Tango Provocateur (Part 3)

He said he'd gone fishing. This made her laugh. He'd never been before despite the fact that he had always talked about it. He said it again " I could not join you dancing last night because I'd gone fishing!"

It was only the other week, last Saturday night in fact when they had danced in her place, in her sitting room just after their meal together. Naked. Together, past midnight, delicious. He sang to her through all those many of Armstrong's songs, singing along oftentimes: "It is true that it can only be you!.....", and he danced her through.

By: Nguyen Nguyen (Fishing)

"He was no player!" she told herself but how could she be sure? What's there to be sure of in life, by anyone, at anytime? "Let's be real!", her ex-husband for those few years they shared together was more innocent looking than anyone could have ever known and was no "rat" as some liked to recall their ex-es but he was totally the wrong man in her life.

Perhaps it was about time to give this guy some room to play his game. "Let's wait and see if he ever could stage or think of any one game", it is only fair she thought not to prosecute any other guys for the misery caused by the miserable last.

The warmth of his embrace was intoxicating and invitingly deliberate in eliminating her inhibitions when they had been to her place last. They started dancing sweetly to Armstrong's songs. One after the other. Every melody touched her. Drifting into such abundance of emotional gratitude for the time and space to have mellowed into "Now, and nothing more". Caresses were heavenly spine chilling. Kisses were not just met by her lips wanting but desirably madly wished for.

How could she not want it more? Was this not every man's and woman's most forbidden wish? The most intense of crushing and breathtaking silky dreams took her only that far, and not much further than she had been wanting him to. But he surpassed those with her. The freedom and liberty given to her, the feeling of 'glee', gained at the expense of feelings of shame, 'the pride in cognition of self', it was not him leading this, but herself. She had arrived at her acknowledgment of a transparency - of inner self - from within her.

Her ex-partner was never cruel or abusive. She could not spread any blame on him for being not like this new man in her life.

It had been many years since the passion had died. It was difficult to remember if there ever was any other than physical natural desires of lust. Between passion and lust there is an ocean of differences , this she had learned now. Lust made her not resist temptations if they were offered but passion made her look and create the heart stopping moments of wants and mind numbing tingles of aching for togetherness.

Can she call this love? Surely not, this has been too short and casual to call it so.

He said he had gone fishing. What a strange thing to hear anyone say, far too much like the song she had heard him sing along.

"Even that, if it were to be true, can not be described as an excuse that is worthy for taking on for being acceptable!", she thought. The massage that he had left her with was stupid sounding and simple: "Gone fishing!", "whatever next!" she thought!

In her sitting room she recalled the fever driven moments they had shared before. She was not ashamed nor embarrassed for having been true to herself. At 'Trust' they had met as equals.

" 'Trust' does not emanate from conviction of what perceived truths are, but rather commences from the assumptions of self-deluding versions of our suppositions", and she liked the ones she held. To this belief, she had given in some long time ago. She was nobody's fool and she had stopped playing anybody else's games - knowingly. Now, she was "happy!" since she found herself to be, for the time being- at least, where she had searched for to be all through her life since she had assumed to have known 'belonging'.

Some years back, in that bitterly cold winter, by the seaside where they lived with her ex-partner, she used to accompany him on his strange walks in the late evenings on the solidly frozen beaches. The sand crystals on those beaches felt like concrete, hard and inflexible. In their walks the snow and winds cut their faces. The howling noises were relentless, the winds and waves crashing together near and around them made their whole body numb. No feelings were possible in any of her limbs. She used to surrender to these because he used to say he felt at one with nature. Maybe he was crazy, may be he wanted her driven crazy, she stopped analysing his mad behaviour a long time ago.

The past was a different country which she had walked away from, and she had no intentions to reason with, or find reasons for any more. What mattered was that she had found all her reasons for being 'herself' and whomever she wished to become now, and she had.

She enjoyed her persona, a living 'tango provocateur'. A woman that men dreamed of holding close and near. Women wished if they could only be daring enough to become like her.

"Where could he have gone fishing till this late this evening?"

It was a cold night outside. She did not wish to be next to him on any boat in that freezing cold weather. She did not want to imagine being on any river or riding any waves, neither near nor far, regardless of any beach, sea, or country that she had or not known.

She wished him to be embracing her close, hot, in their nearly naked state when exhausted from dancing many hours of tangos. She imagined them on her sitting room floor, they could dance till they could give up and collapse onto each others' bodies. On her sofa, tasting life with each individual breath, the unique sensation of knowing one another's heartbeats, "What a wonderful world!", but that crazy man had instead gone fishing.


"Tango Provocateur"
A Short Story by:
MilongaCat