The use of force

Fighting impalas

I couldn't have predicted one of the best things that happened, dancing away.  It wasn't the beginning of a great friendship.  It was not that it was a marvellous venue, though it was nice. It was not a musical vortex into an evening of one danceable track after another. It was not one of those rare and magical dances where the world recedes and you seem to enter a different dimension of music and connection and shared movement, now and together.  It didn't start auspiciously at all.

I arrived towards the end of a pre-milonga practica.  There were maybe three middle-aged couples on the floor and their teacher.  I sat by the bar and passed the time of day with the barman while I waited for people to arrive.  I wanted to see how the seating would pan out.

A couple of older guys arrived and sat further down the room, chatting.  One of them began saying hello to people.  The other stayed where he was, waiting for his dance partner to arrive. Later, I watched this couple dance tanda after tanda together, quietly, smoothly and beautifully, in the embrace.  At one point something went slightly awry for a second or two, perhaps somebody tripped, I don't remember exactly what it was.  I wasn't quick enough to look away.  Separately, first he and then she caught my eye, embarrassed, and we smiled.  In the milonga a lot of things including invitation and refusal, are understood individually, yet are secret more widely and it's how it should be.

Suddenly, the guy who had been moving about and who was much smaller than me, had approached and was asking me to dance.

No matter how often this happens I am always taken aback. It's different if you know the person well and it's even different if you might have been chatting with someone beforehand because you've had some time to consider how you might reply if they do ask you - directly - to dance. But it's different to be asked "cold" and unexpectedly by someone you don't know, especially if you haven't seen them dance. It's against traditional milonga etiquette which avoids imposing on people like this. I am not great at managing this well in the milonga. I can usually handle it in familiar territory but dancing away in new places again makes things different.

Many say, and I agree, that your chances of an enjoyable dance under these circumstances are very small.  Before this evening, initially, I had danced little in these unknown milongas.  But the evening before I had taken a risk accepting a guy who had invited me by look and from a respectful distance even though I hadn't seen him dance.  Things had gone quite well. I generally figure that if a guy I haven't noticed dancing has seen me in inverted traditional roles and still wants me to dance with him as the girl, then I am more inclined to be less cautious than usual.

Perhaps it was the memory that the previous evening's risk had paid off.  Sometimes though, some of us just do feel we should spare people who ask directly the embarrassment of a refusal.  

Update, 2023:  Spoiler alert:  we are being manipulated.

I have no idea why, when, rationally, it is they who put us on the spot.  Sometimes a direct refusal to a direct request can blend into the general activity of the milonga and that makes it easier.  Here, though, there were probably fewer than a dozen people in the room and I had a sense that everyone knew one another.  Locals are always curious to to see how a visitor dances.  They watch to see who they first accept and murmer "Good choice!" or groan inwardly for them...I knew this!

Perhaps it can be hard to turn down a walk-up because we feel that their gaucheness is unwitting, but our refusal would be knowingly done. This assumes the request is not predatory which is simply too difficult to know.  Assuming it is not, you, then, are in a position of comparative knowledge about etiquette and therefore I think, of responsibility and responsibility to be decent and not unkind. 

Update, 2023:  This is far too generous.

And yet...if you don't want to dance a dance that is intimate, really, my feeling is you just shouldn't.  I knew this too.  But, under pressure it's easier to apply right-thinking to some circumstances than it is to others.

I find the "don't feel bad you would be teaching them a lesson" argument a bit arrogant and hard-hearted. In reality, if I see it coming and I don't want to dance, I avoid eye contact, or if I was caught unawares, when it's busy, all things being equal I can often make up an instant excuse. But the music was great and for an unfathomable combination of the reasons I gave, and a couple of seconds in which to decide - I did accept him.

As the only couple on the floor, though I didn't want to look, I imagined all eyes on us.  I was pushed into ochos and out of them.  I had no freedom and no choice over how to move or when to move.  There was no invitation, no suggestion, there were only orders.  This is what happens with guys who "do" not guys who "feel"; guys who just implement upon you, do to you, moves they have more than likely learnt in class, never mind that they are in fact embracing another person and a stranger of the opposite sex.  These moments are precious!  I completely fail to get inside the head of a guy who thinks it's fine to push and pull women about as though we are a sort of particularly flexible life-size doll.  

2023 update:  That's because there's a healthy "empathy gap". 

It feels like they think we are inanimate that we have no feelings about what is going on.  These are not the guys who listen to the music and their partner.

I was jammed up against him yet there was no connection.  I felt like property, like an object and I was desperately embarrassed for him and for me and my poor judgement. 

2023 update:  That's why you shouldn't feel bad for ever turning down walk-ups.

There might not have been any music, it felt so irrelevant in the circumstances.  I immediately considered leaving after the first dance but realised this would be worse than having refused him at the bar.  I felt completely stuck. The second track began.  What on earth to do?

In dance as in life, we deal with being pushed around differently and maybe how guys deal with it tends to be different to how women deal with it.  Sometimes people just put up with it.  Sometimes we put up with it but as a trade-off for other things.  We might put up with it - but only once. Some of us simmer with resentment, but put up with it. The more belligerent, confront.  The impetuous, the strong, the aggressive, courageous or foolhardy fight back.  Sometimes we don't put up with it and stalk off, aggrieved, angry and making a loud point.  At some stage we've probably all done each of these but each of us probably does have a tendency.  As things turned out, this time I didn't even think about it.

I stayed but found myself wordlessly refusing to be shoved around. He pushed me firmly forward or sideways.  I resisted.  To my astonished mortification he pushed more.  I dug in my heels, aflame with shame and fury.  When he released the pressure, I turned or moved where he had wanted. I could tell he was puzzled and couldn't think what else to do.  I stood my ground.  Things repeated themselves and reached a crisis.

I can't remember exactly when they started to change.  Perhaps at the end of the second track because I'm not sure I could have borne another two dances.  Nor perhaps could he.  But certainly in the third track a miraculous thing happened.  I realised the guy wasn't pushing me. He let me turn on my own.  He gave me physical and musical space.  Nobody had said anything but he had listened, heard and understood!  It was a wonderful, astonishing moment.  We had started to have if not quite a conversation, then an understanding.   In the fourth track I could close my eyes and relax.  I don't know that I can remember being so relieved and pleased in a dance.  At the end, through my daze at how unexpectedly things had changed, I realised he was saying nice things and we parted on good terms.

I sometimes wonder how his story goes.  Perhaps his starts, "I took pity on a stranger and wished I hadn't bothered." But I hope it doesn't.

I must have been riding a euphoric high or been too surprised at what had happened or had become over-optimistic because although I can remember thinking "Oh no, not again", I nevertheless accepted another guy who appeared next to me from nowhere.  He walked right up and held out his hand which is a particularly difficult thing to refuse.  This is another danger of accepting walk-up invitations - you become even more fair game for the truly predatory guys who struggle to get dances locally. I endured two tracks before being shocked into a chasmic volcada in the last bar. This is what happens when you have people who do different dances calling them by the same name and meeting at the same event.  If the lesson earlier had been "people can listen and change tack" I think the lesson of that lesson was "do not push the lessons you learn too far..."

Thanks to http://www.micro2macro.net for permission to use their photo.