The good, the bad and the grotesque at Gricel

I promised myself I would give Gricel a swerve in the future, last time I went there. And yet I found myself there again, this evening. I must be going gaga. I come halfway across the world because the dancing in this city is that good, but that is not to say that Buenos Aires does not have its share of bad dancers. It just has more than its fair share of good ones. To be fair, I did get in a few good dances, this evening. But I had loads of the other kind.

Let me tell you about some of the unusual interpretations of the man’s role, a speciality of the dance floor at Gricel. There was the Boa Constrictor, whose arm went right around my waist and finished up with a hand squeezing right under my breasts, so I could barely breathe and my legs moved like dying fish. There was the Masseur, who kept rubbing his chest against mine in all directions, which felt plain pervy. There was the Spinner, who flicked me with his wrist, like a spinning top, instead of indicating my direction with the torsion of his centre. There was the Farmer, who used both arms to steer me this way and that, like a tractor. There was the Wrestler, who forced my elbow way beyond my back, on the open side of the embrace. And then, there was Death, who tried to bore me rigid by repeating the same two steps throughout an entire, unbelievably long tanda of milonga.

Goodbye Gricel!