El Beso: Merry Christmas from the very smug

My second milonga, I went to El Beso with my Brazilian flatmate, who has been dancing tango for fifteen years. Headstrong from the success of my first milonga, it didn't occur to me that this one would be any different. In fact I even sent an email to a friend, who is about to come out here, saying something like: “I must have danced with about fifteen men... they say the Argentines won't dance with tourists, but that's just a load of old hooey.”

Once, a long time ago, in Camden Lock, I found a bunch of Christmas cards that said, “Merry Christmas from the very smug”. They amused me and I thought they expressed perfectly the way I felt about things, that year. That was just before the most painful point in my life. I have to say that Sunday night at El Beso was the most excruciating milonga ever and I sure as hell wish I hadn't tempted fate, sending that email. Let me tell you what it was like: we were shown to seats furthest back from the dance floor. No one made eye contact with us for the first hour. Nobody had seen us dance, which in my case, would have made little difference, but in my flatmate's case, would surely have made some: she's a good dancer. I made an internal vow that if someone asked her to dance, I would go out of my way to do something good the following day. At last, someone made eye contact with her and she rose to meet him on the dance floor. When she sat down, her partner asked me to dance. At El Beso, (the Kiss) I loved that when people met to dance on the floor, they first exchanged a kiss, even with strangers. Other than him, I had one other person ask me to dance. One. That's a total of two partners all evening. We left early, around one a.m.