In praise of ponytails

Life is gorgeously unpredictable. Yet it is a universal perversion to speculate, anticipate, expect. I expect I shall meet a man with a ponytail in Bs As. I expect the city is peopled with them. Certainly, a fair few of the Argentine, male tangueros in London sport a ponytail. So that would be a fair assumption to make.

Of course, it has to be worth the name. There is nothing wrong with having a few sweaty strands tied back in a rubber band, but that is not a ponytail. I am talking abundance. There was a fine ponytail at the milonga yesterday; it belonged to a North London man. I obsessed a little about it as I drifted off to sleep. What is it about the ponytail that grabs me? Let me see.

Perhaps there is a subliminal connection with horses and it triggers the awe and doting first experienced in the context of riding, as an adolescent girl. As children, a poem my sister and I would recite over and over again with ever-increasing gusto, was the unabashedly romantic The Highwayman, by Alfred Noyes:

"Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hoofs ringing clear;
Tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding __ riding __ riding..."

Then again, maybe I associate it with the gallantry of the courtly tradition, honour and valour, Lancelot and Guinevere, the knight at arms rescuing damsels in distress. Maybe, like so many nice women, I'd really rather be La Belle Dame sans Merci toying with the heart of a palely loitering knight with a ponytail. But I haven't researched this at all; perhaps they never wore ponytails, other than in school plays.

Few men wear a ponytail, nowadays, so it has to be a deliberate choice, which suggests there is an unspoken declaration going on, something like: Look at me. Enjoy me. I am a magnificent male. It intimates confidence, which is always attractive; possibly vanity. Though it might not be not everyone's cup of tea, vanity can be both entertaining and endearing in a man.

And here, I must quote the song, My Conviction (from Hair, the musical ):

I would just like to say that it is my conviction
That longer hair and other flamboyant affectations
Of appearance are nothing more
Than the male's emergence from his drab camouflage
Into the gaudy plumage
Which is the birthright of his sex
There is a peculiar notion that elegant plumage
And fine feathers are not proper for the male
When aaaaaaaa-ctually
That is the way things are
In most species

And then there is the heady experience itself that escapes description: the luxurious sensation of connecting with a man in tango, your hand resting on a masculine trapezius muscle cloaked in the lush silk of his mane.

Then again, perhaps I just like the way it looks fanned out over my hips.

Mmm... Come right back!