Treat Me Like Your Dog!

               Men and women in America have evolved to the point where we no longer understand each other. That is the problem yet understanding is not the solution. Speaking as a man fully cognizant of his ignorance about the opposite sex, I am here to say that the best thing we can do at this point is to make her smile.

               We shouldn’t attempt to fathom the working of her brain, rather we should try to interpret her body language and use it to evaluate the effectiveness of our efforts.

               It seems to me women are under the impression they provide men with sufficient verbal instructions to adequately comprehend the reasons for their actions. Much to the consternation of the gentler sex all their elaborate explanations seem to fall on deaf ears. It is not that he cares or doesn’t care, rather it is because her utterances don’t make sense to him.

               Ladies, try telling a dog why you’re doing what you’re doing and it’ll have the same reaction a man has. It’s ears will perk up, it’ll look you in the eye with sincerity and then turn away before you’re even done talking. Now give that dog a treat and see him respond! Don’t stop there: pat him on the head, say nice things to him, get him excited….but not too excited, right?

               So it is for a man trying to make sense of a woman’s actions.

               I  won’t claim to know the mind of a woman but I will say that dancing tango has allowed me to observe our better halves with much regularity. When a woman wants me to ask her to dance she will come over and chat me up, saying encouraging things to build up my confidence. She will smile, cock her head from side to side and look up at me, even if she has to lean forward to do so. 

                That works for me as it would for a dog.  

                When I first arrived in New Mexico, the difference between the American women and the non-American women was pronounced. My senses must have been heightened from being displaced from my home environment. Most of my conversations with the foreign-born girls was conducted almost entirely with body language; when I interfaced with the Americanas, the exchange was mostly verbal and my responses were never up to their expectations.

               American culture is suffering from gender identity confusion and this was most evident at our last practica. There were three more men than women.

               If we were the sexist pigs the media has told us we were since the sexual revolution began, we should have been fighting over those few girls like a pack of ravenous dogs with a bone…that did not happen. The guys that weren’t dancing started talking about fishing and continued telling taller tales when ‘challenged’ by another male’s quite fictitious feat. It is an endless loop of falsifications about the size and quantity of anything mentioned by the previous speaker. There is no room in this conversation for dance invites.

               I had to prod them a little bit but I finally got them to take turns with the three very happy women who were with us. I thought back to when I took up dancing as a hobby and recalled being the same way: if I got to talking with another guy about ‘who’s dog was bigger’, I soon lost interest in dancing.

               Women are not like that. If they’re talking and get a dance proposition, the conversation is ended quickly and they politely excuse themselves from their company.

               I think tango succeeds in America, and many other ‘western’ countries, because it fulfills a need that is lacking in the interaction between the sexes. The man’s laissez-faire attitude toward a scant gathering of females is half the problem. The other half is the lady’s desire to be fought over like a fresh kill in a pride of hungry lions.

               It fills that void with its many codigos, or codes of conduct, and its idiosyncratic customs like the birthday dance.

               The birthday dance is usually performed for a tanguera. As a song begins all the leaders line up to dance with her. Aggressive males will position themselves strategically around the room to interrupt her dance as skillfully and as brashly as possible; politely brash but the boundaries should be pushed to enhance the birthday girl’s enjoyment of the experience.

               If we were normal men, it would be evident that this is all done for the benefit of the woman whose special day it is and we would act out our parts as forceful suitors to the best of our ability. We are not a society of normal men. We are half of a civilization that has lost its testicles. We live in a world where the woman is more likely to be the primary wage earner. In the jobs we do have we are inundated with propaganda that constantly reminds us of our emasculation.

               The American tanguero is unique in that he responds to the problem of gender identity confusion in an ingenious manner. He could buy a ton of weapons and blast away at the shooting range. He might choose to hunt down animals who are no match for his superior fire power, gas-powered engines, camouflaged fabrics and lures. He may even join a religious group that consoles him with biblical quotes reaffirming his role as head of the household. There are many things he could do but most only resolve half of the problem.

               The tanguero settles this issue not only with respect to himself but also for the many women he encounters, not just on the dance floor but all who come in contact with him at work or at play. The tanguero dances to be pleasing to his partner at all times. He measures success not by how well he reads her thoughts or anticipates her movements, nor the quantity of kind words he receives from her but rather by her smile, the flush of her cheeks and the look in her eyes.

               This is a very productive approach towards a solution; to treat it as something that must be worked out with deference to both sexes; that we are part of a whole and all our efforts should be geared for a time when two people move as one, around the dance floor or along the road of life.


Note: Check out my new book on Amazon: Fear of Intimacy and the Tango Cure.

 Note: For an in-depth look into the mind of the Kayak Hombre, read his book, available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/River-Tango-perri-iezzoni/dp/1453865527/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369366756&sr=1-1&keywords=River+tango

What's Missing When Women Lead

               In Durango we have a sizable crew of leaders embarking on the journey into tango dancing. Most are men but some are women. I’ve seen many ladies assume the role of leader but I’ve witnessed very few who are capable of making the connection necessary for true tango to happen. Leading a dance in tango is much more than simply changing hand positions, it takes a commitment.

               It is my belief that women are better at exacting promises from their male counterparts than they are at making them. If a lady intends to lead she must accept the responsibility of the role but she needs something more. Allow me to explain what that ‘something more’ may be.  

               If a man has sex with a woman a baby can result. When we were just monkeys swinging in our trees, our emotions and the scarcity of available mates were all that was required to keep us hanging around after insemination. 

               Once homo sapiens invented fire, men discovered the ladies of the night and things changed. Men searched in the darkness for more sexual encounters and women began work on the foundations of civilization.

               The obligation of the father to provide for his child was a chief concern for the girls who laid the groundwork for the rule of law. With the invention of the wheel and the arrival of Man’s BFF, the dog, enterprising males constantly endeavored to change the rules. 

               I honestly believe we would be extinct as a species if sheep could give blowjobs. The last man on earth would have happily ended his days as a shepherd in the Caucasus Mountains twenty-five thousand years ago, with no woman to mourn him and a large herd of sheep trying to get out of the corral.

               As creative as men were in pleasing themselves, women were equally imaginative in their ways to keep us around to help raise their offspring. They invented commerce and money so the shepherd had a place to take his sheep when their numbers grew too great. Conveniently, by design and not by chance, he also had a way to get enough money to buy himself some oral satisfaction from the girls in town who busied themselves with another concoction of theirs: wine.

               Women sorely regretted their creation of alcohol but that’s another story for another time; we’re talking about what it takes to become a leader of a tango dance so let’s not get distracted.

               When I decided to dance tango I didn’t know where to find it. Living in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania I found plenty of people willing to take my money for what they called ‘tango lessons’. I started my search in October 2005 and didn’t find a ‘real’ tango instructor until February of 2006, four months after I began my search in earnest.

               Until I discovered tango, I had been attending ballroom dance classes at a studio run by professional dancers. I had two left feet when I started. Having one of those feet changed into a right foot cost a lot of money. It was an expensive operation but it had to be done. I was a single parent raising two girls and I was lonely. If I didn't come up with a solution soon, my loneliness would have driven me into the arms of a cigarette-smoking, drunken hillbilly senorita who might kill me in my sleep after I finished cleaning the Stygian Stables and diverting the Nile River into the Red Sea. 

               There were a few women interested in me before I learned to dance but, when I interviewed for the position of sexual favor recipient, I was hit with a request for commitment to complete a long list uninteresting assignments. The list was usually very well presented as the simplest of Herculean Tasks, and, if I had actually been Hercules, the jobs would indeed have been very easy to complete.

               A younger man would have taken the bait and been hooked into an arrangement consisting of many brutal tortures and boring ceremonies involving in-laws and PTA meetings. If I hadn’t been so busy cooking dinners and washing clothes, I might have had time to fall for their feminine wiles. I see now that this was a good thing. At the time, however, it was excruciatingly painful to walk away from the bargaining table.

               Eventually, my need for female companionship forced me to arrive at some sort of compromise with my emotional obligations to parenting. A compromise is almost like a real promise with writing in the sidelines indicating where the exit is. 

               And so I began my journey into the world of dance.

               Women arrive at the leadership role in dance as novices in the game of commitment as experienced by men; recent advancements in the global communities of governance on the recognition of same-sex marriages gives me hope this will no longer be the case.

               A lady endeavoring to lead another woman to tango music has an advantage over her male competitors: she is genetically engineered for multitasking and a man is not. 

               Pay attention now because this is where things get real complicated.

               The necessity of commitment arises from the man’s inability to multitask: to hear the music, choreograph movements to the melody and to convey his plan to his partner. This is happening continuously. To make it even harder, throw in a room full of other dancers of various skills and then add navigation to that list.

               Fortunately for the guys, we already know where we’re going so we don’t have to navigate. Unfortunately for the girls, we often steer them into other people or walls, even steel beams…sorry:-(

               An educated man might make the assumption that women make better leaders. Luckily I am not educated and therefore am not burdened with the usual impediments that accompany an advanced degree in learning. This lack of mental clutter allows me to see how much women, when playing the role of follower, appreciate the hard work and dedication I have put into my tango training. I am equally appreciative when the follower has spent her own free time practicing the movements that help maintain balance and enable embellishments to be performed within the context of my lead.

               A man’s road to gaining the ability to multitask while dancing is much longer than a woman’s. As in all things in life, success that is earned is always much more rewarding than a success that is inherited. When a follower dances with a man who has come by his skills the hard way she responds by releasing the ingredients necessary to make a powerfully addictive drug. The embrace of two such participants creates a delivery system that bypasses the bloodstream and injects the aphrodisiac directly into their souls for a truly cosmic experience.

                This is true tango. It is a phenomenon that keeps us coming back like the emotional junkies that we are. 

                I'm not saying a woman is incapable of adding this kind of element to a tango dance that she leads. I'm just saying it is a rare thing...and it should be. For such an event to be a common occurrence would lessen the meaning for that truly exceptional woman who put so much hard work into becoming a leader of the dance.


Note: For an in-depth look into the mind of the Kayak Hombre, read his book, available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/River-Tango-perri-iezzoni/dp/1453865527/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369366756&sr=1-1&keywords=River+tango

                

               

Svetlana Petkovic: Tango Instructor

               Last Sunday the Durango Tango Society hosted guest instructor Svetlana Petkovic. I have to admit I was very apprehensive about the weekend for many reasons. My biggest fear was that our nascent tango community would not be up to the challenge of intensive exercises in technique led by a very skilled instructor with a strong background in Russian ballet.

               I had participated in one of her weekly tango workouts in Albuquerque and found it extremely rigorous but very, very helpful. There I relearned what so many great instructors have taught me many times before: to dance tango well, I must be on my own balance. I already know this but a full-time job and a penchant for cupcakes helps me to forget.

               I wondered if Durango was ready for a class focused solely on movement techniques and not on fancy figures.

               No fancy moves? How un-American! Exactly! That’s why it’s called ARGENTINE tango. I am a patriot and I enjoy somersaults just as much as any other American who watches ‘Dancing With The Stars’ but I realized long ago that acrobatics  are not what Argentine tango is all about. It is about two people moving to music in harmony and on their own balance.

                I worried that not enough dancers would show interest in a course simply titled ‘fundamentals’. This was a class for dedicated tango dancers, regardless of skill level. I stressed over that greatest of all workshop phenomena: gender imbalance. Finally I wondered if Svetlana would be too much ballet and not enough tango for Durango.

               I needn’t have caused myself so much consternation because she did an excellent job. The students fell in love with her right away. The next five hours was like a great date: dinner and a movie…and coffee and crumpets afterwards, followed by long, thoughtful conversation about the finer aspects of tango techniques.

               Did she say she was married? How could she let us fall in love with her and not tell us she was betrothed…wait, she did tell us she was wedded to Erskine which is okay because we loved him as well!

               The topper was when they both stayed for our regularly scheduled practica which immediately followed the workshop. The two of them didn’t just merely relax and mingle, they worked with any student who showed a desire to retain or gain a better understanding of what was taught.

               This is something more than instruction. This is love. Love makes things grow and tango is alive and well and growing in Durango thanks to Svetlana….and Erskine and Easter, the road manager. We owe them a great debt of gratitude for  putting in so much time and effort to bring tango to our little town nestled in the San Juan Mountains of southern Colorado, far away from any metropolis where tango is danced regularly.

               The weather changed that day and everywhere buds could be seen pushing out of the once frozen earth. Like the flowers and the trees, our tango community in Durango was also blooming. Thanks to Svetlana I feel confident that this summer our nascent dance society will bloom into a beautiful gathering of happy dancers.

 Note: For an in-depth look into the mind of the Kayak Hombre, read his book, available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/River-Tango-perri-iezzoni/dp/1453865527/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369366756&sr=1-1&keywords=River+tango

              

              

              

Last Tango of the Living

               Last Sunday I drove my mother and sister to Mesa Verde. On the final leg of our twenty-mile journey through the park we came across three mountain bikers in the middle of the road. Their arrangement immediately struck me as odd and I remarked that it looked like someone doing CPR, cardio-pulmonary-resuscitation.

               I hoped I was wrong but I was not:-(

               We pulled past them and parked the car. I got out and went over to the three people, who looked to be in their late sixties or early seventies: a woman standing, a man performing chest compressions on another man who lay sprawled on the ground.

                My thirty years of river running experience has led me to expect that more qualified people than me would be around to handle such a situation. It saddened me to find this was not the case here.

               The victim’s skin was tinged blue. I discovered later he had been unconscious for five to ten minutes before our arrival. Since someone was already compressing the chest it seemed logical to me that the best way I could help would be to deliver oxygen to the victim.  

               Shortly after the advent of AIDS, most of my CPR instructors advocated for the use of a plastic device as an interface between the rescuer’s mouth and the recipient’s mouth. I’ve always wondered what I would do in such a situation if I didn’t have such a device and yesterday I found out. Reluctantly, I tilted his head back, pinched his nose and extended his chin with my thumb. Placing my large mouth over his unshaven face I exhaled a huge breath into his body.

               This was disgusting!

               Once I started artificial respiration I lost focus of everything else. I remember hearing a woman crying in the background. The victim’s skin tone returned back to its normal color immediately upon receiving my breaths.

               That’s as far as we got towards resuscitation.

               It was difficult to exhale into the lifeless body in the position we found it and I began to consider what we could do better. I unstrapped his small backpack which was still beneath him and encouraged others to help straighten him out to maximize the effect of our efforts.

               While I was blowing air into the man’s lungs, an annoying woman started singing the song ‘Stayin’ Alive’ by the Bee Gees. This seemed out of place to me but no one ejected this crazy person from the premises and I was in no position to object to the distraction.

               “Uh, uh, uh, uh, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive,” she tried to sing, her voice obviously strained, “uh, uh, uh, uh, stayin’ alive…”

               I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why she was singing. I later learned that the timing of this melody is also the same timing at which chest compressions should be delivered. Students getting their CPR certifications are taught this in class.

               I continued with the breaths hoping someone would relieve me. I heard sirens and then a woman offered to take my place delivering breaths. After a valiant effort she conceded that her mouth was not big enough to cover his. It seems my thirty year lucky streak of finding expert help in dire situations had completely run out this day and I was forced to continue providing breaths until emergency personnel arrived with a manually operated breathing apparatus.

               I wasn’t relieved of my duties, however, once the respiratory contraption was in place. A female park ranger delivered compressions while someone else delivered oxygen via a hand pump. When she got tired, she asked me to take over for her. It took me five seconds to get the hang of it but soon I was administering compressions just like a trained professional. We took turns pumping his heart until the paramedics arrived in a helicopter.

               Eventually another person arrived to administer chest compressions and my part in the CPR was done. I finally had a chance to speak to the woman who was singing. By this time she was wailing uncontrollably and I told her she was not making recovery any easier for the man on the ground. She immediately quieted down only to erupt again a few minutes later.

               When I rejoined my mother and sister watching from a distance of only a few yards away, I found out this woman was the victim’s wife of forty-nine years. They had married when he was twenty-one.

               Unfortunately all our efforts were not enough to revive the man who lay on the ground. He stayed dead in spite of more than two hours of sustained emergency life support assistance. Well-equipped, trained park personnel arrived on the scene within forty minutes. A helicopter and paramedics were there inside of an hour: a pretty good turnout for southwestern Colorado’s remote Four Corners Region.

               I have thought about this event a lot. I couldn't sleep very well until I answered two questions.

               Question#1: how will this affect me psychologically? Other than my repulsion at having to cover another man’s face with my mouth, I don’t have any feelings I could classify as negative. I’m certain he will show up in my dreams from time to time but that would be normal.

               The deceased’s body-shape was much like mine and that has had an impact. Even though he was seventy years old we both have the same size beer belly. It has been four days since the event and my diet has changed considerably. No more egg mcmuffins or sausage biscuits for breaksfast for me, from now on it’s cucumbers and tomatoes.

               I’d been having a difficult time getting back into an exercise routine but not anymore. I walked for an hour with my sister the next day and then swam ten laps at the Durango Recreation Center pool. I feel a heck of a lot ‘cleaner’ inside after four days of a diet consisting mostly of fruits and veggies.

               Question#2: was that a satisfactory end to that man’s life?

               His friend since they were both seventeen years old had been riding with him when the man collapsed.  After the helicopter left, we shuttled him back to his car and he identified the dead man by name. With a little research I discovered the man was a professor of biology. Considering what I had learned from his death, I’d have to say his final ‘lecture’ was invaluable to me and others as well.

               I have been training for an incident like this for most of my adult life. I always carry a well-stocked first aid kit but now I know I can improve it with a good respiratory shield. I’m fairly certain I could administer effective CPR, tandem or solo, now that I've had some hands-on experience. Hopefully there will never be a need for it but, if there is, this man’s death may lead to the successful resuscitation of someone else.  

               I now know that I can handle, emotionally and psychologically, a negative outcome in such an event. I'm sure that, if I do everything in my power to achieve a more positive ending, I won't suffer any recurring stress after the event. The distressed spouse added greatly to level of anxiety at the scene. That I was able to perform competently in spite of the hysteria gives me comfort when I think about future wilderness excursions and the possibility that a similar calamity may occur.  

               If I think of this man's death in tango terms, then I'd have to say it is like the end of a great tanda of tango dancing: if the participants break their embrace longing for more, this is the sign of a healthy engagement. His wife definitely indicated her desire for him to stay with a cry that rent the very fabric of the universe through which his life force must have escaped.

               I have to conclude that the answer to the second question is that he died well. I know I would be flattered to have a spouse miss me the way his wife obviously did. Any man would be proud to have a woman put on such a public display of anguish at the loss of her husband.

               That everybody did so much in his final hour to keep him here contributed a sense of closure to his departure, if not for him then certainly for his wife. 

               That we worked without expectation of compensation is probably the finest aspect of the event. I guess it was our way of saying that we truly did not want him to leave. In America, anyone with adequate health insurance is in danger of being kept alive until every last bit of revenue is drained from every available resource a person has which, to me, seems like an undignified death.

               When I consider all the other ways there are to leave this world I am reminded of an old Irish proverb that advocates for a person to ‘leave the pub a little bit thirsty, the table a little bit hungry and the bed a little bit tired’.

                The man that died that day left life with a little bit of it still in him. As in all of Life’s lessons there was a great deal to be learned in his passage to the Great Unknown. In the greatest of all tangos that we dance, the Tango of Living, these two participants parted ways hungering for more. Theirs was a dance well done.

              
 Note: For an in-depth look into the mind of the Kayak Hombre, read his book, available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/River-Tango-perri-iezzoni/dp/1453865527/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369366756&sr=1-1&keywords=River+tango

Learning To Lead

               It’s difficult to learn how to lead a dance in tango. Whatever brought you to tango also attracted new followers as well. You begin like an ant trying to carry a grain of rice back to the anthill. It is hard work just trying to pick up the grain. Meanwhile, the tangueras who started with you have already been to several milongas and are buying their second pair of shoes.

               Something keeps you from quitting…….but just barely. Your frustration is immense. You become defensive, start rationalizing, then channelizing before finally accepting the undeniable truth: you are clumsy. Acceptance is the final stage before true learning begins.

               You begin exercises in balance and rhythmic movement when you are alone. It is not until a frustrated follower takes the initiative to finally tell you what you are doing wrong that you lead your first back ocho. Until now you thought you had been doing it correctly but the smile on her face tells you otherwise. Now you’ve learned something; not just how to lead a back ocho, what you’ve learned is that the ‘smile’, that faint wisp of satisfaction displayed by a woman and not the broad, polite baring of teeth you get as a matter of cordiality, is the barometer by which you will now measure success.

               Your job as a leader of tango is simple. Your goal is not the execution of complex maneuvers; rather it is to elicit a positive emotional reaction from your partner. Once you’ve realized this, you have learned how to lead and the rest is all just plain fun.

 Note: For an in-depth look into the mind of the Kayak Hombre, read his book, available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/River-Tango-perri-iezzoni/dp/1453865527/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369366756&sr=1-1&keywords=River+tango