Cocooned

It’s Tuesday night, and what could be more appealing than to spend the night cocooned? No need to go back to the Turn so soon. It will be there next week.

My apartment is especially beautiful at night, the windows black mirrors, the wooden floor glowing in the lamp’s small light.

I have homework from Grisha to practice for Friday’s lesson. Last night, Joe ran me through his version of Eleven Perfect Steps, and there’s work to be done there as well.

I have my DiSarli CD. That is the music for a night like tonight. Everything is inviting.

But.

I am in the midst of a story that is unfolding simultaneously in the blog and in life. I didn’t choose the story, but I have chosen to tell it. To continue to tell it, I must continue to live it…

What the heck, I must continue to live it regardless. You can walk off the floor mid-tanda; you can’t walk away from your own true story.

So tonight I do not cocoon myself in a dancing meditation.

I go back to tango.

* * *

Costume can be disguise or armor.

When I started tango, I often wore long-sleeved, turtleneck tops. Armor.

Tonight I need something very covered up, but subtly so, in a way that will not betray that I am running scared. Disguise.

Costume is its own kind of cocoon.

* * *

I like the spare, severe lines of tight pants.

Pants make a woman look too powerful for tango. Some men interpret that costume to mean she wants to wear the pants in the dance. So I am told.

Pants do not make me look powerful, except in the way that the stem is stronger than the blossom of a flower. That is how tight pants make me be. When I am wearing tight pants, the whole length of me is one piece, flexible and strong and free. Resilient.

When I am wearing tight pants I feel my legs extend strong from my hip sockets down into the earth, eight inches or more below the surface. I am the stem, I terminate in roots. The earth feeds me power, my body gives it back. This is grounded.

The walking trees of Tolkein do not tear their roots free and replant them at every step; their roots remain buried even as they walk. This is grounded.

I love to follow.

I don’t want to own power, I want it to flow through me.

I want to be that strong.

* * *

Tonight I need a costume that makes me feel self
-contained. Covered up,
strong. Something that says I,
myself can hold my own.
Not because a lead is
taking care of me. Because
I am taking care of myself.

Covered up but not
timid. Tonight
I need a costume that holds everyone
yet at arm’s length, says,
My strength can match
any of you, bring it
on and on and-and …
on.

** *

The thick, winter-weight pants. The long-sleeved t-shirt over sturdy lingerie.

Covered up but not timid. The t-shirt is sheer black over a solid black camisole. The lingerie is hot pink, only the strap whispering Psst! from behind the cami and t-shirt, an accessory to match the Chinese character scrawled on the front of the shirt.

What does the character say?

Various leads have made guesses. It’s a game to play between dances. On any given night, any guess can be right. Tonight I choose Rick Moss’s best guess:

Biker Bitch.

Covered up but not timid. The whole thing fits like a stem's epidermis.

* * *

And the Comme il Faut’s with the spike heels.

And the earring, a three-inch saw blade resected from the eviscerated belly of a Swiss Army knife. It can draw blood.

Just in case.

* * *

To those who are not captivated by the surfaces of things, a costume can be quite revealing.

* * *

Each of us has to live our life story. It helps to take it in small doses.

I arrive midway through the evening. It has been my technique. I arrive in time to work the desk, and by the time my shift is up, I am acclimated to the scene and can dance.

Tonight I arrive earlier than usual, in time for the community dance. It is my new tango practice: Dance with strangers. Working with shyness is like taming a horse. Sometimes you have to back off, and sometimes you just have to make it do what you want it to do.

The community dance is set up to create a random mix of partners, each dance interval lasting as long as the lead likes it to last.

I am lucky! My first partner is Nick Jones, with whom I have just had my first private lesson. He whips us into an off-balance turn, the kind he is going to teach this weekend in a workshop titled “Turn ‘Til you Puke,” with Luiza Paes.

I am signing up for that workshop!

My next draw is lucky, too: The Mathematician! What are the odds? The Tragedy of Tuesdays is that he practices all night with a classmate; this brief community dance is the only chance I will have to dance with him. He makes the dance last a lovely long time. Lucky!

OK. That’s enough bravery. I do not trust my luck to hold.

I scurry to the lobby, work my shift at the welcome desk. For the rest of the night, despite the rules against dancing more than one tanda, I take shelter in my practice partner’s safe, familiar, safely familiar embrace.