Tropical Zen

My teachers think I should teach.

If I want to teach, I will (among other things) have to do the grunt work of dancing with all the old, not-so-pretty, bad dancers in every community I land in. Everywhere I go where my face is new, until I have a Name for myself and also land in a bigger community where they are accustomed to Names, I will have to dance with bad dancers and make them look good if I want clients. That is the work part of the business. Dancing with good dancers and cute people is the fun part, but it doesn’t pay very well.

Related to my orientation and the strongly gendered culture of tango, I’ve never once fooled myself into thinking that I will find love here. It does not matter to me if I dance with attractive women; I’m not interested in attractive women, nor am I interested in straight men, and the supermajority of tango dancers will be straight men and women (whatever their orientation). From the tiny little pool of tango dancers who are gay men, the likelihood of encountering one who’ll enjoy my freedom, annual migrations, and also my non-monogamy are even more slim. So much so that I have written it off as even a remote possibility.

There’s no need to feel bad for me. I don’t go looking for love in straight bars or government offices or hardware stores, either; when I find it, it is within my community, friends and friends of friends, people who share more with me than love of a certain music or dance style. Perhaps I have higher standards, or maybe I just have more specific needs; whichever the case may be, I’m not in any hurry to alter a reasonably functional system of low love expectations and polite but sexually neutral behaviour. I imagine that the straight men I dance with would be just as put off and weirded out if I flirted with them as I am when a woman gets too overtly sensual at me; that’ s usually the time to bring up a reasonable but blunt reference to my lover, the big hairy sailor in Victoria. (Who doesn’t dance tango, and doesn’t need to. It seems foolish to try to get all my needs met in one person and only one person; if there are needs he can’t meet, what do I do then?)

Several of the women I danced with last night assumed I was a teacher. I suppose, if the requirement for being a teacher is that I’m willing, then it’s in the process of becoming true. It still doesn’t quite fit comfortably, but it’s becoming more okay as I get used to the idea. Maybe by the time I return to Puerto Vallarta I will think of myself as a teacher, and be one.
And I will dance with all the older women, and make them smile.