The Tango Embrace

                As a fledgling tanguero at practica, an extremely attractive tanguera confided in me that one of the men had a super-duper embrace.

               “I just love (blank)’s embrace!” she exclaimed, loudly.

               She said this to help me understand there was something lacking in my embrace. She wasn’t trying to hurt my feelings but it stung, all the same. Today’s piece is about my quest to help women enjoy my tango embrace.

               My first thought was there should be a college course in holding women. When a couple applies for a marriage license, the man should be handed an application form for the class. Only upon successful completion of the course can they be allowed to marry. I’d probably still be married...if I knew then what I know now.

               As with all elements of this dance, acquiring the skill to convey it correctly, takes a plan. As with all my plans, there are only beginnings that lead to course corrections and the next step of the plan. It is kind of like running a difficult set of river rapids: you can have a plan, but it always changes after the first unexpected event, so why plan beyond it?   

                I began with Sharon Hillman’s Close Embrace Workshop, in the basement of the Unitarian Church in Bethlehem, PA. Each class was two hours long and entailed two sessions. I am slow to learn, so I took the class twice, six weeks apart.

               The lessons were extremely sensual and had my hormones firing on all pistons. Steam was coming out of my ears and I couldn’t think for weeks afterwards. I attended a practica and found I learned nothing, other than differing ways on how to steel myself for the onslaught of the sensuality of a woman in close proximity.

               Actually, steeling yourself from a women’s sensuality is a big part of the embrace, speaking only for myself. With me, it is a constant battle to put away the infatuated little boy, who falls in love far too often and bring out the man who could skillfully maneuver a kayak in class five whitewater rapids, where one mistake means near-certain death.

               For two solid years, I worked on my embrace. It was difficult not to fall in love. Eventually, I was able to ignore a woman’s sensuality and focus on navigating while in tango embrace. It turned out, this was half the problem; the other half was learning to relax. The more I relaxed, the more I began to notice that my partners were relaxing, too. 

               It was at this point that I realized tango had cured me. Until this time, I eschewed all forms of physical contact unless it was with my ex-wife or a girlfriend. I always attributed this to growing up in a large family and being packed, sardine-like, into our yellow, Rambler station wagon. My armchair psychiatrist friends always diagnosed it as homophobia. In a way, they might be right. Homophobia might be a defensive instinct. I can remember several attempts by older males to molest me when I was a kid but I always managed to escape. Such was life in a depressed coal-mining town.

               Once I got the embrace down, tango became a universe and I was Captain Kirk on the Starship Enterprise, on a five year mission to seek out strange new worlds…and dance with their women. Before I had mastered the embrace, nervous women always seemed to be crazy. Afterwards, they were just nervous and it became a game to wait them out, to see if they would calm down; the rewards were often great.

               “The rewards were often great.” Yes, they were and not in a way to which I had grown accustomed. Maybe it is because I’m older, maybe it is because of tango, who knows, but now I find it extremely gratifying to be the vehicle through which a woman discovers tango. Those are noble words and so antithetical to the ways of a whitewater river guide, who is happiest in the chaos of the rapids. I must be heading for calmer waters or it is my attempt to calm the waters myself.  

               It might be time for a camping trip; maybe to Assateague Island and visit the wild horses. If I get a contract signed for work, that is what I’ll do. I’m up for an embrace of another kind….Nature’s Embrace. It took me twenty years to get that one down, but now, it is mine forever.