Imposition

Johnny Hughes

Freedom was the title of the first post in this blog back in 2014. Agreement and consent are the social friends of freedom. I have written often about its antithesis e.g. Obligation.

Grown up milongas (as opposed to the kindergarten version) are, above all, places of choice. Dancers come and go when they like, nobody probes for full names or even real names, or into personal circumstances.   Women don’t mug guys for dances and guys don't do walk-up, hand-proferring invitations.  Neither “begs” for dances through conversation.  Most of all, they are places where no-one imposes themselves on anyone else.  There is no use of force. 

When one person forces themselves on another, physically, psychologically, socially, any way at all, it is hard to think of more grotesque, dangerous or sickening behaviour, even more so when it is thinly disguised within a civilized setting.

The absolute cornerstone of milonga culture is freedom of discreet invitation and equally discreet acceptance or refusal. This all happens by look (the inviter's cabeceo, the accepter's mirada). It is also one of the most obvious codes (accepted milonga behaviours).

Some people don't truly understand this code. They can't cope with it, but are alert enough to have learned its importance. These types look for stratagems to get round it. This is manipulation: they will manipulate people to get what they want. People who are deaf and blind to the many freedoms that make a good milonga are those who impose themselves on others, who try to oblige others to attend to them, who use others to satisfy their needs. 

Why don't these people adhere to the code like everyone else? Because perhaps they are impatient to dance or ambitious in dance, because they are not at peace, because they are insecure. They need attention, all the time. Consider: what happens to these people if they do adhere to the code but don't manage to dance? They will not have a perhaps understandably disappointing evening, they won't, more resourcefully, instead of dancing, enjoy the music, or the spectacle or the company, or the conversation because that is too objective - it wouldn't be about them. No, this person will have a calamitously bad time because they are not getting that attention. This is a classic narcissistic personality. Their reaction? Probably histrionic, moody, emotional.

How do they get round the code? Both men and women will show off, in their dance, or their clothes or their behaviour. They will demand attention. Until recently while I recognised (except when, catastrophically, I didn't) the danger signs of these types I never really understood why - because I didn't need to. I just avoided them.

So what happens if they don't get dances? Instead of just shrugging, accepting it, not taking it personally, moving on, they will be hostile and resentful, especially if they have been turned down. This is another sign of the immature personality.

Young and pretty female versions might do the indoor equivalent of standing on a street corner. They flirt and chat not for the pleasure of that but as a stratagem to pick up dances because they can't truly relax, find peace in the milonga. They feel awkward unless they are dancing all the time. They don't realise how transparent they are to experienced dancers and so they pick up the dregs they deserve.

To get round the code, men just walk up which fulfils this pathological need for attention in the most obvious way. They aren't patient enough or able to get a dance the accepted way. They get the praise they need simply by getting a woman to accept their proffered hand while the rest of us cringe. The guy who walks up isn't simply a bad dancer, he is sending a warning about his personality.

I have written often about that diabolical triad that motivates so many:  money or power or status.  They are found in these controlling, demanding narcissistic types. Such people are constitutionally unsuited to good milongas.  They will never fit because these traits seem to be hardwired into them.   The focus on money and power are both types of ambition but both of these are really about status.  Attention seekers are just childish versions of adult status seekers.  And status seekers are essentially, profoundly insecure.

What are the characteristics of people who invite by look, who don't use stratagems, who don't impose themselves on others? Respectful and empathetic certainly. Altruistic? Undemanding? Understanding? Calm? Quiet? Patient? Grounded? Observant? Take your pick. They are all excellent models of behaviour. These are signs of listeners, people with an outward focus that is not on themselves, good partners in conversation, in dance and in life.

Codes and cues

Clear lines of sight at the last milonga I attended; Glasgow, Oct 2019

I sent The Erring Eye to a non-dancing friend.

"It was perfectly clear that some kind of awful experience was underway, but I had no idea quite what it was - even after finishing the piece.  Some bloke spurned a dance with the sort of all but imperceptible Sotheby's gesture which then panicked you into dancing with someone half as tall as you?"

This was almost spot on so I was puzzled about "no idea".  Maybe it was because the piece was written for a dancing readership who understand a lot of the milonga context that isn't explicitly mentioned.

Told bare, it sounded like a storm in teacup. But being strung out from culture shock, fatigue, heat and homesickness was taking its toll.   And perhaps the piece does not convey the hothouse atmosphere of the milonga, the intensity, the focus beneath the seemingly relaxed atmosphere and the social behaviour.  The consequences of small mistakes seem huge in that world behind the velvet curtain.  Tango can be vampiric.  It has sucked people over to Buenos Aires,  giving up lives, partners, families; sucked them dry and spat them out, hollow-eyed. 

All the senses are in play in the milonga.  We are, after all, animals.  There is only a veneer of civilization in the milongas of Buenos Aires, but it is a very cultivated veneer.  Sight is the sense used for making dance arrangements.  Inside the milonga everyone sees everything.  In this environment there is a whole set of non-verbal accepted cues and behaviours.  It is because the milonga is such a visual place that these work. In 'The Erring Eye' nearly everything about the traditional codes was absent.  

First among these codes, women can't explicitly invite men in traditional Buenos Aires milongas.  It is unthinkable. I once saw a European female tourist try to dance in the man's role with another woman mid-evening in El Beso club when it was packed on a traditional night.  A fight nearly broke out.  You have to stick to the codes in the traditional places.  These two were told in no uncertain terms but they continued and things didn't go well at all.  On another night around 3AM, when a different traditional milonga was emptying and only after my local woman friend had got permission from the easy-going host, I danced in the guy's role with her and even then got a shocked and disapproving look from the guy next to me in the ronda, the anti-clockwise movement of couples around the floor.  

What can a woman do?  She can send a "mirada", a noun peculiar to women which means to suggest, by look, that she may be available for dance. "Mirar" - not gender-specific - is "to look".  The man then invites, also by look: "un cabeceo (n) / cabecear (v)". This is a term specific to males unless in e.g. Europe or less traditional milongas, a woman dances in a man's role.  Cabeza means "head" so he might nod his head down in a question, or raise an eyebrow or smile.  The woman then accepts with a nod or smile or looks away, so there is no loss of face which is a public, not a private problem.  

Only once she has accepted does he get up and come over to her.  Only when she's certain he means her and not, say the woman behind her, does she get up.  Otherwise, she risks being called "toast", too keen, popping up too early.

The difference between a look that signifies "I am available to dance" and "I am inviting you" is subtle, fractional even, yet absolutely distinct.  

The non-verbal invitation is a practical system that has evolved over time.  It fulfils two functions.  It allows for a woman's refusal probably without anyone else noticing.  This is especially important in a macho culture.  It is also very different to Britain in the 1950s where a guy might walk up and potentially risk the walk of shame, alone, back to his seat or the woman would feel obliged to accept his direct invitation.  

This practice of walking up or shudder-inducing hand-proferring, as an invitation, is seen as gauche in many milongas and in some is explicitly or implicitly not tolerated.  The best enforcers of this code are women themselves. Beginners tend to be keen to dance so the places where you tend not to find the male hand-offer are where there is a level of milonga experience and competence among both sexes. 

The non-verbal invitation's other function is speed and efficiency.  To understand that we will backtrack a little to the end of a tanda (three or four tracks, depending on the music, danced by the same couple), whereupon the guy escorts the woman back to her seat.  This fulfils two purposes:  the guy shows his care and respect for the girl and the girl has a chance to get her bearings.  

Often the woman dances with her eyes closed.  Especially if the dance has been very good when the woman opens her eyes and returns to reality, it is quite common for her to have no idea where she is in relation to her seat.  Typically the guy realises this in seconds and it is a great compliment.  This practice of escorting women is absolutely typical in a traditional Buenos Aires milonga and in many milongas there because that respect for women is part of the culture.  In Europe I have only seen it in better milongas or among individual men.  It happens more in the south of Europe than in the north.  Being left on the dance floor after a dance, especially after a good dance is a horrible feeling.  "Like dumping a girl on her own after a night out," said a friend.     

The man then returns to his seat.  Some non-tango, interim music called the cortina (curtain) plays for a couple of minutes while this is going on, 

In good milongas, everyone at this point is seated. It is both good manners and essential for the success of the next stage.  There is then a second or two of wonderful, anticipatory silence when you can hear a pin drop - and then the next track begins.  In those first few seconds of the new track, non-verbal, visual arrangements to dance are made in seconds across significant distances, depending on the experience of those involved.  If people stand, it blocks the line of sight.  That is why good venues, and there are many outstanding venues in Buenos Aires, are rooms with plain lines of sight and no obstruction.  If a guy had to chase a woman round the room to invite her he could lose half the track and a couple usually wants to dance the full tanda together.   That is the second reason dances are arranged visually and why they are efficient.
 

Have I got the gist? Or is it more serious, and in fact much closer to sexual assault?

He had and it wasn't sexual assault but in Buenos Aires the inkling of something potentially dangerous, or more dangerous than in Europe is never too far away.  In Buenos Aires if you leave a milonga with a guy "for a coffee" it is well known to mean one thing so you had better know what that is.  The Argentines are up-front about these things.  They have long had the telos, the albergues transitorios or dedicated "love hotels".

But doesn't the great game between men and women have that sense of if not danger then something uncertain, something hard to put into words?  Girls used to grow up with that idea of uncertainty regarding men, pulling petals off daisies as they chanted a rhyme.  No doubt men did and do too even if they don't resort to mutilating flowers.  Of course that game and uncertainty can go too far.

On the whole, in those short three weeks, I found Argentine men tactful.  No doubt, they also knew how to spot and try to exploit a sexual opportunity better than any nationality I have ever come across, or possibly they are on a par with the Italians.  There are strong historical links between Argentina and Italy.  Many immigrants were from there.  The porteño (Buenos Aires) accent sounds like a toned down, Italian form of Spanish.  Argentine men, especially men from Buenos Aires are known in other Latin American countries as the players of that continent. But if you were clear about your boundaries they could back off and sometimes hold no grudge.   In dance it was different.  If you refused a guy, that was it, he never asked twice. Almost never.  

So the men would escort you off the floor, stand aside when you passed, show formal respect of the highest order, a respect largely vanished in Europe in the name of equality; but they would do so with, often, a glint in their eye.

Before I went, someone warned me:  "They're not like the men here.  They're wolves."  In Buenos Aires, give a guy an inch, by which I mean, let him keep hold of your hands between tracks - and he might try to take that inch, with teeth.   He is very possibly disreputable.  But there are always exceptions.

Codes

I love the costumes at Halloween. Enlivened by gore-spattered limbs and ghastly faces the tat drops away, giving place to other-worldliness, creativity and transformation. Dropping off my son at the school Halloween disco I was awed by the artistry of the delicate Dia de los Muertos design on a beautiful clown in a wig of multicoloured curls.

For the children, the main event of Halloween is trick-or-treating. Their enthusiasm never wanes. No matter his confidence and desire for independence I don’t care to leave my now nine-year-old, of still unpredictable road sense, wandering about, in a dark costume, his mind on treats, with heedless drivers blitzing down residential streets. So for years I too have trudged these hilly streets in the dark, the cold, the dreich and once in an icy downpour. Nothing though deters the children. Next to Christmas, Halloween is best. It is the dressing up, the friends, the promise of sweets with the delicious uncertainty of what and when and where and how much and what kind of reception from these strangers we visit.

Each lit house has its own message. One has gone to town: the whole front festooned with spider web and danger cordon, bugs, rats, goo and gore. Another transforms its lawn into a graveyard through which the children pick their way, past a skeleton with arms and legs protruding from the ground. Some will have only a jack-a-lantern outside. Another just a milk bottle with a tealight balanced on a gatepost. But this part of the game - spotting the signal, finding the one welcoming house in an otherwise darkened street. Later, walking back we remember the best one: the man with the neat house and garden, the decorations and the welcoming stained glass around the door. But it was the man himself who made it memorable: how, after the knock at the door and the werewolf howl, a clawed hand poked itself alarmingly outwards through the letterbox towards the five poised children. The man groaned loudly at the dreadful jokes, and despite the late hour on a weeknight, play-acted his way into the spirit of it all.

This year I enjoyed the silent codes around Halloween, of what to do and what not, codes figured out, passed around, passed on, tried out, explained to little ones or people who have never been before. Mistakes were made, laughed at in company and learned from. It was so natural, so human, such an antidote to our often overly-analytical, political, defensive, hide-bound, society.

It started before we went out. Social codes start in the home. My boy’s friend and his mother came for tea. These codes are even in the way we set the table, how we wait for each other to be ready to eat, the way our young visitor brought a gift and said, so politely, how good the simple food smelled, enquired what it was and where I had found the idea, said how much he was looking forward to it and offered his compliments at the table. The delightful manners of this child, and his straightforward, open, honest face means he will always be welcome. These are a sort of code; partly taught, shown, demonstrated by example to children by parents and family and partly just understood. They are the codes by which we identify others with whom we will or will not likely be socially compatible. To learn them and make them one's own requires awareness and confidence and trust. Equipping ourselves with them shows our development. To compliment a host is a time-hounoured way of showing appreciation of the effort to welcome a guest in the home. It demonstrates awareness and gratitude, social skills of a high order. It is a sort of ritual around which we hang our conversation, a trellis upon which our friendships grow.

Sometimes there may not quite be parity in our codes. Thirty years ago I learnt in France that hot chocolate may be drunk from bowls in the morning, that young friends even accompanied by parents and family may go topless at each other's swimming pools and that many homes will not use side plates for bread. If, in youth, one imports a foreign custom and make it one’s own one may, later in life, unthinkingly faze guests. There may follow silent clamour to calm our host or guest’s embarrassment, restore the momentarily broken ritual. More simply there may just be quiet adaptation and a memory, carefully filed. Such moments test our resourcefulness and grace.

So the children put on their costumes and try out their jokes on one another. The notion of trying to trick or treat without a joke to share is so obviously unsuitable it doesn't even arise. It is part of the very definition of the activity. This apart, the main code is so simple even pre-schoolers pick it up: only knock at decorated houses. What then does it mean if a house is decorated but dark? Or lit and decorated but doesn’t reply? Must we adapt our reasoning if a rival group tells us they have been cruelly sabotaging lanterns? If we are too late the hosts may be having their tea or have gone to bed, or had enough or run out of sweets.

“How often do we knock?” asks one.

“Once of course, only ever once” replies another.

“How many sweets can we take?”

“One unless offered more”.

“But Henry took three and the rest of us only got one”.

“She offered me three so it was OK!” says the straggler.

“No we can’t knock now. It’s too late” urges a ghost of pre-teen height.

Through the unwritten rules we learn we enjoy free interaction between stranger child and stranger adult, a concept otherwise almost unheard-of today. We learn that different rules apply in different contexts, the constraints here: symbols, company, costume, exchange and timing. Thus through fun, pleasure, enjoyment and reward and while hardly realising it, we learn implicitly social lessons of independence, observation, confidence, safety, mechanisms of exchange, negotiation, respect, gratitude. Social learning: long may it live.