Great Moments in Tango Teaching: Tom Stermitz

I have been saving this story all year, waiting for the right time to tell it…

Today is Boxing Day, when we redirect unappreciated gifts to someone who will truly value them.

This is a good day to tell the story of Tom’s gift. The woman who received it had no use for it, but that doesn’t mean it was wasted. In my book, it ranks as the first among a year’s worth of Great Moments in Tango Teaching.

It happened last fall or winter. It was Tom’s turn to teach the public introductory classes at the Mercury Cafe. Shane invited a new housemate, Amy, to come with us.

Amy is short and round, with a cap of dark hair and a sweet child’s features. She is outspoken and opinionated and has recently come off a stint in the Peace Corps. She is an out-and-out lesbian, and she is only going to take the class if she can lead.

I tell her she can, that there are never enough men and if by odd chance the class is gender-balanced tonight, I’ll let her led me for the whole class.

This is how the class works: The teacher demonstrates a step, then the students practice for a minute or two. At the end of the practice interval, the partners separate. The men stand still while the women walk to the next man along the line of dance. Then the whole rotation begins again.

Amy stands still in the man’s spot as the women rotate. You can imagine the routine: Some women helpfully try to move her along, some bypass her, some gamely agree to follow her lead. Some men try to claim her. Some insist. Amy insists right back. Some take it personally. Some good-naturedly back off.

The distaste on some faces, both female and male, is obvious. Perhaps I am only seeing what I expect. It is not fair to assume these dancers are bigots; perhaps they merely object to Amy’s insistence on flaunting the rules.

This is none of my business, and that’s a good thing because I would not handle it nearly as well as Amy. She negotiates this double-black-diamond course as deftly as if she skied it every day.

At the end of the class, Tom introduces cabeceo and makes us give it a try. Four of us are left on the sidelines: the most gorgeous woman in the room, Amy, I and a man who would rather sit it out than look at any of us.

From across the room, Amy catches my eye. I shrug, head for my chair. She keeps looking. Oh! I get it! We dance.

The class ends. Tom makes his move. He approaches the table where I sit with Amy.

I know what is coming. He’s done it to me already.

After teaching introductory classes like these, Tom likes to circulate among the beginners, recruiting them for his own series of classes.

He says something like this: “I saw you dance. You’re ready for my advanced beginner class.”

After only one lesson, it seems premature to invite Amy to join an advanced beginner class, but Tom didn’t get to be a full-time tango teacher by being shy.

So I watch him approach and I wait for it...

He homes in on Amy. His eyes are right into hers. His voice is offhand, as usual.

“If you want to take my class as a lead, I’ll make it safe for you to do that,” he says.

Amy makes a polite answer. It’s clear she’s had enough. Tom walks away, his demeanor unchanged.

This is just Tom being Tom. He made his pitch. Take it or leave it, he’s not going to burn the house down.

This attitude of Tom’s rubs me the wrong way. I sometimes get the sense that Tom deliberately makes people feel decidedly ordinary. As a person who builds her life around doing exactly the opposite, I am annoyed. Offended on behalf of whomever is the object of his disinterest.

But in this moment, that very disinterest endears him to me as nothing else could.

So you’re a lesbian who only wants to lead, he says. That works for me, come to my class.

And at the same time: I’ll be your champion. To get at you, they’ll have to go through me. No big deal.

And at the same time: I’d do the same for your monkey’s uncle. Take it or leave it.

Most of us live, at some time or other, on some kind of margin. And so we know this: Sometimes there is no greater gift than someone who offhandedly says, “I see you. Come as you are, come join the crowd. We’ll make room for you. No big deal.”

If Tom and I didn’t annoy each other so, I would chase him down right this minute and hug him. I would hold him up as a man of the highest order. And say: This is life as it shoud be, each person recognized in their own right, without fuss and bother.

Everything that has happened is happening still.

Kudos to you, Tom Stermitz, forever.