Tango

by Stefanie Wasserman | 2006

Latin. Sexy. Proud. Smart. Hot.
It's everything and everybody here. In Rosario, Argentina.

* * * *

I am invited here to exhibit my text-as-installation piece at the Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes Juan B. Castagnino, in the first 404 Festival Internacional de Arte Electronico in December, 2004. Each evening, there are new works performed. Afterwards, festival folk and Rosarinos gather at a bar that feels snatched right out of Brooklyn. Under a crescent moon-lit sky, we drink together well into the night.

* * * *

It's 2:30 AM. I hear in the art crowd rhythmic accents that ring from all over Latin America: Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, and Brazil. In unison, they sound like a stacatto xylophone that chimes over a bass line of São Paulo toasts. "Sa-U-je! Sa-U-je!"
I drink up the chorus of sounds. The night is young.

Tonight I meet Carmen and Antonio, a Rosarino couple.
She sports a Twiggie haircut; he wears an Argentinian leather cap.
They are mod, charming, funny, and extremely well-educated - just like everyone else I've met here.
They speak absolutely no English. Nada. And ask me if I’d like to dance.

They whisk me outa there. Pronto.
Ten minutes later we're inside a high-octane night club with hundreds of hard-dancing, vibrating, sweaty bodies. Every person over 20 in Rosario must be in this place.
The energy is like Mick Jagger playing Madison Square Garden in 1975.

The crowd knows every single word.
But I can see in their eyes that I'm the sole English speaker here.

I'm not in New York City anymore.

It's 4:00 A.M. "Laughter, joy and loneliness and sex and sex and sex and sex..."
Carmen, Antonio and I dance, drink, laugh, and begin sentences that don't have endings. As is the custom, we share regional beer from the same plastic cup.

It's the best beer I've ever tasted.

Antonio asks me if I'd like to come home with both of them, and the music kicks in louder.
            "You can't always get what you want."
I dance harder. And pretend not to hear.

It's 5:00 A.M. More beer is shared. We meet their friends on the dance floor, and dance in groups and couples. There are hundreds of eyeballs on this sweaty dance floor.
It feels a little over-whelming. I draw an invisible circle around us to feel comfortable.
There is no let-up to the music in sight.
            "Cause I try and I try and I try and I try..."
Carmen asks me if I'd like to come home with both of them.
            "Shadoobie"

It's 6:00 A.M. Two rooster-like bouncers strut about and scoot the pulsating crowd promptly onto the sidewalk. Outside, the sun is up. And harsh. Carmen and Antonio think they have lost their car. We find it one block away.

It's 6:10 A.M. As we approach their rusted, beat-up car, Antonio asks me,
"Would you like to come home with us?"
I pause. I offer a map where I am staying, and politely ask,
"Perhaps you could drop me here?"

As I navigate the tricky terrain of cross-cultural sexual politics, I hope I am not insulting.
Carmen and I both get in the back seat because the front passenger side is jammed.

It's 6:30 A.M. Antonio stops the car abruptly in frustration. "This map makes no sense!" He lights up a cigarette and takes a long, slow drag.

Casually, Antonio lifts Carmen's tight mid-drift and reveals her sexy, taught tummy.
"Wouldn't you like to come home with us after all? Since we can't find your place?"
(I had already been in many taxis who also could not find it.)

It's 7:00 A.M. The goats are eating breakfast. The horses are mulling about.
Antonio, Carmen and I are still trying to find the dirt road that leads to my place off a traffic circle. If you blink, you miss it and have to loop back around.
We blink a lot. I silently thank the local beer gods that they are still so full of drunk good cheer that they haven't become pissed - yet.

Antonio pulls over again. In the back seat, Carmen looks at me.
I get the sense that my stall-o-meter is running out.
TICK.

Antonio turns around. He eyeballs Carmen, and then myself.
TICK.

Carmen leans towards me with her dark, Latin sexiness.
Now she looks at me dead on.
"Are you hetero?"
"Yes."
TICK.
She withdraws back to her side of the seat and carefully considers this information.

Slowly, she re-adjusts her position from her right hip to her left.
Her body language says: "What type of woman resists this way?"
She is clearly frustrated.

She looks at me hard and googles her memory for everything she's read about Americans since George W's 2004 re-election.

She squints her eyes, and turns to me with a deeply quizzical expression.
She offers the only rationalization she can possibly find:
"Are you Republican?"

View Stefanie's installation (mentioned in this piece) that was exhibited at Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes Juan B. Castagnino, in the 404 Festival Internacional de Arte Electronico (December 2004) on her website >>
Click "Installation"

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