All Good Things Come To Those Who Wait

               This post is dedicated to all you ladies out there who leave the milonga early. If this is you, then you are probably wondering what goes on when you are gone. Read on and you will know.

               There is a woman out there who is counting on your absence. I see her at most crowded milongas, the Patient Tanguera. She is almost always alone and seemingly unaffected by the amount of time she is spending idle but it is not wasted time. Watching and waiting, she tunes in to the collective emotions of the crowd like an actor standing behind the curtain before it rises.   

               The habits of men are her familiar friends: we like variety and rarely feed on the same flower for the entire night.  She is intuitive about forthcoming cabeceos. Her deportment seems too calm to me, like the eyes of a crocodile protruding the calm surface of the water. I have to wonder if she has an extra sensory gland that is capable of making innate subconscious calculations on who will ask her to dance. Her demeanor is a testament to her predation skills. My mind races for an explanation for she is an enigma; I imagine she is a seduction addict who can ‘smell’ the imbalance in a man’s opiate receptor levels.

               Patience pays off seemingly on cue. The clock strikes eleven and all the Cinderellas rush to get home before their Cadillacs turn into pumpkins and the crows stand beside their eyes. A wave of pheromones blows through the room and suddenly she is sitting in the spotlight.

               For the next hour or so she experiences a series of high-quality tango encounters with mostly skilled leaders. Satiated, she dons her shoes and disappears in the middle of a tanda. She has answered her hunger but it came with a heavy price; there will be hell to pay at work the next day, a day that has probably already begun before she even walks out the door.

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