Libertango.

Last night the compound had a screening of Death or Tango – the film about the “Federico” el orquestro typico in Buenos Aires….

There was lots of Astor Piazzola and I swooned hearing it again. Tears dribbled into my eyes, I could feel my blood pumping, feel my cunt moistening, feel my crazy little soul dancing inside me… my soul – does such a thing exist? – in love with crying bandoneons, stormy skies, crashing waves, (Emily) Bronte landscapes, and lyrics like “I want to make my heart drunk… my tears follow your shadow, my tears on your eyes, on your closed eyes I cry….”

Where the fuck was I?

Texting the Brixton cowboy – “I want to go to Argentina!” thinking of him on the tube, Piazzola on his I-pod. He texted me filth in return…. No longer in Buenos Aires, I was straddling him, fucking his mouth with my cunt, or his cunt with my mouth, then my cock….

Where the fuck was I?

Sitting in the place where I got married 6 years ago… wearing a 3 piece suit, blue not white, but sitting there all the same, trying to believe where I was, trying not to think of the exwife, her return, her place here, her place in me….I sipped mulled wine (vino caliente) and thought of England, Argentina, Piazzola and Petersham.

Mi Buenos Aires
Querido….
Cuando yo te vuelva avez?
No hablas penas
Ni Olvido

I found Carlos Gardel easy to love but fifteen years ago Piazzola used to grate on my ears… it was too mad, too intense… the mad, wild lyrics of tango subsumed into chords, beats, sensation. I think I really fell in love with Piazzola when I could finally leave … what do I call this ex?

How the hell do I find a name better than the one he had for himself? He was an engineer, a poet, and a revolutionary. He was 11 years older than me. He gave me a language, an education, a family. He taught me cooking, history, politics. We fucked for 5 years, lived together for 8. He got me hooked on avocado “palta” for breakfast, long baths to music, long endless hours in bed, reading, talking, reading, writing….

His own language, of exile, of tragedy, of political failure, matched my own sense of exile from myself, displacement from home that was familiar and hated… or maybe it was a distraction – denying my own petty struggles by dreaming about bigger ones…

So now, what do I call him? Mi Viejo Companero? (companero – is somewhere between comrade, friend and lover) and veijo means old... and he was old, is an old memory….

It was HALF MY LIFE AGO and I was still a country girl. Scruffed and starved after my first year in the city, Scraped and scared from a cervix operation, caused from a nasty infection, from nasty sex with a nasty housemate who I still wouldn’t mind killing if I could….

Ell veijo companero fed and cuddled me and seduced me with Chopin, Neruda, and Gato Negro. He was the poet, the older man, cultivated, educated… he educated me, and I fell in love with him. Still so young and ex catholic I decided that my heart was more important than my nether regions… opened my legs and tried not to think of the cute queer fresh faced girls around me… played the role of friend, confidante, agony aunt.. ran coming out workshops for baby dykes while adding ideological padlocks to my own closet….

And after five years of this bullshit – I looked older than him, certainly older than I look now. His own moniker is a play on Nabokov’s famous book – masculinised but diminutive…. And he was and remained young, while I aged. He used to joke about drinking the blood of virgins to keep his youth – but sometimes it didn’t feel like a such a joke….

The bullshit was not only about my closet – but his own demons which were writhing around haunting him. He started waking up screaming the names of dead friends in the middle of the night, started self medicating with even more Gato Negro y macoña. He couldn’t listen to Cumbias any more or sweet songs by Sylvio Rodriguez – but needed darkness – intensity –anything to match the pain, and scream back at the demons – and so daylight hours became filled with Astor Piazzola…. Adios Nonino getting darker and crazier, and crazier and darker, and trying to fuck the pain away but each of us moving off into our own caverns of despair….

My own genitals protested. I developed chronic thrush and I think my clit invaginated whenever he came near…. My stupid head, my stupid heart wanted to comply, wanted to soak up his pain, desire, anger, hope….. drowning in his sorrow instead of facing my own. My patermonster was dying of cancer. I didn’t want to know, or care.…. It took a long time to realise that I do the best thinking between my legs, not between my ears – and to trust my body more than my ideas, my words, or those of anyone else….

I used to call him ‘Mi Novio’ (the fiancée…. Lover) as he hailed me as “Amore” or “La Reigna Margarita” or when I didn’t want to fuck “Maracona de Mierda” (dyke of shit) – to which I’d respond: “Boracho Juevon Culiado” (arse fucking big balled drunk).

So – it wasn’t until I’d left el Viejo Companero – left his house, left the music, the vino caliente, the three day parties for rain, for onions, for the sun – where Petersham would morph into Temuco while Chilenos shared stories of brujeria and danced the Cueca in the rain with more vino caliente and zopaypillas…. It wasn’t until my last year in art school – when a teacher put on Libertango while I was drawing – that I could feel the bandoneon loco move into something else….

And so now – ten years later… Piazzola moves me again… moves me inwardly, physically and mentally – as again I drift somewhere between nostalgia, hope and amnesia.

Amnesia gives me hope, because I forget about how much pain I felt about El Viejo Companero, how the first year after we broke up felt like hell. Every single day. How I couldn’t fuck or dance, didn’t want to see friends. How I had to leave el barrio and walk somewhere different. How I took a flat in Randwick, a job in Maroubra and staggered along Coogee cliffs hating myself, hating my life and feeling so empty and hollow and dumb – until finally words found me – and I started writing, writing madly daily, wildly – mad desire, mad anger, mad critiques…

Now thinking of Abel and the end of the marriage, and wishing I could end my feelings, but having to face them as unrequitable. Anticipating her here, in my face, nearby but not near…. As my chest clogs with tears…. (pleurisy sounds like pleurer – French for cry, for rain). As my bowels stiffen, and eyes water and hands shake, and stomach tremors…. As I choke on my tears, clutch, cry and shit – and this just in anticipation – all I can remind myself is that one day I’ll forget this – that it will drift into other pleasures, distractions and delights….

So again – I reach for my phone – send a mad desiring text somewhere – remapping my circuits of pleasure onto virtual space – share SMS hugs with other friends – swap mad ideas for text porn/internet porn/print porn/porn reviews/pornformance – remaking, reinventing bodies and language and space into something somewhere, sometime different but still here – another reality creating itself from the impossibility of the present.