My Glasses, My Heart Part 2.5

I have become a connoisseur of pockets. Andre favored dress shirts. Bill is a cowboy—pockets with snaps. Robert often wears something unusual in fabric and color and cut with a fine, roomy pocket.

There are many other pockets, I’m sure, but I have not made an acquaintance with them. I am not a pocket-hussy. I don’t remove my glasses for just any lead, and I won’t put them in just any pocket. One likes to maintain a sense of propriety.

Once I took off my glasses to dance with a stranger; he left me stranded on a huge, foreign dance floor, and that was that. Now I use my good sense.

When you go out on the town with a man for the first time, it’s smart to keep taxi cash in your pocket. When you go out on the dance floor with a lead you don’t know, it’s smart to make sure you can walk yourself off.

This week at the Turn I took my glasses off, thought better of it and jammed them back on as I joined a new lead on the floor. Smart move.

Other than with Andre, I never put my glasses in any of The Five pockets. The glasses-in-the-pocket thing is a touch common. The Five and I maintain an elegant formality that is its own kind of dazzling.

Andre is long gone from tango now, but he has left his mark in these lingering thoughts about etiquette and courtesy, the character and purpose of each.

Etiquette is good manners, a code of conduct conveying respect. In a society that reveres the casual and brisk, there is a tendency to be utilitarian in our dealings with one another. Etiquette requires us to slow down. It says: I see you, I am paying attention.

Courtesy is the expression of the care we take for one another. When Andre walked me back to the bar and handed me my glasses, he was doing more than etiquette demands; he was saying: I wish to do you a kindness.

It may seem as if etiquette is the lesser of the two, but that is not the case. Not at all.

Etiquette paves the way for social commerce. As a code of conduct, it has broad range; it can speak volumes or not at all. It preserves boundaries and conventions and roles. Etiquette serves us best in situations where these things are of primary importance.

Courtesy says, I like you. Do you like me? Mannered conduct gives way to improvisation. Courtesy lends itself to the personal, but don’t let that mislead you. Conventions relax but persist.

Etiquette serves us in ways that courtesy does not. When we wish to express warm personal regard and even affection from a neutral stance, etiquette serves.

The Five are the leads with whom I regularly dance. I like them and vice-versa; at milonga and practica we seek out one another. Four of The Five are involved in significant relationships. Propriety is of primary importance. Etiquette speaks volumes, and the word spreads all along our interlocking webs of social connection. When it serves in this way, etiquette is outwardly focused, a form of public speaking.