I Am a Tango Lesbian

I am a tango lesbian. This comes as a surprise, because I am normally quite straight. But I cannot deny that evidence and logic clearly point to it:

When it comes to tango, I am a lesbian.

Ladies like hugs, TeacherTom says again and again. (I don’t.) This move or that will make a woman’s heart go pitter-patter. (Not mine.) This move is excruciatingly sensual. (Yikes!) He instructs the women to throw our arms around the stranger standing beside us, to wrap our arms about his neck. When I resist, he smiles indulgently.

“Soon you will like it,” he says. (Fat chance.)

One teacher orchestrates a group grope in which, in an incantatory tone, he urges us to feel one another all over, caress the skin, knead the muscle, cup the neck, stroke the fingers and palm, the tender wrist, the soft underside of the arm. He instructs us to take one another into a full embrace, to inflate our lungs, feel the pressure of breasts pressing chest, feel our hearts beating through the thin barrier of clothes and muscle.

Ahem. I hate to break this up, but…

…give me a good, hearty handshake any day.

A handshake is cordial. You look the person in the eye and press the flesh firmly to say “You’re all right.” That’s a nice way to talk to a stranger.

I talk to strangers this way all the time.

For example, in my church, when they “pass the peace” (air kisses, a vague circle of arm around shoulders, the exchanging pleasantries and blessings), I stick out my hand.

“I shake,” I say.

My pew-mates assume some deep personal scar, but they have given up trying to fix me. After you have humiliated a few hug-bullies by straight-arming them in front of their friends, the rest get the message.

Once when I said, “I shake” to the person beside me, he began to twitch.

“I shake too,” he said.

We laughed together, and it felt like a hug.

Just to be clear: I hug whom I please. I throw my arms with abandon around most of the people in my family, the friends I’ve known 20+ years, people for whom I feel real affection.

And that’s not all!

At tango, I hug the ones who come at me with open arms, in keeping with the spirit of things. I hug the ones who expect it, whose feelings would be hurt if I didn’t.

I hug Glenlivet because we are litter-mates and I have no other litter-mates left and after a year of dancing, he feels like an old friend. Also he smells good. He has lovely manners. And though he looks like a teddy bear, he feels solid and real

A Glenlivet hug feels like a handshake: masculine and warm and personable. Cordial. A dance with Glenlivet is like a handshake that goes on for three minutes. It does not make my heart go pitter patter. Not much.

My heart goes pitter-patter for the dance. The music and flow. The lead is part of the fabric of the dance, as are my shoes and the floor.

One tango-philosopher told me that men and women join tango for the emotional and physical closeness.

I joined tango because I like to be alone. For all its vaunted connection, this is one solitary endeavor. The lead is alert, architecting the dance, navigating the floor. I am with him a million miles away, floating on the music, eyes shuttered on the world.

The lead is my conduit. I send my energy through him to get at the dance. My body connects, but my heart dances alone. It feels like Outer Space. Wide open. Quiet. There are stars.

I joined tango because this is some serious dancing.

I joined tango for the emotional and physical closeness with that inner-Outer Space.

I don’t find it sexy at all.

In the human social system, sexual cluelessness is more inscrutable and dangerous than lesbianism. At least people know what a lesbian is. Lesbianism bucks the system to get its own piece of the pie. Obliviousness says, “There’s pie?” One proposes subversion, the other, anarchy.

To domesticate the concept, I hitch it to mainstream language. It is the sense of things that matters, never mind the facts. Testing the line on my writer friends, I say: I am a tango lesbian.

“You can’t say that! The Merry Peri scolds. “What will the real lesbians say?”

“Are you?” Melinda asks, point-blank.

That raises an interesting question.

“If you take sex out of the equation, what is the quintessence of lesbianism?” I ask Emily, an out-and-out activist.

“It’s a political construct,” she says.

Now I’m confused.

Let’s just go with the line: I am a tango lesbian.

Here is another line: Tango is life.

If A then B?

There is only one way to find out:

Late, after a long night of dancing, lounging in the dark with a glass of wine, looking through the window at trees and the moon, I check in with my Self.

I like men quite well. I like lots of things about men in general, and I like several individual specimens.

Two in particular have stirred my blood steadily and long. Neither one is suitable. By force of habit I let all that flow by. Very Zen. Very practical. Don’t look in windows at what you can’t buy.

Still. They are the avatars of my desire.

When tango has made me feel an aversion for men, repugnance for close quarters, I use these avatars to check in with myself.

I reach out intuitively to one or the other. I let my mind dwell.

A small floodgate of longing swings open.

Ah.

I let the longing flow by.

This one is not suitable and never will be.

And yet

Ah.

Damn the fates.

Still.

In this moment, on the fulcrum of longing and misery brought on by a member of the opposite sex, I confirm my sexual identity.