Milonga from hell

Easy peasy AI

Speaking of unfriendly welcomes, I am reminded of the story of the most alarming milonga I have been to, bar none - because of one person, the host. It is confirmation that the way somebody is welcomed (or not), at any event or place, anywhere, not just a milonga, is one of the key points of their experience.

This happened back in 2017 and I was actually too scared to post about it then, back when I was writing more milonga reviews.  The experience, despite lasting no more than ten minutes, was so awful it really shook me.  A milonga can be scary because you don't know anyone, you have lost your confidence, you are new, all sorts of reasons, but unkindness or malevolence takes it to another level.  

It has become quite funny to look back on, in the way that sometimes people act more like caricatures than human beings but at the time and for a long time afterwards it was anything but. 

The host of this milonga, if the usual connotations of "host" can be so twisted, is one of the scariest  individuals I have ever been near in the tango world - and I don't even know them.  If I have been close to them in a ronda I make sure to move.  The dance partner, in any case, usually has their arm stuck out aggressively warning people of a clunk in the face if they dared get within reach.   

At the time, I had already encountered this person once or twice, probably in my London explorations.  It was likely at the kind of posturing, London milonga held in cavernous, dark spaces.  This person fitted the London tango scene like a glove. But even there they stood out with that dreadful aura of arrogance, superiority and hostility.  Within their ambit was like being in the chilly spot of an already cold room. It is the sense of somebody with a dangerously over-inflated sense of entitlement and self-importance. Even though the harm to me from this type was years in the future the danger of them billowed off in waves. 

I didn't know them, didn't want to know them and because I didn't know them I didn't know they were running the milonga I went to, well, tried to go to, in 2017.

I wrote about what happened to friends afterwards and what follows is based on those reports.

I had been at the other end of the country seeing friends with my children, ten and eight at the time and we were travelling home.  I made a detour to go to this afternoon milonga.  We had been travelling for three and half hours and I was gasping for a cup of tea.  

*

Wow. Most unfriendly milonga and host I have ever been to and met. Nobody on the door. No one to pay, no welcome, not enough seats, let alone seats with tables. No host in the room for five minutes.  

At this point, a friend I had written to remarked, archly: Not all bad then!

I didn't immediately change from my jeans and street shoes because I was a road blinded, the place was new to me and I wasn't sure where to leave my stuff. All the tables and chairs were taken. There were bags under or bums on the few remaining single chairs which were well outside the main horseshoe of tables and chairs round the dance floor. That exclusive horseshoe, no free tables and no one to show you to a table which already had people on it meant it was not a place to go if you didn't know anyone. Unless of course it was the kind of place where it is apparently fine to barge in and take over someone else's place. I suppose now, the way to enter such a place must be with an air of superciliousness to match that of the host, as though you obviously - given the public advert - have every right to be there. I say that because entering politely, respectfully and waiting to pay first was entirely unsuccessful.

 So I sat in a seat in a corner of the room by the entrance with my older son on my knee, waiting for someone to welcome us and to pay. My other son was playing outside.  We were desperate for the loo but there was no easy way to get there, or to the kitchen except by walking on the floor, which many did.  It evidently wasn't a place where etiquette mattered much.  However, we waited for a gap between tracks, so as not to disturb the dancers. My son later pointed out the host had had no such qualms.  

The dancing was poor and men mostly aged, over-skinny or overweight.  I was struggling to see the attraction of staying but I thought if nothing else I could have a cup of tea, enjoy the music, watch the dancing and who knew what chat or dance surprise might arise, as it usually does.  If someone nice had been on the door to say hello  - well, if anyone had been on the door - perhaps it would have made all the difference. But no one acknowledged us in a friendly way though a woman I had asked who to pay was pleasant.

Then I saw someone standing, hands on hips, surveying the place, like vulgar royalty. 

Eventually, they came over.  I realised with a jolt it was the London type with the paralysing vibe. They didn't show any recognition of having seen me before but that kind are so busy wanting to be noticed that they don't do much noticing.

There was no hello, no preamble, just a bare, 

Have you come for the tango? 

I hesitated as I decided what to say, shocked by the abruptness and the confrontational manner.  It was already making me think twice.

Then they said with a smile so fake it ought to have come out of a children's novel and in tight, clipped tones said: May I ask why you've come?

Well, yes, we've come to....have a look, now feeling far from certain that I wanted to stay and  instinctively burrowing away from that insistent, sniffing nosiness.  

That hesitation was the death knoll. Out, then. What they actually said was

It's a private event, really.

The lame, "really" tacked on to the lie gave it away. But I already knew the event was public and had been widely advertised as such.

Right, I said, Christopher Foyle style, stunned into speechlessness by the unfriendliness and staggered by the barefaced lie. The event had been publicly advertised on Facebook and on Tango Timetable.

They nodded curtly and stalked off.  There was nothing else for it. We got up and left.  We had been there less than ten minutes. 

When I stumbled out, still road-blitzed and still gasping for a cup of tea, my youngest was nowhere to be seen.  Maternal instinct must have made me look up. In the true style of my second son he had climbed the fire escape - rungs, not steps - and was hanging on, proudly and perilously at roof level. I realised I was relieved to be going.

What did you make of that? I said to my eldest in the car. I hadn't started driving because I was still reeling at how appallingly we'd been treated.

Scary he said. No kidding.  And, he added, with a child's insight and instinct, It didn't look like a private event.

Indeed not. The event was tagged "milonga" and it was described as "a wonderful social afternoon for dancing with friends old and new, all tangueros and tangueras welcome, irrespective of where you learn your Tango" A practice area was also advertised as well as the social dance floor, so even if we had been new, we could have been put there - at the bottom of the pecking order.

I've only ever heard pretentious or ignorant people say "tangueros".

I had had a feeling there was going to be a sting when I had seen Come along with a good positive attitude and your dance shoes. Experience tells me that kind of coercive language is code for: Act exactly how the host wants or else...

I had been dancing for five years at this point.  I suppose we might have passed - at first sight - for non dancers wandering in. Most hosts are delighted to welcome new people. Letting them in free is almost standard. Beginners are cash cows after all and if you are dead set on control them you can invite them to sit and watch.  Except anyone alert would have noticed we didn't walk on the floor during the tracks when we went to the loos.  So you might think we wouldn't be so immediately judged and dismissed as blundering, non-tango peasants. 

So I still can't quite fathom why we were treated so badly but sheer meanness although unusual, seems, in the context, an obvious explanation.

Admittedly as the host approached us my son had fallen off my knee rather farcically into the coats but I don't think that's what did it. Perhaps he saw them coming and tried to hide.

I am reminded of the personification of evil and cruelty in children's books and films characters: the Tilda Swinton character in The Beach or the wicked witch in Narnia or Mrs Coulter in The Northern Lights trilogy. In the car I asked my sons who were the scary characters in children's literature. "Miss Root" they said ('The Demon Dentist'). I hadn't read it.  

Were they  like that? I asked 

More vicious, one son replied. 

A message came back from an old hand in the milongas.  Apparently this person used to be known as "the White Grace Jones".

*

Years later, the host kept trying to friend me on Facebook.  I doubt it was to apologise.  I can only think that they again they failed to recognise me, didn't care or had ulterior motives.  Each time, I backed away as from a rattlesnake.

Oddly enough, though, last week I was considering travel and looking for a milonga in an area not far from the milonga from hell.  I found one on the dates I was interested in but the details were locked down within a closed group.  You could only find out the details by joining the group. I  How odd.  These you only occasionally find for secretive European encuentros. It felt like coming across something unknown and potentially dangerous on a walk.  Rather than poke the thing or turn it over I walked around it. Then I spotted it was the same host and jerked away, reflexively.  Sometimes clichés, are perfect, especially for warnings. Birds of a feather flock together. I was glad people who enjoy that kind of hosting were all hidden away together in some secret milonga.  Out of sight, out of mind.