Notewort

Noteworthy Conversations

To end this Postcard from Buenos Aires, I would like to share with you is a collection of some interesting conversations either my friend or I have heard, during my stay there.

My lady friend and I were looking for breakfast places to have "real breakfast" after we finished dancing at 6am.

"After every milonga, (gals should know that) there is only one place to go for breakfast....."

Ezeqiel P.

"Tell your friend dancing over there that she dances very pretty, but she needs to lose some weight."

A milonguero at his 60s

"I know you are very better (than I am) at tango, but let's dance to this (tango) anyway."

A milonguero

One night I was bored at Niño Bien. After I danced with a milonguero at his late forties for a set of tango, he asked for another set to follow. I accepted it, figuring I would have been bored otherwise sitting out the next set.

While dancing, he said, "Confucious said a dog will follow home with whoever pets his head." (referring to me accepting his dance twice may mean that I am interested in him)

I answered, "But Confucious also said: for that dog does not realize that by doing so, he will end up in a pot on top of a stove."

He laughed heartily to my reply, then, "What do you mean?"

A milonguero who tried too hard in picking up women and apparently does not know Chinese eat dog.

I have settled down in my new tango house and wanted to invite some friends over for dinner. Before an Argentinean lad confirmed to me if he was available or not, he asked,

"¿ What are you cooking ?"

*&#@P)%^@{%#!!! Unimpressed with his reply, I answered, "¡ Dogs !"

(I did not invite him again.)

While I was dancing with a guy, he said,

"I have been dancing with Ms. X for a while since I started. But I no longer invite her to dance now."

"Why not?"

"She is getting too good for me."

I wonder why I was invited.

I was invited to dance a vals (waltz) with a tall and elegant milonguero at his 60s, whom I noticed has been very choosy in finding his dance partners for vals. He explained,

"Otherwise, it would feel like dancing with a refridgerator. Not just any refridgerator, but the one that is filled with food inside after a shopping spree".

I jokingly warned him that I might be a refridgerator too.

"You are not a refridgerator. But if you insist that you are, then you are a frig with wheels."

At Yuka and my birthday party at my tango house, I was making steaks sauté a lá minute. I prepared the steaks to "rare", "medium" or "well done", to our guests' requests.

* * *

I asked one guest, who preferred his steak to be cooked medium, if he enjoyed it after he finished licking his plate. He replied,

"It was well done."

I was horrified and apologized profusely for 5 minutes that I might have sautéd his steak too long.

"No, I meant it was well prepared."

* * *

I asked another lad, who appears to have the habit of flirting with anything that moves, if he wanted to have a second helping of the steak, "¿Do you want more meat?" (I don't know how to say "steak" in Spanish.)

"No." He replied.

His friend sitting next to him clarified, "He only wants the kind of meat that is alive."

I was dancing with a Dutch who was six foot something in height, as tall as a door to me. After the first dance, while he was still holding me, I looked up to him and requested a favour,

"Do you know a Japanese word 'Harakiri'?"

"No."

"It meant killing oneself by slicing open one's abodoment with a knife."

We looked down, we broke out laughing; he realized that his metal belt buckle has been scraping against my stomach.

"There is one thing that I am not going to miss about the tangueros in Buones Aires. For one, their snootiness thinking that they are too good for me; two, their hidden agendas."

A foreign milonguera, upon her departure from Buones Aires
after her many dancing trips in the past years.

I had my sweet and bitter moments in Buenos Aires.

Farewell to my friends, the milongas and the city!

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