How Tango Changed My Life

Passion. Addiction is not a word in my vocabulary and drugs not in the picture. On the couple of occasions I tried some grass, the results were, to say the least, pathetic. When I tried tango, however, it revolutionized everything. I discovered what addiction meant: anguish and exhilaration, longing and withdrawal, a myriad of sensations usually associated with either a wild love affair or drugs. I learned about that sudden craving that grabs you down there, inside your stomach, and all of a sudden screams for a quick fix. I’ve become familiar with that crazy resolve that often sends me searching for more, asking, begging for another dance, another few minutes of gratification.  

Compliance. For the first time in my life I’m obeying orders, listening to the leader, waiting for his guidance, happy to conform to another body. For once I’m not the one who has to make decisions, I leave them all to him, the guy in whose arms I’m nestling for the few minutes of each tango. I want him to show me how to stretch a note until it’s almost too painfully beautiful,  I want him to make me savor a better phrasing, his interpretation of a wonderful song I’ve danced many times. With each leader a familiar tango is unique: his conception and, of course, my answer. In the last five years I’ve acquired a degree of femininity I’ve never possessed before. Have I finally learned to be less belligerent? Could sweetness be the word I’m searching for to define the new me?  The answer will probably come the first time my husband (who just started to take classes) invites me to dance.

Patrizia Chen's new novel It Takes Two is in stores now.