La Nuit Blanche

In the beginning of my trip, I bought a Moleskine at a paper shop in Palermo, and began filling it with bits and pieces of Buenos Aires, cutting and pasting signature napkins, milonga entry tickets, small maps, museum passes, subte passes, boat ticket stubs, plane ticket stubs, cinema ticket stubs, colectívo receipts, restaurant bills, business cards, packets of azucar gathered at all the cafes, stickers given to me by gypsies, candy wrappers, tango flyers, doctor’s prescriptions, packets of Aspirina C, cigarette packs, dried jasmine flowers, tiny photos of naked ladies working on Corrientes, anything I could lay my hands on.

Around the edges, is written bits of poetry, funny doodles, addresses, phone numbers, new names, secret declarations, both mine and his. His are mostly hand-drawn maps, demonstrating where the cafe will be for our next rendez-vous…

For five weeks, everyday, I would cut and glue and paste and write. It became a nightly ritual before I went to bed.

The moleskine is about to explode, it absolutely refuses to stay shut… It looks like one of those Japanese paper-lanterns, having opened up into a full three-dimentional circle. When I lay it on the table, it opens itself up like a miniature bandoneon.

persicco
el cuartito
el gato negro
la viruta
1 viaje
marroc
la giralda
MALBA
villa malcolm
tango brujo
el federal
gaston y moira
il gran
kavanagh
mundial de baile
linea: 039
comme il faut
suipacha
papelera palermo
parakultural
control de mesa
facturas
medrano 476
boutique del libro
riobamba 416
niño bien
cheff iuseff
la briela
freddo
el imparcial
cafe de los angelitos
maipú 444
honduras 4912
armenia 1618
boleto oficial cinematográfico
restaurant pippoe
entrada no. 823
soler 4502
los immortales
clásica y moderna
zivales
anda a la milonga y bailá!
gran cafe tortoni
avd. de mayo
torquato tasso
colonia del sacramento
buquebus
el taller
aspirina C
caballeros
malasartes
9 de julio
salon de fiestas
cordoba
corrientes
el duende
a catedral de tango
radio taxi alo
bandoneones en extinción…

And this is only half-way through. The last entry was:

El Ultimo Beso

where I had a last cafe con leche with my Engish girls before I left for the airport.

Every few pages contain a memory of a day and a night in Buenos Aires.  And one in Uruguay.  Several conversations.  Hundreds of kisses.  A few tandas, a cab ride, a bus ride, a subte ride.  The faces of people I was introduced to, the mozos who served my table, voices rich with American, English, French, Australian accents, porteños lilting phrases in castellano.  The stairways and buildings I walked through, the echoing in the corridors, sounds that belong to another world.  I can jump into a wardrobe, and for a few seconds, close my eyes, and be there.

Did you know, the porteñas are not afraid to wear brightly-colored flowers in their hair on the city streets? At 2pm on a winter afternoon.

The men complained and sulked about my camera, not because they felt it was an invasion of their privacy, but because they couldn’t catch my eye to ask me for a dance.

Parakultural, Salon Canning

I didn’t go out this past weekend to a favorite NYC monthly milonga because I am going through a period of mourning.

No, it’s not the dancing that I miss. Superior or not, different or no in Argentina, the dancing, I am convinced, is beautiful here in New York. I myself am a New Yorker, and the porteños seemed to love the way I dance…? Maybe it’s because here at home, I am lucky to be partnering with the most amazing dancers, maybe it’s because so many of my friends have been spending so much time in Buenos Aires that they brought much of it back with them, perhaps it’s because some of them were porteños in a past life, I don’t know. But no, it’s not the dancing iself that I miss.

What I do miss, are the places. I miss the high arched ceilngs, the truly café-like atmosphere, the airy brightness of the milongas, the wood panels, the French windows opening onto stone balconies, smoking rooms, the professional mozos dressed in black and white. I miss that there were more tables surrounding the dancefloor than the dancefloor itself. I miss the permanence of these places, as if they were built just for dancing tango.

I miss the mood of the milongas. How they felt like they had been there forever. How the old places carried the weight of decades and decades of memories, how it seeps into your being and permeates the way you move, how the new places were feverishly vampiric with new young blood pumped into fresh new veins, adding an asbolutely modern aesthetic to this old dance.

I miss the hosts and hostesses who greeted me with open arms and warm hugs and kisses on the cheek, who remembered my name since the second time they saw me, who treated me like a darling of their milongas.

I miss the men who were dressed in impeccable suits, and beautiful hair, the really old milongueros, and the teenagers, alike. I miss how they smelled of citrus and cologne, as if they had prepared themselves earlier in the evening, just for me. I miss how they gazed at me, intently, from across the room, and respected the distance between us when I turned my eyes away. I miss how they would walk me back to my table after each tanda. I miss their ludicrously funny palabras.

And I miss, terribly miss, my new friends. I met a group of beautiful English girls during the last two weeks of my stay. Every night, we shared tables together, walked to and from the milongas through the streets of Palermo, Villa Urquiza, Constitution, Retiro, met for coffee in the afternoons, went to birthday dinners and the theatre, bought gifts for each other, took pictures of each other, took care of each other. We would nickname the milongueros with the names of movie stars, talk of love, of fear, of desire, of ambition, of art, of cities, laugh-lines deepening with the smoldering glow in our eyes. I miss Tina, her velvety eyes and silly laugh. I miss Sally, her sparkling wit and warm hugs.

I was blessed, particularly so, I think, in comparison to other turistas on their first visit to Buenos Aires. I was spoiled with everything I could wish for.

And now it’s just not the same…….