Married to the Tribe
By: Camille Cusumano
Tags: Love, Dance, Milongas, Argentina, Tango

Married to the Tribe

Tango induces tribal love. After tango, coupling with just one feels sort of claustrophobic.

Photo by Preillumination SeTh on Unsplash

No matter the stranger’s laser blue eyes and satin silver hair. The magic resides in the embrace and he knows how to power it from his core through my torso. The music begins and we are dancing airborne tango.

Airborne tango occurs when my partner and I are so in sync we leave the ground. One of tango’s basic tenets is that one leg is always free. So, for split seconds during weight shifts, both feet seem to dance on air. If cars hydroplane on wet pavement why can’t fleet-footed dancers generate uplift on a wood floor? At the Verdi Club in San Francisco where I dance tango every Thursday, I’ve been in “flight” nearly the whole evening with the stranger who is passing through from Oregon to Africa. He is so thrilling to dance with that I break with protocol that advises couples to change partners after every set of four songs.

His pendulous strides allow my legs to float out slits in the sides of my genie pantaloons. Astaire-like in his extensions, he has the build of Gene Kelly, compact and grounded — except when we are airborne. We exchange more sweat than speech. I praise our nimble connection once. He responds, “Tango’s like sharing a central nervous system.” Off we glide under the ambient fire of vintage chandeliers.

As I exit the salon, my Argentine friend, Gladys, who has not missed my breach of etiquette, asks “Tu novio?” Is he my sweetheart?

I smile, recalling the lovely rocking of his cadencia, a syncopated step, so perfectly in time to the music, I still feel jubilant. He is what Argentines might call “El Re del Compas,” the King of Rhythm.

I have given him my email because it turned out we had a friend in common. But, “No, I’ll never see him again,” I answer Gladys.

It is not just that he lives in another state, but that three years before I had vowed to keep chaste the place of my passion, this container as it were, called the milonga, where I dance with a satisfying mix of freedom and intimacy. Sometimes I stand back and observe. Manicured feet in candy-colored spikes, fluid garments, torsos spiraling beneath joined heads move in an organized ebb and flow that disallows any inkling that we are not all connected.

I’m content to belong to that tribe, not to any one man.

I have tried clumsily to explain to non-tango friends about my sense of a third presence when the tango connection is this good. They smile. The thousand-mile gaze follows. But I’ve learned that the alchemists even had a term, tertium quid, that referred to a mysterious third element that arises with two known quantities.

Tango mysticism aside, I’ve etched real miles on dances floors from San Francisco to Buenos Aires. Milonga, the venue where tango is danced, is a word of African origin, possibly meaning gathering place. And so up to now, I’ve kept my gathering place as sacred as a church. This promise was easy to keep only after I failed to steer clear of entangling alliances, only after all the tumult tango sparked in my life. First, I quit my day job, a coveted editorial position on a travel magazine. Then my obsession catalyzed the loss of my cherished 15-year relationship. Locked in embrace with multiple partners every night, how could I not expect him to feel like my insignificant other?

When I first arrived in Buenos Aires (planning to stay two months but staying a few years), I was still bereft over my losses. I met a student of philosophy, Peter Esser, from the States, who warned me that tango was a pharmakon. “Like government, police, food, and drink,” Peter said, “tango can be medicine or poison.” I had yet to bleed the poison as I proceeded to engage in two ill-advised affairs with Argentine milongueros. These prowling men, who “fish” the milongas, are usually great dancers, romantic, suave, and practiced at the art of catch and release.

The art of self-deception, I realized, was the toxin I needed to purge. Tango itself was pure. The dance, consisting of a few basic steps, asks nothing more than total presence and skillful play. It was born among poor immigrants of a primal desire for bonding with others. Over its more than one hundred years, it’s been refined but its improvisational quality endures.

Tango had crept into my life unbidden. Maybe I was ready for the cleansing of tired, lofty expectations for my partner, myself, for life. The first technique a tango follower learns is to not anticipate, or she’ll miss the beauty of the moment, the dance’s subtle betrayal. At any time, leaders may block our feet (paradas), sandwich them, spill us like fountains (volcadas), hang us off cliffs (colgadas), twirl us like windmills (molinetes), or invade our space (sacadas).

Despite its sexy aspects, tango is undeniably playful and therapeutic. When I sank into its childlike quality, tango began to influence my behavior even outside the dance circle.

In Buenos Aires, you can dance tango from 2 pm to 6 am, though clock time ceased once I entered the tightly packed halls. I’d melt into the embrace with men from all corners of the globe. I’d feel ravished in an oddly wholesome way. Before dawn, I’d return to my bed alone, sleeping sound as an adolescent nourished by a dozen fairytales.

When I came home to San Francisco, I kept clear of the “tango-ed web.” Eventually however, I longed for a relationship. Although I believe in chemistry, I caved to online dating buzz. I played up my love of bicycling and swimming. I wanted no one who danced tango. (The gods must have roared with laughter.) My first and only date looked auspiciously like my previous relationship — a tall, Irish lawyer. It went well, perhaps too well. He emailed me soon after that he had been inspired to “resurrect” his former relationship.

I was happy for him. There may be plenty of fish, but I was using the wrong bait. Not one guy bit after the recidivist lawyer. I was resigned to being married to the milonga when the Astaire-Kelly stranger emailed me the day after we met. He said our evening of dancing pleased him “into a smile” and “Nothing quite that good happens very often for me.” He wrote in a refreshingly open way that was flattering, self-revealing, and charmingly vulnerable. I read and re-read his emails.

My weakness for tango is surpassed only by my soft spot for the written word. Our emails grew legs that danced over many miles the next two months as he traveled. I began to fall in love with his voice. Unlike the men I had tried tediously and in vain to connect with on e-Harmony, he was hair-trigger responsive and lighthearted. He cared minimally for biking and swimming — but, alas, we had tango.

He wrote casually that he was passing through San Francisco on his way back to Oregon. I hit the send button seconds later. “Come! Stay five nights,” I entreated.

“I love how understated you are,” he wrote back.

“What’s the point?” I replied. “We’ve already shared a nervous system.”

He came, he stayed, and our airborne tangos continued to take flight more than a year later.

Tango taught me to not anticipate, thus in a larger sense to not burden love with expectations. It gave me other tools that apply to intimate relationships: How to maintain my own axis or balance in partnership and, as a dance of improvisation, how to enjoy uncertainty. Despite what I deemed best for me, the universe sent me a partner, however fleetingly, who for a cherished few years, shared my passion for an activity that cannot progress without trust. I’m grateful. Laugh all you like, there is still this mysterious third presence that looks out for me, for him, for us.

And, perhaps the best part: I’m still married to the milonga.