There's a folklore dance from Argentina called chacarera. I won't describe what it looks like. The point is, I was sitting there, along with many others, on the floor, and we watched two rows of people, men on one side, women on the other, dancing this highly traditional but equally seductive dance.
A friend of mine got in touch with me today. She had been quiet for many years, not so much that something weird had happened between us, but more that she had always been quite flaky about keeping up communication. And before I could go into her facebook to see what had been happening in her life, I got a picture from her of her new daughter, a little baby sleeping.
In the chacarera, during the first few measures of the song the men and women raise their arms and snap their fingers to the beat of the song. And as soon as the singer comes on, each couple in the two rows comes towards each other. Though they never touch, they almost never take their gaze off each others' eyes, except when in one instance they have to turn around, but it's that instance that creates a longing that is eased only when their gazes reconnect. I saw this couple dancing. It wasn't that they were dancing with better moves than others. But rather they were dancing with each other more intensely than were the other couples. They weren't real lovers in real life. They just happened to find each other when they had announced that chacarera was coming up. She was a beautiful woman, with pitch black hair, wavy, long enough to just cover her neck and a few more inches of her chest, leaving a little bit more skin before a red shirt covered the rest. Her exposed chest was of a healthy olive color. But it wasn't just the way she looked, but the way she carried herself. She truly was trying to be seductive using the music and the dance. He was being the most gentleman, balancing longing and independence. He had a slight beard, though he was in his early twenties. He wore a gaucho hat, or some sort of hat that in this Argentinian atmosphere seemed like a gaucho hat. He wasn't muscular nor lanky. He seemed humble, and made me think about the poor peasant boy who was in love but showed great restraint against a formidable foe embodied in this gorgeous woman. When they came close, and again, never touching, their facial expressions were almost excruciating. How much they wanted to just touch.
The last time I had heard from my friend was her story about an affair. And because of the affair she broke up with her long-term boyfriend. I remember her telling me how she was driven into almost madness in this affair with a married man. How she couldn't stop thinking about him, how she handled the game they had to play to maintain this relationship while having to deal with their legitimate lovers. How she once bumped into his wife, and how the wife looked at her. She told me a little about how she felt about her boyfriend then. She was glad he was in her life. But that was it. There was no passion, but there was an anchor in her life. She thought she could have both, the excitement and flame of a senseless love while having someone to go home to, to wake up next to and feel safe. But that was gone after some frenzy that burst out from their hearts. She never told me how her boyfriend felt about the whole thing. She only mentioned the married man, how he in the end wanted her but somehow, it was too late. She mentioned a tape with the music that united them in the beginning, and other music that told her how desperate he felt. They met in the subway. Their eyes just met among strangers. She on one row of the old 9 train, he on the other. She was in her early 20s back then, starting her PhD work in psychology, and he was in his early 40's, a writer. The train was undoubtedly humming or squeaking. Back then the New York subway was even worse than now. But there was magic. They just saw each other and started a few months of turmoil for at least four people. I can't remember if there were children involved.
At some point of the dance, when the instrumental returns, the man would stand more or less stationary and kick up his feet in what is called the zapateo. Meanwhile, the woman makes circular movements, sometimes very close to him, but not enough for him to catch her, and this is called the salendeo. This woman with the pitch black hair, she had these fiery light hazel eyes. She would look at him, and she could have pierced his heart. But he looked back at her, smiling, moving slightly forward to respond to her coquettish advances that would inevitably shrink back. And when the vocal returns to the song, they resume their circular exchanges.
But in the end, after one more circular exchange, in the final one, they turn once more, missing each other, only to reunite face to face, and this time, they embrace, with their faces very close to each other. And the music stops.
So now my friend has a new man. I don't know if she had one before this since that affair. Probably. But the point is that this new man is her husband. She's finally married and has children. She's about a year and a half younger than me. And suddenly, she was settled. Not so sudden, I suppose, since I hadn't heard from her in a while. I wonder how they met. I wonder what he offered her in her life, what he meant to her. Why they got married. Was there something that pulled them together, or was that affair enough for her flames, and that once the coal had been burned up, there was no more need for flames. Once the ashes of passion had gone with the wind, perhaps she could finally settle down. And the music of life? A different kind, perhaps. Like some mellow classical music that evoked family, stability, infants. No more songs about passion, lost love, unfulfilled desires. It was a different stage, a different mode of living now.
