On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 1:00 PM, Brick Robbins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Sometimes the cortinas take on appearance of a feeding frenzy, with 3 > or 4 men standing around each of the better followers, with the > follower begging for the chance to rest. I once found a follower > sitting behind the counter in the kitchen, hiding. She said she just > wanted to rest a bit without having to turn down someone every 30 > seconds.
That's an interesting observation. I have seen the same thing with my own eyes, but with the genders reversed. My boyfriend is a fine dancer. He and I like to dance together and we do it a lot, but when we separate to find other partners, the women simply hound him. He finds it difficult to turn them down. He finds it hard-hearted, so he ends up dancing with a lot of women he doesn't even want to dance with. It's hard for him to find the chance to dance with the partners he likes because he's "servicing" so many. Often, he still declines invitations because he has already promised two or three others in succession. Sometimes the ones he turns down glower and glare at him the rest of the night. Several no longer speak to him (or me). I ask you, is this seemly behavior towards a man in a partnered relationship? I don't want him to have any sense of obligation about me, but if he has a duty to anyone, who moreso than me? Don't you think it's presumptuous for other women to expect so much from a man involved with someone else? He doesn't feel complimented by all the attention. These women are making demands of him. They feel as if they've paid their money to get in and to have a decent dance; somehow it's his duty to provide what they paid for. They often tell him, with pride in their voices, that they are independent and aggressive women who have no fear about extending invitations to men. I wonder how they expect him to respond, with admiring approval? (Incidentally, they all adore me. Or they seem to anyway, because they never fail to sit near me and chat me up while expecting him to return soon.) He tells me he doesn't even want to dance every single tanda in a night. There's so much pressure to meet everyone's expectations, the evenings are far from relaxing. They're hideous. God forbid that he stop for a second to have a drink. The vultures circle around the semi-still form, "I see you're not busy?..." So, get this. He won't even come with me to milongas anymore. I don't even get to dance with him myself except at home or when we go to private parties. Sisters, you are ruining my life! The only milongas he'll attend with me are in Buenos Aires. I'm counting the minutes until our next trip. He won't go to a milonga unless there are reserved seats and nobody approaches your table to ask you to dance. It's the only way he gets some peace and quiet and dances just with people he likes. I wish there were reserved seating milongas north of the equator. We would pay double the going entrada. But there aren't any. Val -- Cryptic Ember - The tango blog of Valerie Dark http://crypticember.blogspot.com _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
