Whether married or single, as far as attendance at some Buenos Aires milongas goes, if you turn up alone you will be treated as single by organisers and by other dancers. Your marital status is, as far as I could tell, completely irrelevant.
Being treated according to whether you arrive accompanied or not is one of the great things about the milonga. People go to the milongas for all sorts of reason but not asking personal questions means the focus is on dancing; whether someone can dance becomes, sometimes ostensibly, often genuinely, the most important thing. If someone does ask personal questions it is easy to recognise that dancing may not be their main focus. This I found more of an issue in Buenos Aires than in Europe.
There, the usual first question, between tracks, was that staple of humanity: Where are you from? No matter how often it is proven not to be the case there is a persistent sense that, whether it is asked of someone from a neighbouring town or from across the world the answer will make everything clear or that crucial information will be imparted that is more vital than ever it is. In those milongas people remain chatting well into the beginning of a track so the noise and the fact that I am softly spoken meant that the answer to this question could last and last. I gave up trying to explain I was half English, half Scottish. Partners already half-assumed I was Dutch, German, Swiss or Scandinavian - why complicate things? To say you are 'British' has for several years felt increasingly loaded. So I simply said:
- De Escocia
- De Suecia?
- No, Escocia.
- Suiza?
- Escocia!
- Ah, Escocia!
And by then, usually, mercifully, we could dance.
This was a personal question, but a normal one and it did not mean anything past simple curiosity and politeness. Nearly all the men asked this. But not infrequently I was asked, even without a wedding ring, about my husband. Where was he?, meaning, Was he?
Occasionally I was asked Was I visiting the city alone? which could again have been mere curiosity or, in that context, by those keen-eyed men, with their decades of experience, out dancing as often as they could, slightly creepy. If you are dancing cheek to cheek, heart to heart with a guy there is a degree of trust but you are always in a public room with everyone watching. This, for the woman, is the safety net. Even so, being a relatively vulnerable newcomer to a city rife with crime, travelling, indeed, alone and speaking little of the language I never did feel comfortable with that question. The very last thing I was seeking was any off-piste offer from a guy from the milongas. I was there to dance with them. As everywhere, there are some apparently lovely guys from the milongas in Buenos Aires but I had also heard enough stories, felt the atmosphere, seen how some of the men's eyes follow women around the room and met enough of those men to feel that, on the strength of a few weeks visit I would not in general trust an Argentine male dancer. I was given that same advice by Argentinian men and women themselves, sometimes with perhaps a touch of pride, sometimes with regret, sometimes as a fact of life. The men I met at some of the milongas for younger people - which is to say men closer to my own age and much younger - felt in comparison, relatively harmless but that could just be because I did not meet enough of them. Still, the younger guys I danced with, also had that particular sense of the woman that is more peculiar to some cultures than others. I have felt it most in Argentinians and Italians but also in guys from Latin American, from some Spaniards and guys from Turkey. Notably they are all cultures famous for machismo.
Occasionally I was asked Was I visiting the city alone? which could again have been mere curiosity or, in that context, by those keen-eyed men, with their decades of experience, out dancing as often as they could, slightly creepy. If you are dancing cheek to cheek, heart to heart with a guy there is a degree of trust but you are always in a public room with everyone watching. This, for the woman, is the safety net. Even so, being a relatively vulnerable newcomer to a city rife with crime, travelling, indeed, alone and speaking little of the language I never did feel comfortable with that question. The very last thing I was seeking was any off-piste offer from a guy from the milongas. I was there to dance with them. As everywhere, there are some apparently lovely guys from the milongas in Buenos Aires but I had also heard enough stories, felt the atmosphere, seen how some of the men's eyes follow women around the room and met enough of those men to feel that, on the strength of a few weeks visit I would not in general trust an Argentine male dancer. I was given that same advice by Argentinian men and women themselves, sometimes with perhaps a touch of pride, sometimes with regret, sometimes as a fact of life. The men I met at some of the milongas for younger people - which is to say men closer to my own age and much younger - felt in comparison, relatively harmless but that could just be because I did not meet enough of them. Still, the younger guys I danced with, also had that particular sense of the woman that is more peculiar to some cultures than others. I have felt it most in Argentinians and Italians but also in guys from Latin American, from some Spaniards and guys from Turkey. Notably they are all cultures famous for machismo.
So the latter type of questions, viz. Are you visiting Buenos Aires alone? are of an altogether different sort to ¿De dónde sos?, depending on the tone, countenance and demeanour of the man enquiring. But some Argentines are as changeable as the British weather and receiving say, a cool reply, when they were expecting a confused or guileless kitten of a tourist lacking points de repères, can turn on innocence or injured pride when it might be expedient and possibly even believe he feels it. It is all rather like interactive theatre, or simply, a game.
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