"And your husband?"

The only frustrating thing I found about this way of doing thing is that it can be hard to get the guy’s perspective on things to do with the milongas - but maybe I was in the minority in wanting that. I spoke a lot to women about those things but I did not know the guys, sat separately from them, was not staying in a tango house where such things might have been easier to find out and I was there for a short time so I spoke comparatively little to the men.

In the Buenos Aires milongas I went to most, chat between men and women sitting separately was on the floor, between tracks. Chat at this time is not my default tendency. If the music is great and my partner can dance then after a pause to breathe and go back into myself for a moment, all I want to do is dance and soon, to make the most of the music. Chat between tracks can continue quite a while.  Even so (very traditional) convention is to talk only about music.  Given the way guys can be over there, this I knew to be a wholly safe topic, one I was comfortable with.  

Otherwise things might start with the (relatively) innocuous:  What do you do? although even that when it happened to me felt fairly personal compared to the things most guys say.  And no sooner that then:  And your husband - what does he do?  Within seconds you are on wholly different ground.  That guy was clearly wise to those of us who, though married, do not wear a ring.  But then some of the guys there believe - or perhaps they know - that once they know they have you in dance they may have more success in pressing an advantage.

But the opening question is nearly always De dondé sos?  In the great cacophony of chat that erupts in the room and if you are softly spoken it could easily take until into the next track for your partner to understand where you are from.   The standard questions which follow are:  Hablas castellano?  Pero entiendes castellano?  Te gusta Buenos Aires? And after that, though you may not have had the conversation you might have liked you have at least survived the basic small talk. They could well ask Es la primera vez acá? - whereupon you realise they sussed you long ago...