Fear and loathing at El Beso

A friend of mine said he was going to El Beso on Sunday night, so I decided I'd brave it a second time and may be, just may be, it would be better this time round, with the guarantee of at least one man I could dance with. My three flat-mates decided to join me. One of them has just started taking tango classes, another is about to start and the third has never danced tango, but is able to follow a lead in most other dances. On this basis, we booked a table. Meanwhile, the guy whose idea it had been in the first place, decided to go elsewhere.

When we arrived, we were designated a table at the back and had to push quite hard to get a table right next to the dance floor or we might never get a look in. We succeeded in obtaining one. Sadly, sitting at the front doesn't make you a dancer, any more than sitting in a garage makes you a car. We sat there coyly waiting to be invited, but rapidly got bored and started chatting, making ourselves increasingly ineligible for eye contact from los varones*. Most of the men were pushing seventy and most of the women were young and the women far outnumbered the men. The four of us were at least presentable and they didn't even know whether we could dance and still, the señores wouldn't look at us. A most provoking thing. We just couldn't figure it out. I spoke with an American woman sitting at the next table and she said El Beso was notorious for this, like the Dome, in London. The three flatmates left in disgust around 1.30 a.m., but I stayed on another hour or so and finally got in a few tandas. All the same, to go back for another dose of snubbing would be downright perverse, but knowing me and my designer realities, I probably will.

(*varón = male. Pronounced like 'baron,' but with the stress on the second syllable – makes them sound rather dashing, don't you think?)