

There's a t-shirt for golfers:
I hate this game I hate this game I hate this game
Nice shot!
I love this game I love this game I love this game

Friday night at The Merc, Extasis at midnight.

The room is freezing. I am not dressed for a milonga. I'm exhausted and hungry. And cranky. I have no business here.

But.

Extasis is coming. The first time I heard them, it took me two days to recover. I have to stay for something like that!

Also, I want to perform an experiment. I want to experience what Tom Stermitz calls the greatest social challenge for an American woman in tango: waiting to be asked to dance.

I want to sit with that, in a zennish way.

Early on I dance with Big Pants. Then tondas go by. No more takers.

I experience the greatest personal challenge for amateurs in Zen: I grow bored.

I duck out to visit poetry reading downstairs. A young girl is saying "Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you." The audience claps wildly.

Well, isn't that original.

Back at the milonga, I resume my sitting practice. Hours go by. Nearly three hours, to be exact. This is quite the sitting practice!

Finally the musicians begin setting up. They put their stands and chairs and sheet music in place. They adjust the lights. The bass and violin tune up.

Tuning is magic. All the sharps and flats resolve into perfect chords. It is musical foreplay. It creates anticipation.

They begin to play. I have been freezing and hungry for so long that at first I can't hear it, not with my heart.

Someone nice comes by, asks me to dance. It's about time!

But Extasis is playing, and right now I don't want some leader getting between me and the music.

"Maybe next time," he says. Then he confides, "When I was a beginner, I was nervous about dancing to live music, too."

I am beginning to hear "community service project" every time someone calls me a beginner.

Then it's here. The violin goes off like a freight train diving off a bridge over a gorge. Like Victoria Falls. Like the World Trade Center. Sliding, disastrous beauty.

The music comes at me like 100 Gs. It throws me back in the chair. My breathing is broken. My mind won't collect.

Another song starts. Dancers are moving.

I can't make the switch back into this world. I don't want to.

More Extasis would only be more.

Time to go home.