Tuesday, May 28, 2013

River Tango: Chapter Three (final free glimpse)

CHAPTER THREE



            Jack filed a report with his supervisor at the CIA hoping to get some more information on Drago. HQ ordered him to maintain a low profile for 48 hours, preferably somewhere safe. ‘Safe’ was not in Jack’s vocabulary; he was a man of action and would not be killed in his sleep. By 9:30 p.m., he had eaten dinner and was off to dance the tango in midtown Manhattan.
            The milonga was located at a ballroom owned by a wealthy Manhattan socialite of yesteryear who no longer ventured out into public. No one had seen her for over ten years except through a small window near the ceiling of the ballroom where she would spy on the dancers the way a little girl looks in on dolls in her dollhouse.
            The music began at nine but the billionaire playboy arrived late to avoid rejecting a multitude of women new to the scene.
            Dealing with rejection, he thought, was a big part of tango and the reason for cabaceo, the rule for inviting partners to dance.
            Little Carl once told him social tango evolved as a mechanism for the Argentine population to cope with severe gender disparities when it prepared to enter the 20th century.  In 1880s, there were large migrations of European men who came to the country alone to support their families back home. Argentina at the end of the 19th century, as were most South American countries, was a harsh place to live, wars were common. In such a cruel climate there needed to be a system for men and women to interact and thus Argentine Tango was born.
            It may not have been called ‘tango’ in the beginning, when it was just a dance performed by the co-mingling of the general population of slaves, immigrants and Native Americans. They gathered in “pirigundines,” or dance halls, where hired women contracted to dance with lonely workers.            Tango also competed with other dances here, such as the waltz and polka.
            In the Argentina of the 1800s, if a married man could indiscreetly invite a woman to dance, he would participate more willingly and eventually give up some of his hard-earned cash to the sponsoring establishment and the consort.
            “Without cabeceo,” Little Carl said, “there would be chaos and the Argentines would have no reprieve from their already desperate situation.”
            Rejection can drive a man or woman to do dangerous things. Rejection was something Jack rarely received yet he took great pains to be careful in how he dealt it. He often declined requests from women seeking to engage him in a dance and it was impossible for some of them not to get hurt.
            The room was large, the floor was made of black and white marble tiles and there were two rows of marble columns, three columns in a row. One side of the room held small tables with two stools at each; banquet chairs lined the wall on the opposite side of the room where mostly women and a few men sat.
            One of Jack’s old girlfriends, Linda, greeted him as soon as he paid his fee and entered. She was a mountaineering companion and fuck-buddy of his for many years before she wearied of the freewheeling playboy and his inability to commit. She became a lesbian, a lifestyle change that Jack took as an insult to his machismo. She seemed happy and this confused him.
            Her companion, like herself, was an elegant woman with brown hair and long legs.
            She and Jack kissed each other on the cheek, exchanged pleasantries then parted.
            Tamara, a scantily clad woman who never wore a bra, maneuvered towards him. He spied her out of the corner of his eye. He knew that she knew he had seen her. As she angled in his direction, something about the jiggling of her breasts beneath her scarf-like dress made him change his mind and he reversed course to intercept her.
            They made eye contact while she was still yards away. He motioned to the floor with his left hand and walked in her direction. He could tell that she was ecstatic and he found that pleasing. Tamara was unskilled but her body felt nice in his arms and catching sight of her breasts at close range was always enjoyable.
            They embraced and began to dance.
            Jack noticed that she made an effort to fall onto him. This made it difficult to maintain his balance and move her to the rhythms of the music. She reeked of sweat.
            She was highly prized by many of the unskilled leaders because she was easy on the eyes and almost never refused an invitation.
            Tamara quivered with delight like a little kid in a candy shop. Jack felt a spasm emanate from her lithe frame as he led a leg-wrap. She slid up onto him, chest first, her pelvis rolling up his thigh like a tongue licking an ice cream cone. She was so completely off her balance that Jack soon lost interest in her despite the baubles bouncing inside her shirt.
            In tango, it is customary to complete an entire tanda with the same partner before breaking the engagement. A tanda is a group of three to five songs in the same style of music.
            He politely danced with her for two more tunes before thanking her and walking away.
            As he looked for an open chair to sit upon, he wondered if she felt his disappointment with her tango skills. She did seem visibly let down when he ended the engagement and he genuinely was concerned about her emotional welfare.
            Briefly, he tried to imagine having sex with Tamara when another woman had locked her sights onto him. His annoying-woman-radar flashed red in the back of his mind. He knew not to look up as he kept his eyes trained on the marble floor. He rose from his seat and turned to his right where mirrors covered the wall.
            In the reflection, he could see Gwendolyn Cooper, a tall African-American woman with wavy blond hair making a beeline for him from all the way across the dance floor. She was the wife of a wealthy politician and she craved acknowledgement of her prowess by dancing with the most highly sought-after leaders like Jack. 
            To his right, next to where he had just been sitting, a good-looking woman in a bright blue dress felt his gaze upon her and looked up at him. He gestured with his eyes towards the floor and she accepted. She rose just as Jack came face-to-face with the pol’s spouse.
            With the acting skills of an Oscar nominee he frowned and motioned towards his new partner. “I’m so sorry,” he said, “maybe later?”
            Gwendolyn grit her teeth, forced a smile and replied, “You can count on it.”        
            She sped off in search of a new victim.
            Jack embraced the woman and hastily began the dance. He feigned to the left to test her ability to respond to his command. There was a slight hesitation, almost imperceptible, yet he noticed. She was distracted and focused on something other than his lead.
            He felt her ample bosom resting firmly on his chest, unencumbered by a bra. A glance downward and he could see her flush cheeks. She smelled like grapes, he thought, maybe apples. When she took a deep breath, she drew him into her lungs, melting around him and into his strong muscular arms.
            Now he knew what was distracting her: it was him. He was being hunted once again but this time he liked it.
            He walked her around the room to the slow, pulsating tango rhythms, trying to think of the name of the melody’s artist to keep his mind off his growing erection. Was it Arrienzo? Canaro? Di Sarli?
            Effortlessly transcribing the music into melodic movements on the dance floor, he led his amorous partner into calesita, turning her on one foot in a complete circle, before asking her to perform a leg-wrap. Her slender torso came forward and snuggled his abdominal cavity, conforming her mass to his like soft clay.
            In tango, as in all dances, one person leads the movement and the other follows. Unlike other dances, the leader in tango must wait for the follower to complete her movement before he can begin another step. He is actually following the follower, waiting for her to finish so he can start anew. Each step is complete and there can be a virtual eternity in between the commencement of a step and its conclusion.
            This woman was full of passion, Jack thought. He needed to be careful or she would have him fully aroused. He might not be able to control himself after so many months in southwest Asia, where he saw few women except those clad in their thick burkhas.
            He pondered the differences of women from the two disparate cultures. The American woman was a stalker of men and a sexual gladiator when compared to the Asian ladies. He suffered from culture shock and now felt a powerful hunger growing deep inside his groin.
            He fought the urge to merge. To cool his jets he recalled an incident where he plunged into an icy river to escape Taliban foot soldiers in hot pursuit. He remembered the ice cream headache, the pain of the frigid water encasing his entire body as he swam in the darkness to complete his getaway.
            Flight would not be so easy this time for the steely blue-eyed warrior. He had no desire to flee. Her body writhed against his ever so slightly as she began the leg-wrap he had asked for. Her erect nipples brushed against his lower ribs. Her abdomen met his upper right thigh just below the hip and her pelvis arched forward just enough for him to feel the outline of her vagina on his leg. Her left leg wrapped around his knee and swirled upwards. A slit in her dress exposed the length of her limb and the top of her luscious thigh.
            He caught sight of her bare leg in his peripheral vision.
            To Jack’s relief the song ended but he still had two more to go before he could break away without insulting her. He was losing control and his instincts told him to get out of there.
            Like the goddess Athena, the seductress perceived that her prey had been spooked and withdrew back into her camouflage: the guise of a woman clad in high-heels, a skin-tight blue dress cut low to reveal plenty of cleavage, long lashes blinking innocently.
            Forcing his thoughts to the attack on the rooftop at noon, the secret agent managed to regain his composure and quelled his sexual hunger for one more song.
            She seemed to have eased off. He told himself that his imagination was playing tricks on him. Maybe she couldn’t help being extremely affectionate. An inability to hide one’s passion while engaged in the deep tango embrace, a connection so spiritually invasive that it allows each participant to see things in the other that they might not even be aware of themselves, was easily understandable. 
            The third song began. Jack hoped desperately there would only be three selections in this tanda.  
            Halfway through the melody he began to relax and to allow the repertoire of his movements to flow uncensored, without fear of making himself vulnerable to this woman’s sensual vibrations.
            He led pasada, an invitation to pass in front of him to his other side. She pivoted gracefully, seizing the moment to execute a lapiz, a long sweeping motion of the woman’s leg drawing a large curve on the floor with the toe of her heel-clad foot. The slit of her dress allowed her thigh to be completely revealed during this maneuver.
            Jack watched as her toe trace an arc on the marbled floor, delighting in the delicate vibrations traveling through her extended limb, into her frame, up through her diaphragm and into his embrace like the rustling of tall grass in a gentle breeze. Her toe found its way to his left foot and she proceeded to step across it, performing a boleo with her right leg before stepping forward and ending the movement.
            Her demeanor was one of submission. She feigned obedience while waiting for his next instruction. She looked up at him innocently, her expression vacant, her full lips barely open, covered with bright red gloss.
            He led her to pass once more in front of him and she was again in control of the moment. Casting her gaze downward but not bending her neck, she pressed her forehead to his right cheekbone.
            Soft curls of brown hair obscured his view as he was forced to scan the crowd with only his left eye. Barely aware of the other dancers moving around him, his right side entered into the universe of a woman in lust. She seemed to go on forever with virtual mountain ranges of pleasure. Entire worlds revealed themselves to him as she brought herself once more into his muscular frame.
            She seemed somehow taller, he thought, as she raised herself on the balls of her feet, the tip of her left breast dangling against his bicep. Her left hip pressed itself against him as she slowly began to step over his shoe, her left thigh draping itself on his own thigh with the flimsiness of a soft fabric. Like a snake slithering around a tree trunk in seemingly endless coils, her leg began an upwards trajectory.
            He peered into the soft brown locks invading his eye socket. The sound of her drawing a breath, a soft guttural noise emanating from a chasm deep within her oral cavity, held him spellbound.
            Her torso covered him like a blanket, a forest full of trees draped in bouncing bosoms. The bottom of her ribcage pushed into his chest, the side of her waist licked his side like a foot-long tongue unleashed from a dream in another dimension.

            He was trapped in the eternity of the moment; the passion of the pause stopped the passage of time. Here music had no sound, the crowd disappeared from his view; she was all he could see and yet he did not see her. All his senses were gone except the sense of touch. He was lost in her world. There was no past here, no present, no future, only her and nothing else.....

You can read the conclusion of chapter three and much more in my book, River Tango, for sale on Amazon:


Sunday, May 26, 2013

River Tango: Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

            The itinerary listed the curriculum as La Cruzada: The Cross.
            Jack wondered how remedial this lesson would be since La Cruzada was probably the most basic concept in tango. Little Carl, who was actually quite tall and preferred to be addressed as Carlito, was one of the most widely respected tango teachers in The Big Apple and well known to Jack. If anyone were capable of taking biscuits and making a banquet out of this simple topic, it would be Little Carl.
            There was another reason that Jack wanted to be here. In the eleven years of his continuing education in the art of tango movement, he had yet to hear Penelope utter a single word. A pale-skinned Brit with red hair who communicated with a mime’s facial expressions, she was Carlito’s constant companion. He often spied Penelope sitting with her partner at a table at the milongas. It seemed to Jack that they were sometimes talking to each other but he could never prove it.
            Penelope’s black Siamese cat and tiny white Shih tzu dog always accompanied her to the dance workshops. Her pets sat in the corner of the studio on a light blue blanket, each sporting a jewel-studded collar conjoined to a pencil-thin chain made of miniature links of titanium. The blanket, collars and chain were handcrafted by the famous designer, Ottavio Missioni, and were worth a small fortune.
            Inside the room, the more advanced students departed and were replaced by inexperienced enthusiasts. The Amerasian woman had stayed and she now collaborated with a young Russian woman.            The secret agent noticed the Russian’s toned muscles and that her movements were that of a practiced dancer. He wondered why two experienced women were taking such a beginner’s level class but he surmised they were like him: people who knew the key to tango lay in mastering the basics and not in the learning of many choreographed patterns.
            Jack couldn’t wait to hear Little Carl repeat a phrase he used in almost every class. Carlito liked to say that tango was like math and that the key in getting from 1 + 1 to E=mc2 was in the process used to derive the answer and not in the answer itself.
            Little Carl billed himself as “Carlito” but few addressed him by that name. A Brooklyn native, the giant man did not appear to fit the stereotypical image of a dancer. His sullen face and four o’clock shadow suggested Mafioso more than mambo. However, his dedication and his wealth of knowledge ensured he would be a studio’s first choice to induct beginners into the world of tango and still provide experienced students with new insights into the dance.
            Carlito began with a simple demonstration of leading Penelope into the cross. He then explained in simple terms the history and purpose of this movement in social tango. The students practiced the movement and switched partners at Carlito’s inference.
            Jack had a difficult time paying attention as all his senses tingled with expectation of an assassin’s knife.
            The Russian woman was next in the line of rotation to Jack when Carlito introduced le doble cruzada: the double cross. The instructors performed the movement to gasps of astonishment from the class before announcing a ten-minute break.
            Jack made a dash for the restrooms located at the eighth floor stairwell outside the studio. Penelope was right behind him toting her cat and dog on their shiny chain.
            As the door closed behind them, Drago ran up the stairwell and swung his right fist hard at Jack’s jaw. The battle-tested warrior ducked instinctively and Penelope took the full force of the hit on her chin. She was knocked unconscious.
            Jack slammed his shoulder into Drago’s midsection and rammed his assailant into the sill of a large open window hoping to break his back.
            Penelope fell to the ground and the cat, named Muffy, seized this opportunity to push its partner on the chain, the sugar-white Shih tzu called Buttons, through the rungs of the stairway railing. The helpless canine fell to the length of its chain and hung suspended above ninety-seven feet of unobstructed open space.
            Drago produced a knife and smiled, his sapphire filling sparkling as it caught a glint of sunlight through the open window. He lunged at the CIA agent who intuitively grabbed the nearest object, Muffy, and thrust it into the Serbian’s face.
            Buttons was yanked back through the railing as Muffy found himself forced onto Drago’s mug. The feline clawed at the man’s nose and mouth. It dug in its hind legs and dredged furiously.
            The knife dropped from the assassin’s hand as he lurched backwards, lost his footing and toppled out the open window.
            The chain connecting the two pets zipped across the marbled floor and the cat disappeared into the open air still scratching at the man’s face. Buttons followed on the end of the shackle and caught itself on the windowsill. The fluffy-white snowball of a creature nearly broke its spine as the chain suddenly yanked on its thin, fur-covered neck.
            Its front legs taut against the window’s frame, the canine dug its nails into the smooth stone ledge, desperately trying to get traction and pull itself away from the open window. It was a hopeless maneuver of paws clambering on an impossibly slick surface but the tenacity of the little animal overcame the laws of physics and it pulled itself, and Muffy, back from the precipice. Muffy’s snout slammed against the outside edge of the window’s frame.
            When Jack regained his balance, he reached out and pulled the cat back inside the stairwell, setting it down upon the hard floor. Buttons quickly ran to it and began licking it profusely with the kind of joy only a dog can exude.
            Just then, Penelope regained consciousness and Jack quickly grabbed her left arm to support her as she rose.
            Helping her to her feet, he gasped, “My dear girl, are you alright?”
            Using the power of suggestion to make her forget Drago’s fist striking her, he said, “A man rushed up the stairwell and I fear my elbow caught you in the head. You went out like a light.”
            Thinking quickly, Jack asked Penelope if she might be low on sugar and inquired as to when she had last eaten. He hoped she would respond vocally and he would finally know if she was a mute or not.
            She looked at him with her brown eyes and nodded in agreement. Her mouth opened slightly as if she was ready to say something when her expression changed. She raised her hand to her mouth, touched a finger to her tongue and showed it to Jack: it was red with blood.
            Now he would never know!
            Penelope’s injury resulted in the cancellation of the rest of the class.
            A police officer arrived to question Little Carl about the apparent suicide of Drago as the students were putting on their street shoes, preparing to disperse.
            The Russian woman approached Jack and introduced herself as Lapushka.
            “Eet means ‘leetle paw’ een my langveech,” she said with a thick Slavic accent.
“Vee needs to talk. Not here. Come.”
            Suspicious but needing answers, Jack was obliged to follow her to the elevator. When the doors closed, she indicated that it was still not safe to talk.
            Pointing to the emergency phone and the ceiling fan, she said, “Boogs.”
            In the elevator, Agent Stueben looked directly at Lapushka. She returned his gaze with a blank stare.
            He supposed she was Caucasian but thought her slanted eye sockets indicated a Mongol heritage. She was a thin woman and nearly flat chested. Her tone muscles denoted a woman of strength and agility. She tied her short, light-brown hair in a small ponytail like a samurai.
            The two continued their staring match until the lift reached the sixty-eighth floor. The doors opened and Jack waited for her to depart first. She walked quickly to a door labeled stairway that led to the building’s rooftop. 
            He couldn’t help but admire the woman’s sure-footed stealth as she climbed the stairs up into the open air.
            He could spot tango dancers in a crowd by their walk. It takes years to learn basic tango movement while most others dances require only a few months. He spent three years just to find out how to hold a woman in the tango embrace.  After five years, he realized he barely knew how to walk to the music and had to start his education all over again from the very beginning.
            This proved beneficial to his skills as a soldier. Now he moved with balance, regardless of whether he was dancing tango, climbing a cliff or engaging in hand-to-hand combat with a mortal enemy.
            Skyscrapers towered above them like mountain peaks in the Himalayas. His combat training told him this was a good place for an ambush. He felt exposed. He didn’t trust this woman but he needed to know why Drago had tried to kill him and she might have the answer.
            “You are Zhack Stueben, no?” she asked.
            A seagull flitted overhead, riding the airways better than the best human pilot ever could: banking, dropping, hovering, eyeing the two humans for signs of food.
            “Yes.” He answered.
            “Deed you suicide Drrahgo?” she asked, fighting hard to not to crack a smile.
            He replied, “No.”
            Now it was obvious to Jack that she was definitely a Russian spy. He deduced that her accent was Siberian, not Slavic. He stared at her coldly, trying to figure out why she had lured him up here in the first place.
            She continued, “Gooood, eet vas my zhob to….suicide heeem.” She smiled broadly, “I veel takes zee credit for zat zhob zen. Drrahgo veel not be zee lahst after you,” she warned, “heeem I know, others I don’t. Een tango zee spies are everyveeeeeere.”
            With that last word, he noticed her demeanor change drastically. Crouching down she turned her back to the doorway. He looked down the stairs and saw no one coming. Her hand was on the mat of the rubber roofing. She seemed to be listening for something, yet he still could not see any signs of danger. She scanned the neighboring buildings with her pale yellow eyes.
            If it hadn’t been for Lapushka, he would have noticed the red dot on his shirt too late. The moment he did see it was the same moment the lithe body of the Russian spy slammed into his with a cat-like leap. A fraction of a second later the red brick wall of the stairwell exploded as a bullet struck it. Tiny fragments flew into the air in a pink cloud of dust.
            A second shot revealed to them that an unseen gunman had the doorway in his sights so they skittered around to the side of the parapet.
            The air suddenly filled with the sound of whirling helicopter blades as a large commercial chopper rose above the roof’s edge. Men wearing black masks and carrying assault rifles jumped out of the mechanical bird’s open hatch.  
            Jack scaled the parapet wall to an overhang where he wedged himself into a thin shadow as best he could and waited for the attackers.
            Lapushka, using the abundant roof stacks and air vents for cover, made her way towards the whirlybird and two of the gunmen.
            A lone assailant turned the corner and Jack dropped onto him from above. Agent Stueben was a master at dealing out death. Using the force of his fall he disabled his stalker with a karate chop to the neck. He landed in a crouching position with one knee forward. Grabbing the masked man with the powerful hands of a K-2 mountaineer, he slammed the body onto his extended leg. There was a loud cracking sound before the man’s frame went totally limp and rolled to the ground.
            Jack seized the would-be assassin’s rifle and poked his head around the backside of the parapet. He guessed an attacker would try to cut off his escape. He saw Lapushka leaping towards a gunman like a mountain lion diving upon its prey. She held a metal scalpel in her outstretched hand and her eyes gleamed with delight. The blade found its mark at the base of the masked man’s skull: death was immediate.
            He was impressed with the Russian. If only she had bigger breasts, he thought and smiled inwardly. His eyes surveyed the battlefield. The blades of the chopper whirled above them. He surmised that the helicopter now blocked the sniper who fired the initial shots. He saw Lapushka, now armed with a rifle, moving between ventilation stacks like a dancer, keeping herself hidden from an assailant whose gun barrel betrayed his presence behind an air vent.
            Captain Stueben was close enough to the helicopter that he could have shot the pilot but he needed to keep it between him and the unseen gunman on the adjacent building.
            A third attacker moved out from his hiding place and Agent Stueben took him out with a shot to the head.
            As soon as Lapushka saw Jack’s victim fall to the ground, she fired a shot into the cockpit of the helicopter that veered into the roof and tore through the surface of the structure.
            She didn’t lower her gun, however, when the flying machine burst into flames on the far side of the roof. Peering into the forest of tall buildings with the eyes of a Mongol archer, she held her breath and squeezed the trigger. It was an incredibly long shot.
            Moments later Jack saw a dark figure plummet from its hidden perch hundreds of yards away. It plunged down into the chasm formed by the skyscrapers of New York City’s skyline. He was impressed. Maybe, he mused, breast size was not as important as superior marksmanship.
            Lapushka looked at him, saw the wolf in his eyes and uttered a gasp of contempt.
            “I must go,” she said, glancing towards the helicopter lodged into the rooftop, “there veel be pipples asking kwvestions.”
            With those words, she slipped through the doorway and disappeared.


Note: For an in-depth look into the mind of the Kayak Hombre, read his book, available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/River-Tango-perri-iezzoni/dp/1453865527/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369366756&sr=1-1&keywords=River+tango




Friday, May 24, 2013

River Tango: Acknowledgements and Chapter One


River Tango

Copyright
perri iezzoni
5/2013





Cover Design by Jesse Vital


Acknowledgements

            Thanks be to God for inspiring me in the creation of this work.
            Thanks to all the river guides who have taught me that being a river runner is a way of life: my brothers, Chris and Mario, Ted Newton and Larry Skinner.
             A special thanks to the tangueras who have been such a big part of my tango experience: Ljuba Lemke, Svetlana Howells, Sallie Bo Andrews and Olga McGuire.
            Thanks to the three wonderful women who helped me edit this book: Penny Rosenberger, Karen Lucey and Sue Dallon.











CHAPTER ONE



            Captain Jack Stueben awoke in his own bed in his beloved city for the first time in five months. It was late January. The Battle at Tora Bora was behind him as he lay in the comfort of a quilt and several finely woven cotton sheets. Only the gentle vibrations of the New York City metropolis breached his apartment twenty stories up in a high-rise building overlooking Central Park.
            Bunny Van Hooven, his childhood sweetheart, belly dancer and CEO of her own cosmetics corporation, lay beside him. Her ruby-red three-inch-high-heeled shoes hung from the bedpost. Once he saw her in the shoes at the heliport, Jack didn’t stand a chance.
            The soft touch of her skin next to his and the sweet smell of her hair seemed like a dream.
            It felt good to be back in the Big Apple, he thought, but he still suffered from brutal culture shock. Afghanistan was all rocks and cliffs, wool blankets, rifles smelling of Cosmoline, voices yelling in Pashtun and Urdu: people bleeding, people dying, people he killed, and one he should have killed and didn’t.  
            Now he was back in his loft where the temperature was set at 78 degrees. He shut his eyes and told himself he was getting old, getting soft.
            He rolled onto his belly and the blankets slid off his tired frame. A dog let out a tiny yelp from within Bunny’s Bellini handcrafted purse. It poked up its head and eyed Jack’s bare buttocks and long muscular legs.
            At 48, Jack Stueben was an outstanding physical specimen: six foot two inches tall with rock hard abdominal muscles from a lifetime of mountaineering, sit-ups and yoga. The only signs he showed of aging were the crow’s feet crowding his ice-blue eyes and the streaks of grey in his short-cropped chestnut hair. The flesh on his cheeks, hidden beneath a beard since the day the CIA ordered him to Central Asia to fight the Taliban, was unnaturally white.
            He couldn’t wait to shave it off when he received his orders to return state-side for R&R. After he boarded the military transport in frigid Chaghcharan, where he began tough negotiations on behalf of Stueben Incorporated for the rights to mine lithium and niobium, he went straight to the plane’s lavatory and dispensed of his facial fur.
            His beard was gone but not the memories of Tora Bora, of the World Trade Center bombing or of ‘The Agency’.
            When New York City was attacked, he gladly accepted the mission to the Far East, a mission for which he was more than well prepared, having spent a lifetime climbing mountains in the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush. Fluent in Hindu, Urdu and Pashtun, he was a lethal weapon fighting for America.
            Despite having been an inactive agent with The Firm for nearly twelve years, his anger more than made up for his lack of clandestine activity. The city he loved with all his heart and soul, the place where he played, loved and danced, was under siege, and he would do all he could to protect her.
            He had to do it because he was working with the idiots in Washington, the ones who always screwed up everything. They botched the Tora Bora assault, he thought, right when we had Bin Laden trapped. The Oil Boys were running the show and there was not much he could do about it…not much, but that didn’t mean he would do nothing. The political power lies in D.C. but the might of American business is in New York City.
            The Stueben family had been conducting business from their nest in Manhattan for over four hundred years, ever since the arrival of Peter Stueben and the first Dutch settlers. To Jack, New York was not an American city, it was the world, it was his world. All that lay beyond its borders were merely places where deals were signed to continue life in a city that never sleeps.
            On the cliffs of the south side of a nameless mountain in eastern Afghanistan, Jack waited for three days to escort an elite commando unit up a thousand feet of a smooth vertical rock wall to attack Bin Laden in his lair. The commandos never arrived. They were ordered to leave the capture of the man who masterminded the destruction on 9/11 to the Afghanis. Jack nearly froze to death waiting for soldiers who never came, waiting to hear his cover name, Joe Tango, called over the radio.
            Now he was here with his childhood sweetheart, Bunny. She attended the same boarding schools as he did growing up in Manhattan. She was his first climbing partner when he got his driver’s license and they could skip school to scale the cliffs in the Shawangunk Mountains west of New Paltz, New York.
            Maybe, he thought, he should settle down with her and start a family. They could adopt a couple of African babies like Brad and Angelina. She would gladly divorce her husband but they both knew Jack would never settle down. His sister, Klara, produced more than enough heirs to the Stueben fortune; Jack would be content to live and love in the city for the rest of his days without ever getting married.
            How long had he been asleep? It was dark outside and he could hear the muffled din of the street. He guessed it was 3 a.m. and rolled onto his side to stare at his companion.
            She awoke as if the weight of his gaze was enough to pull her from her dreams. She stared back at him for a moment, smiled and bolted out of bed.
            He rolled onto his back and stared once more at a crack in the plaster on the ceiling. One of these days, he told himself, he was going to get that fixed.  Then it wouldn’t be home, he rationalized as the strong smell of coffee brewing and the sound of Turkish tango music blew in on a gentle wind from the kitchen.
            Bunny popped back into the bedroom, bubbly and bouncing. She wore nothing but a sheer cotton sheet and a couple of see-through scarves to cover her melon-sized breasts and her very curvy waist. She held a handkerchief in front of her face hiding her nose and chin, showing only her animated big blue eyes. Her long brown hair fell about her small shoulders like water falling, splashing when it encountered her milky white skin.
            She started dancing to the music with the skill of a well-trained seductress. Moving in choreographed movements to the vibrant beat of the song, Bunny hopped about the room, accentuating drumbeats with hip bumps.
            She smiled broadly with the innocence of an adolescent on the verge of puberty. Bobbing around the room, she would fix her gaze on him as she seduced him with her rhythmic writhing. As she looked at him, he could see the lust in her eyes growing.
            She laughed loudly when the song ended and leapt on top of him, pulling the covers over them as they descended into a serious session of love-making. When they were done, she brought him coffee and kissed him tenderly as he drank it, still not speaking.
            He fell asleep after they made love again and woke three hours later to find her staring down at him, adoringly.
            “Bunny,” he said, regretfully, “I’ve got to go.”
            He didn’t want to go. He genuinely appreciated being here with her and he knew she felt the same way. It was like a great dance encounter when each person can feel that the other is truly enjoying the union. At times like these, even the simplest of movements achieve the ultimate romantic affect.
            He felt close to her and didn’t want it to end. She wasn’t safe with him; there were men out there who wanted to kill him or anybody he loved. There was one man in particular, a traitor named Frankie Hanks.
            He had to go. He couldn’t fight the urge to tell her he loved her, that he wanted to always be with her and that he’d never take another adventure ever again. He knew that was a promise he could not keep. He was a child of wealth, pleasuring himself, indulging in all of life’s mysteries and roller coaster rides was what he had been born to do.
            He could never stop and, if he did, someone would find him, someone with a gun and a bullet with his name on it.
            He had to leave because he felt compelled to speak those words to her and he knew it would be a lie. He loved her too much to lie to her; to hurt her like that. They had something special, and that was something he could not afford to lose.
            She continued to stare at him for a long time before taking a long, deep breath and said, “Andrew Jackson Stueben, you are not going anywhere until I’ve made sure you are getting the proper amount of rest and recreation.”
            She used the name his mother called him when they were children. Her brown hair framed her eyes perfectly as she leaned forward and narrowed her eyebrows as if to say, “I really mean it this time.”
            “Well,” he said with a tone of concession, “I better take a nice hot shower then.”
            He got up and went into the bathroom. Turning on the cold water, he pulled the shower curtain shut and went to the towel closet. Here he kept several base jumping parachutes in case he needed to jump out a window during a fire or in a situation like the one he faced now: held hostage by a woman intent on mothering him to an emotional precipice where he would feel compelled to take the final plunge into marriage.
            He grabbed a satchel, opened the large window filled with translucent panes of glass and looked outside to survey the jump zone. He could see the busy 97th Street Traverse during the morning rush hour and one of the tunnels that allowed automobiles to pass beneath the pedestrians as they crossed the park, even on icy cold days in January. His breath formed a small cloud that dissipated quickly as he ducked his head back inside.
            In a minute, he attached the harness and was on the ledge, the main chute tucked snuggly into the crook of his left arm, the pilot chute clasped in his right hand. Without hesitation, he threw himself into the frigid air of winter and began plunging through 400’ feet of nothing towards the ground clad only in a harness, baby blue boxers and a white t-shirt.
            In 3 seconds, he plummeted 294 feet before his main canopy deployed, catching the wintry air in its embrace and slowing his descent to a few feet per second. Near the ground, he managed to catch an updraft close to one of the 97th Street Traverse tunnels and landed at a walking pace on a snowy sidewalk next to the busy roadway.
            Quickly rolling up his chute into a ball, he hailed a cab and disappeared into the hustle and bustle that is New York City.
            By 8 a.m., he was at his mid-town office where he walked in barefoot, draped in his base-jumper’s silky wind sail.
            Anya, his secretary, greeted him heartily, her four-inch heels in stark contrast to the plain white t-shirt and blue jeans she wore. A lawyer with short-cropped brown hair well versed in international trade law, Anya was a lethal weapon in her own rite, possessing the two attributes no man should ever be pitted against: beauty and brains.
            She was his savior and secretary. She was paid  handsomely for her commitment to his secrecy and his family’s fortune.
            “Nice to see you’re baaaack,” she said smiling wryly, a slight hint of her Polish accent peeking through her words. “I’m guessing you’ll be needing shoes, a cell phone and some money. I’ll get right on it. Any progress on the Chagcharan lithium mine contract?”
            In a monotone voice devoid of any clue he’d been away for the last five months neck deep in land mines, horse shit, blood and bullets, he replied, “Yes, Anya, all three please. I’ve got a tango workshop on close embrace on 19th Street at eleven and I don’t want to miss it.”
            He walked briskly past her through a large brown door into his office. The door shut with a muffled slam as part of the chute caught in the doorjamb.
            Inside his sparse office whose walls were spackled but not painted, he chuckled to himself as he recalled her shoes and how well they defined her as a woman of the West.
            He opened the door to a small bathroom with a shower, turned on the hot water, and let it run. He laughed when he thought that he wouldn’t be skipping out on his bath this time.
            He was glad to be back in his office with Anya at her desk. She was his connection to the pulse of the city. Through her, he could live his life to his own satisfaction. It didn’t hurt that she was a damn good tango dancer, too, in case he needed a practice partner in a pinch.
            Tango was the only partner to whom Jack could be faithful.  Like all tango dancers, she took him in when he was wounded. She lived in his brain where he worked on movements in moments of solitaire where the complex rhythms of her music echoed softly.
            A large oak desk inhabited the center of the room on top of an old oak wood floor looking out of place in this modern office space devoid of decoration. Against the wall-sized window, was a large couch where he often slept. He liked to be close to the hum of the city that rocked him to sleep like a mother singing a lullaby to an infant. Fifty stories up, there was not much noise from the street, only a soft vibration filtering in through the steel beams that supported his nest in the sky.
            He took a long hot shower and walked back to his office to find a pair of Converse sneakers, a couple of credit cards with his name rubber-banded to a wad of $100 bills and the latest smart phone with a yellow Post-it note indicating the phone number of the device.
            He peeled off the sticker, committed the number to memory and tossed it in the garbage can across the room.
            Opening a drawer in his desk, he produced a roll of duct tape, tore off two short strips and placed one on each of the bottoms of his sneakers to allow him to turn easily on a smooth surface for dancing.
            Picking up the phone, he familiarized himself with it, scrolling through the screens and menus before sending a text to Anya in the next room. He asked her to send flowers and chocolates to Bunny at his apartment.
            A few seconds later, he received a text back indicating that it was done. There were many smiley faces in the text.
            He smiled.
            By ten-thirty a.m., he was out the door and back on the street hailing a cab to go to an Argentine Tango workshop downtown.
            He caught the tango bug after attending a play on Broadway called Forever Tango in 1990. Afterwards, he went to a ‘milonga’, a place where tango, and only tango, is danced.
            As he rode in the cab, smelling heavily of incense and alcohol, the sights of the city whizzed by his window as blurs of bodies, buildings and automobiles of every sort.
            He remembered his first impression of tango culture. At first, he couldn’t figure out how the men were inviting the ladies to join them on the dance floor. They all seemed to know each other and spontaneously decided to get up and unite as a couple in what seemed like a very passionate embrace.
            The room was a small ballroom with two rows of marble pillars in the center. The floor was made of three-inch-wide oak boards and had a deep, rich golden patina after years of dancers walking and turning upon its hard surface.
            He asked a tall blond-haired woman in her fifties to dance because he liked her shoes. She smiled and met him on the floor. Slinging her left arm around his neck, she pressed her forehead to his cheek and waited for him to begin.
            “You know nothing,” she said plainly. “Sit down.”
            She indicated with her outstretched hand back to the place where she had been sitting, a row of simple wooden chairs and small coffee tables lined up against a wall.
            She called herself La Batata. She was the first woman to explain the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of tango culture to Jack. She was a singer who came that night to perform a song called Malena. She was a novice tango dancer, or tanguera, as women who danced tango were called, but she was Argentine and well versed in the rules and regulations of this cultural export from her homeland.
            He found it odd that an Argentine at her age would be learning the dance that hailed from her own country.
            “Cabaceo,” she spoke, looking him directly in the eyes with no intention other than to communicate and make sure he was listening, “is how we ask and are asked to dance.”
            She held a small plastic cup filled with red wine in her hands and rolled it around the interior ridge of her right hand from the thumb to her forefinger’s tip without spilling a drop.
            She continued with the seriousness of an elementary school teacher educating a young student on the fundamentals of language, “It is difficult for a man to ask a woman to dance, sometimes it is the hardest thing for him to do. His machismo is at stake and a man needs his machismo or else he is nothing in his own eyes. Cabaceo enables a man to ask without risk to his manhood. It is done with the eyes,” she put her cup down and pointed to her own two eyes with her two fingers and then to Jack’s eyes, “you make contact, eye contact, and, if she likes you or she just wants to dance, then she will nod. You can then walk over to her and escort her onto the floor. If she doesn’t like you or doesn’t feel like dancing, she will simply not make eye contact.”  
            Jack said nothing, listening raptly while watching the couples move around the dance floor. He found himself fascinated with their feet, the women’s elegant shoes tracing intricate circles on the floor and in the air with a certain kind of playfulness that he found pleasing and enticing.            The men moved with catlike precision and the confidence of lions.
            It was like no other dance he had encountered. He had learned ballroom dancing in college, a must for any young man or woman with a pedigree or someone who is socially ambitious, especially military officers. This dance bore no resemblance to anything he had ever encountered. There was no logic to it, no direct connection to any particular rhythm in the music of which there were many and yet, oddly enough, they did not appear to be out of sync with the songs. He could discern no correlation between the alluring, sensuous movements of the women and the cues given by their partners.
            He found the women, dressed in revealing skirts and high heels, to be very appealing, sexy, sometimes slutty, but always very seductive. He was transfixed by the movement of their feet on the floor, perpetually in motion, drawing soft imaginary lines like artists painting abstract images on the floor of the ballroom, inspired by the complex rhythms of the music.
            The taxi screeched to a sudden stop to avoid another cab that had pulled out in front of them. The driver yelled obscenities in Pashtun that made Jack smile, then laugh.
            At his destination, Jack paid the cabbie and headed into the lobby of a non-descript high-rise. A small marquis in the lobby indicated tango was on the eighth floor. He rode up in the elevator and arrived ten minutes after the class had begun. He paid the modest registration fee to an elderly woman sitting on a folding chair in front of a small card table.
            As he entered, a collective sigh swept through the women in the room, relieved to add another man to their choice of partners. Many women knew him and liked him. A handsome man with a billion dollar bank account, he had a host of women frequently stalking him. He had a reputation as a competent leader. He should be, he’d been doing this for eleven years and had been to Buenos Aires twice to learn from the natives.
            A woman once said to him after a dance, her face flushing and her knees wobbly, “Jack, you’re like a fur coat: not every woman can own one but all women want to wear one, a real one, at least once in their life.”
            The room was a lot like Jack’s office, devoid of decoration: a wood floor, walls, some with mirrors, a few benches lining the walls and not much else. The class was gender balanced except for two women who came as a couple.
            In the center of the room were the instructors for this class. A tall thin man of Serbian descent named Drago stood next to an extraordinarily attractive woman known as Olivia, who was dressed in a fluorescent pink, skin-tight dress. She had platinum blond hair. Her skin was very pale and she spoke with a Scandinavian accent.
            Jack Stueben easily found a woman to be his partner then directed his attention to the instructors. Everyone was excited about the subject being discussed: the tango embrace.
            Instruction was not something Jack needed. He was well acquainted with all aspects of this particular subject, as well as with most topics on the fundamentals of this dance. What he needed more than anything was to be back in the embrace of the tango community.            
            Argentine Tango was all about physical and emotional connection, he thought; it had nothing to do with verbal exchanges. To him it meant physical comfort without the need for verbal commitment.
            “What we are looking for in the embrace,” Drago began, speaking eloquently with the hint of a Balkan accent, “is a sensual connection. That means we are connected not only by the physical sense of touch but also by the other senses.”
            He took a short breath and looked around the room at each of the students, staring intently at all of them. When he came to Jack, the gaze of his grayish-blue eyes seemed to linger for an extended moment that Jack instinctively knew was a tool of assessment.
            The small hairs on the back of Jack’s neck stiffened when he felt the instructor’s eyes upon him. Out of place as it was, he sensed the beginning of a battle between two men when each sizes up the other before mortal combat.
            He dismissed this thought, attributing it to culture shock, jetlag or maybe even post-traumatic stress syndrome.
            Drago continued, “When we are in tango embrace, we are aware of our partner’s smell, the sound of her breathing. If our diaphragms are aligned, we are attached to each other’s spines, to our nervous systems. It takes a great deal of concentration to perceive all of these things but we must do this to begin the dance properly.
            The most difficult part of tango is to allow ourselves to relax while completely focusing on our collaborator; yet that is what we must do: join in the embrace and allow ourselves to feel and hear every emanation from our partner. When you can do this, then, and only then, will two people be able to move as one.
            Argentines do this naturally because it is a part of their shared heritage. For us it is difficult because we must learn how to relax and how to allow ourselves to connect without any barriers.”
            Olivia looked to him, nodded her head and turned her eyes to the rest of the class for affirmation of the teacher’s message.
             Jack turned to the woman next to him, an Amerasian woman. She was tall but not too tall, about five foot six or seven, he guessed. She was quiet and seemed a bit introverted.
            He offered his frame to her and let her be the judge of how close she wanted to get since he suspected she might be timid. He was totally in control. He’d done this a thousand times and was certain she was in for a real treat; he was going to light her up like a Christmas tree, watch her cheeks flush and hear her gasp as her breath quickened unexpectedly at the warmth of his body and his commitment to their temporary union.
            She placed her right hand on his extended left hand and grasped his thumb like the claw of a tiny bird alighting on a branch. Her grip told him he needed to move his arm a fraction of an inch towards her to complete the embrace and he did. Then she reached her left arm over his shoulder and across his back to place her hand on his left shoulder blade.
            She pressed her form to his. Her short black hair barely brushed his face. She elevated herself on her toes until her forehead was even with the top of his cheek. When she did this, he could sense the tautness of her tendons as she extended her legs to accommodate him. He found this arousing. He could hear the sounds of her breaths falling gently in his ear. She collapsed herself onto his frame in an act of submission performed to perfection.
            He was overwhelmed. He could feel the outline of her petite breasts against his chest yet she was light as a feather. It was as if she was not leaning on him at all. Her hair was clean and fresh, absent of any fragrance other than her own natural scent. He felt her ribcage expand as she pressed herself further into his embrace. She was completely acquiescent and ready to move at his command.
            He was lost in her femininity.
            The music began to play and he feigned to his left. She responded perfectly. He breathed her in, enjoyed the aroma of her body and moved to the side, transferring their weight to his left side. She followed without hesitation or resistance, as if she was a part of him who wanted nothing, who merely waited for him to move but was quite content to be still.
            He could feel the warmth within her. They had chemistry and their coming together created a heat that burned like fire. He was confused, how could he feel such a thing, he thought.
            With that question in his mind, she shut him down completely and cut off their connection. Withdrawing her arm, she lowered herself from tiptoe position until she stood flat-footed like an elevator returning to ground level.
            He was devastated. What had he done wrong?
            He saw the disappointment in her eyes as she looked to the instructors. Something deep inside told him this was a setup. He tried to ignore his instincts, thinking he was still out of sorts from a twelve thousand mile flight and the culture change.
            The woman stepped away from him and looked to her right. A tall figure blocked the sunlight streaming in through the window from the street.  It was the Serbian.  He was explaining something to Jack who was unable to comprehend the words of the instructor. He could only see the woman getting further away and the heat fading like a cloud covering the sun.
            Drago stood before him, his hand outstretched.
            “You’re restricting her movement,” the teacher said as he grabbed Jack’s hand.
            He said more but Jack didn’t hear a word.
            When the other man’s flesh touched his hand, he flashed back to Afghanistan. How many men had he killed in the last six months? This is how most of his victims died, with the touch his hand. Faces flashed in his mind of men who breathed their last breath with his arms wrapped tightly around their necks. 
            He switched to combat mode too late: the enemy already knew that he was aware of him.  He let his arm go limp, the rigidity disappeared from his posture and he allowed the other man demonstrate how to embrace the woman properly. His gut feeling told him the deathblow would not come here in front of all these people.
            “Good, good,” Drago said as he smiled broadly and displayed a light-blue sapphire embedded in his upper-left canine tooth.
            He forgot all about the Amerasian woman as he pretended not to be aware of the instructor’s intent. He could feel the eyes of the hunter upon him.
            The class was soon over and the students milled about waiting for two more teachers to arrive, Little Carl and Penelope.


Note: For an in-depth look into the mind of the Kayak Hombre, read his book, available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/River-Tango-perri-iezzoni/dp/1453865527/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369366756&sr=1-1&keywords=River+tango



Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Gender Identity Confusion


               The rule in tango is that the follower is always right. Novice tangueras have a difficult time believing this. In tango, it is imperative that a woman asserts herself. She does this through her assumption that she is following whatever the leader communicates to her. Opposite of the fact that the leader must always question himself, the woman should never do this. Her brain is off. When she does not believe in the righteousness of her actions then the condition I call 'gender identity confusion' develops. 
               In tango, the leader is responsible for the communication of the couple’s intended movement. If the leader were the driver in a car and he turned the steering wheel to the left, he could not dispute that is the direction he gave to the vehicle. If he steered left and the car moved right, the car is broken. If the follower moves in a direction other than where the leader thinks she should go, then he was mistaken.
               In America, we are taught to be sensitive to all sorts of failure but it is not that way in tango. If a man’s lead is inadequate then the woman must not respond. Any attempt to compensate for his mistake creates more problems for the next woman on his dance card.
               This is how a guy ends up thinking a woman failed to perceive his lead and that he must then explain it; he has danced with too many women who accommodate his errors by guessing his intentions instead of reading them through his frame. If the woman cannot discern the lead then the leader must assume his efforts are unclear.
               I've seen so many women get confused when a man tells them they are not following correctly, something he should NEVER do! These ladies know in their hearts that what the man is saying is an absolute contradiction to what he communicated in his lead. A follower suffering from gender identity confusion guesses where to move which is contrary to the information she is receiving through the tango embrace. I can't say why women don't immediately rebuff their partners when this happens, but not doing so results in harm to themselves and lots of others down the line.
             
Note: For an in-depth look into the mind of the Kayak Hombre, read his book, available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/River-Tango-perri-iezzoni/dp/1453865527/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369366756&sr=1-1&keywords=River+tango


                

Friday, May 3, 2013

Silence of the Lambs


                Yesterday I saw a hawk in the middle of the road, standing on top of its prey, an unfortunate pigeon. It was a Cooper’s Hawk and the pigeon was not yet dead. The main course on the hawk’s dinner menu that night was not too happy about the circumstances and it popped its head up to object. With nary a ruffle of its feathers the hawk clamped a large claw over the pigeon's head. Its talons squeezed tightly and the hawk took the other bird’s life with the cold heart of a natural born killer.
               As I drove home last night I thought about that event and how the instinct to kill for food is within us all. If the accipiter failed to end the life of its victim efficiently, it might get hurt. This kind of bird slaughters other animals daily; it probably has chicks to feed and failure is not an option. So it was for the primordial hunter who had to provide for the members of his clan. If he was not an emotionless executioner on the hunt others might starve.
               We possess many instincts which we suppress because society has laws to persuade us not to act on them. These are feelings like lust, jealousy, obsession and more. We think of them as the dark side of ourselves and often forget about them until an essay like mine reminds us about them or we hear about them in the news when people break the laws we are meant to obey.
               I cannot help but wonder if the reason social tango has so many rules, or ‘codigos’, is to protect its practitioners from the primal emotions that are triggered as a result of the tango embrace. When two people of the opposite sex come together and move to the tango music, a perilous chemical reaction occurs. 
               Some of the rules of tango are meant to protect one partner from the other. Some rules ensure the enjoyment of the group is maintained. The need for such guidelines can be found in abundance once a person stops thinking of himself as an individual and acquires the perception that he is half of a couple and one member of a crowd.
               There are many Codigos del Tango and they are very important so I’ll refer you to the Tango Therapist for an in-depth explanation of what they are: http://tango-therapist.blogspot.com/p/tango-etiquette_10.html
               Using my own experiences as an example, I’ll illustrate why the code of silence is so necessary when two strangers share a dance.  There should be no conversation between two unfamiliar persons except at the completion of their engagement. Here, the words, “thank you very much,” and, “my pleasure,” are exchanged and not much else; no relationship status inquiries, no phone number requests, etc.
               Guys, every woman knows immediately when a man is hitting on her. You might think you’re being very clever but this is something they have a lot of experience with, unlike you who has probably just written new material for this line of questioning and naively believes your ulterior motive will not be detected. It is my guess that, as soon as they grow hips and boobs, girls are dodging one-liners from the moment they walk out the door in the morning until they close it behind them at the end of the day.
               For several years I danced with a young Polish woman whom I found incredibly attractive. I was 48 at the time and I guessed her age to be in the late twenties. ‘Attractive’ is not the right word. To me she seemed fresh like a baguette just out of the oven, as ripe as a freshly picked strawberry at the end of May and as innocent as a baby fawn lying in the tall grass down by the river on a hot day in early June.
               She was a novice tanguera when I met her. Whenever I scanned the room at the Dance Manhattan practica on Saturday afternoons, I was sure to find her looking to me with her beautiful doe-like eyes and a huge smile. When she stood to join me for our first dance I noticed she wasn’t wearing a bra. It was all I could do to keep myself from gawking.
               Her ochos were very polished but her boleos were non-existent. Over the course of six months we worked on boleos and other basic movements. Initially she lacked confidence in herself and I encouraged her with my honest opinion that she moved elegantly and that I was absolutely enchanted with her efforts.
               I had to be very careful what I said to her because the wrong words would have destroyed her self-esteem and she might disappear forever. I was infatuated with her and her absence would be a tremendous blow to my machismo. Except for my words of support, I spoke very little to her and only when prompted. If I said anything more my true feelings would have been revealed and she might reject me. That would have been an injury that I don’t think my ego could have handled at the time. I might even have stopped dancing tango.
               An old man’s attraction to a younger woman is one of those instincts from the dark side of our ids. Back in the day of sticks and stone ages, an older man might have to impregnate the younger girls in the tribe if some calamity claimed the lives of all the available young bucks.
               If I hadn’t been a father heavily involved in raising two teenage daughters I might have made a fool of myself, so great was the temptation to do so. I’m glad I didn’t. She didn’t need a lover, especially a poor, overweight, older man like me. She needed the man I was for her: a skilled leader who would patiently work with her on new movements with no strings attached.
               One day she showed up with a boyfriend. I was so jealous. When I scanned the room and my eyes came upon her she was always looking the other way. I'm certain she had guessed how I felt about her. My heart pined for her yet I was glad that she had found happiness in another man and satisfaction with her dancing that I had helped refine.
               I can imagine a primitive tribe of homo sapiens being overrun by a competing clan. At times like these I’d bet that an emotion like jealousy, combined with a super-sized shot of adrenalin, would come in handy. It could help a man fight more ferociously for a girl he’d been hoping would carry his DNA to the finish line and beyond.
               My young tanguera didn’t dance with me for over a year. One day she showed up at Dance Manhattan and I could tell that her relationship was floundering because she looked at me right away and smiled. When we danced it was like heaven! I’m so glad I kept my mouth shut and didn’t do anything awkward that would have driven a wedge between us.
               We both needed each other but we needed to keep our relationship confined to our time together on the dance floor. If it was not for the codigo de silencio between partners, I would have let a wonderful relationship pass me by on the River of Life.
               We enjoyed many more encounters for at least another year before I lost my job and began traveling in search of a paycheck.
               In the course of my infatuation for that young woman I experienced so many temptations that I successfully suppressed. In our initial encounters I desperately desired to stare at her breasts long enough to burn a mental picture of them into my brain. The internet called out for me to ‘friend’ her on Facebook. As her body moved around me I was presented with countless opportunities let myself linger against her for an inappropriate length of time.
               I did none of these things. The reason I let these enticements pass is because I learned something from my previous relationships with women and in raising two daughters. I learned that women must be respected above all else. 
               Eventually I would realize that this is also the number one rule of tango. This dance is all about the woman. If I am respectful of her I am also paying homage to us as a couple.
               Tango is a dangerous dance. It relies heavily on a connection between two participants bonded on an autonomic, often cosmic, level. In such a state, parts of us are exposed with which we have very little experience controlling. It is a brush with our primordial selves which brings us the greatest rush. We abide by the rules of this dance, not because we are mindless automatons whirling around in circles, but because we are dancing on the edge of a very high precipice and the rules are the guidelines that keep us from falling to a tragic demise.


Note: For an in-depth look into the mind of the Kayak Hombre, read his book, available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/River-Tango-perri-iezzoni/dp/1453865527/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369366756&sr=1-1&keywords=River+tango