Random Acts

The real reason I have few blog entries this year is not for lack of interest in writing, it's for lack of travel.

It occurs to me, however, that I encounter single serving friends every day of my life (well, every day that I leave the house), not just on airplanes or buses or dive boats or dance floors.

Every now and then I take my misanthrope sweater out of the closet, peel it out of its dry cleaner plastic sheath, and don it for a while. Lately, I've been wearing misanthrope like it's the new black. This is strongly correlated to my TMJ-induced chronic pain and discomfort, which I've recently epiphanized has stripped me of many layers of self-confidence, not to mention robbed me of the simple pleasures of eating good food, and made me rather anti-social. Ironic considering I've lost about 20 pounds since finishing grad school and no longer feel self-conscious about pouring out of my clothes, and of course now that I'm done with school I actually have time to be social. Oh, but I digress.

On a good day that starts out bad, someone surprises me with their kindness and I shrug off the misanthrope sweater. It usually takes nothing more than a simple compliment from a stranger - proof I suppose that I was not born to be a misanthrope. A man walked up to me in the metro and told me my hair was beautiful, a security guard in front of the World Bank said I was wearing a pretty jacket - it's enough to pull that thread as I walk away and... watch me unravel. But not the real me, just the misanthrope.

It takes two...?

Year two of TangoSutra was, despite my apprehensions, almost entirely undisappointing.

Sure, I was secretly hoping my favorite dance partner of 2008 would appear and atone for his grievous error of brushing me off post-weekend, but I found a new favorite dance partner, or 3, instead, which inspired me to spend exactly twice as much time dancing as sleeping in a 3-day period.

There is a certain je ne sais quoi about Argentine tango which makes describing it to the uninitiated a bit like describing Dali's The Last Supper to a blind person. "For those who understand, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible." I don't know who said that or what they were originally describing, but I have an affinity for hobbies that can be described thusly.

And yet, in my brain always a budding authoress, I must make some attempt to convey at least a piece of the puzzle that is tango, because it ultimately leads to a story, or stories, about single serving friends, and this blog is about them.

I love tango at least as much as I love commas; I suppose I could live without both but I sure wouldn't want to. Tango is always surprising, which does not always mean unsettling (but sometimes it's that too). Every dance is a fingerprint, or a snowflake, or whatever other cliché indicating absolute uniqueness you like, because it is the culmination of an infinite number of variables: the song, the partner, the location, the floor, the other dancers, the mood, the shoes, the temperature, the time, the chemistry...

Some factors have more influence than others, but all these factors blend together to create a piece of art for 5 minutes or 5 songs. Sometimes it's awkward pre-school finger-painting, sometimes it's divine Sistine-Chapel-ceiling masterpiece, and sometimes it's gaudy fabric-wrapped-building-ala-Christo-esque fraudulence, but it is always art.

Every leader has his own lens through which he interprets the music and the scene and communicates that vision to his follower, and every follower has her own lens through which she receives the communique and acts accordingly. In that way, it really does take two to tango. Significantly, the conversation that takes place during a tango isn't one of words, or eyes, or gestures (not if it's done right), but one of energy, essence, aura... yes, chemistry. I can usually get a fair sense of a guy's character and personality as soon as we've danced a song. There are those who are fun to dance with but absolute drama off the dance floor. Or maybe they are self-centered, generous, pretentious, sarcastic, shy, passionate, genuine, playful, outgoing, sensitive, intellectual... there are all kinds.

The part where the theme of this blog comes in is this recurring phenomenon I've recognized when people walk off the dance floor at a milonga. The nature of tango lends itself to quickly-formed, passionate, and very intimate connections - people jokingly (or not so jokingly) refer to Argentine tango as sex on a dance floor - and much to my dismay, a shockingly large number of tango dancers seem incapable of distinguishing between dance-floor chemistry and the rest of life. I'm not afraid to admit that I have been one of those fools. I understand why it happens, but it remains a frustrating reality that time and again perfectly great dance partnerships have been destroyed by the expectation that it's more than just that - a dance partnership. If we dance well together that does not obligate me to laugh at your jokes or sleep with you or be your girlfriend, and it doesn't give you the right to be jealous or possessive. It kills me how many guys I've met in tango make such assumptions, when really they are just single serving friends.

That being said, this weekend uncovered for me three dance partners whom I sincerely hope will not be relegated to the single-serving-friend shelf, and two whom I wish I could put back there. But those three - completely distinct from one another in personality and dance style - do have potential for more. At the very least, I can count on them to ask me to dance the next time I see them, and perhaps we'll become great friends in the rest of life as well. If only misguided assumptions wouldn't get in the way, if only they remember that it always takes two.

Hey Mickey, you're so fine...

I've just noticed that most of my posts have been about guys that I've met while traveling. Not so many girls. Clearly I'm going to have to make an effort to introduce myself to some chicas when I travel, but in the meantime here's another chico for the records.

Mihailo, or Mickey, as he goes by outside of his native Serbia, is a dive instructor in the Dominican Republic, where he's been living for about a year and a half. This tropical life is something of a reincarnation for him, as a life of bad choices back in Belgrade landed him in a coma, and when he woke up he decided that it was time to make a change. On little more than a whim he started diving.

He is in all respects a man of paradox. At once charming but crude, multi-lingual and multi-cultural but intolerant, a strict vegetarian for health reasons who refuses to wear a helmet when riding his motorcycle, egotistical but self-aware, popular with the lasses and most unpopular with the lads. To put it plainly, he's a jerk (which he readily admits), but at least he's a fun jerk. Good for a few laughs, a couple of drinks, and a trip to the oceanfront boulevard for some fresh air and a much-needed break from work, Mihailo was in many ways a perfect single serving friend...

...Mostly because none of my other friends would be able to stand him for more than one serving.

Hey buddy...

Divers are an interesting lot. I've met all sorts of divers - sweet, egotistical, crazy... but never dull. And they're usually pretty laid-back, too. It's hard to say what's cause and what's effect, but some of my favorite people that I've met while traveling have been people I've gone diving with.

I think there's something about the nature of diving, about choosing to make yourself so vulnerable in such a potentially hostile environment, that makes it easy to forge immediate bonds with your fellow divers. When you're putting your life in someone else's hands and trusting that they'll know what to do if the need arises... well, that gets you to a certain level of understanding that bypasses a lot of those early getting-to-know-you stages.

What's funny is that at the end of the day, I may trust someone with my life, feel completely comfortable around them, and perhaps forge a strong bond, but still know very little about them beyond where they're from and where they've gone diving.

Such is the case with Denis, who was one of the best dive buddies I've ever had, if not the best. He's from Montreal, he certified to be a dive master years ago in the Red Sea, but has only been diving once in the past 10 years. He took a day off from his annual vacation with his dad to do a couple of fun dives in Puerto Plata, and we got paired up as buddies. On the first dive, the visibility was so poor that we got completely separated from our dive master, but being the awesome dive buddy he is, Denis stuck with me and then we decided to surface early to look for the others. Never a fun choice, but it was still very cool that we did exactly what dive buddies are supposed to do - look out for each other and stick together.

The second dive was much better in all ways, and hanging out between dives and after for a little made me sad that I wouldn't have the opportunity to go diving again with this particular cool buddy. Ah well, we take what we can get, even if it's just a few photos and fond memories.