Silliness and Rapture

Wow, apparently it's the week for blog posts!  I've just come back from a performance of Lady Windermere's Fan (surprisingly good), and it's put me in a fine mood.  The last few posts have been rather heavy, so I thought I'd grab hold of this cheer and use it for some lighter posting.

So tonight at dinner everyone was telling jokes, and I wanted to tell this one, but didn't get a chance:

Three nuns go up to heaven, where St. Peter says to them, "I know you've all led blameless lives, but the rule here is that you have to answer a test question before you can get in. Everyone gets the same question, and here it is:  What was the first thing Eve said to Adam?" The first nun thinks for a bit, and then she says,  " 'I will obey you in all things'?"  St. Peter says, "Sorry, no," and off she goes to hell.  He says to the second nun, "What was the first thing Eve said to Adam?"  The second nun thinks for a longer bit, then says,  "'Praise be to the One that made us both'?"  St. Peter says, "Oh, I'm sorry, but no," and off she goes.  He turns to the third nun and says, "What was the first thing Eve said to Adam?"  The third nun says, "Oh, that's hard."  And St. Peter says, "In you go."

I would also tell you the octopus joke, but that one is so good that I'll save it for later (otherwise what would you have to look forward to?).  Instead I'll tell you what is, sadly, a joke that never fails to make me laugh:  A man walks into a bar with a lizard on his shoulder. He says to the barman, "I'd like two drinks, one for me and one for Tiny here."  The barman says, "Okay, but why do you call him Tiny?"  And the man says, "Because he's my newt."

Yes, it's true, for me there is nothing like the pun.  I swear, If you want to make me love you, just make plays on words, the badder the better.  Never mind the stomach, or the wallet:  the way to my heart is through the pun.

And all of this somehow reminds me of a story my friend S. loves...Years ago now I was sitting at the dinner table with my parents, and I must have been leaving for England in a few days, because we were talking about seating on airplanes.  I fancied myself quite the international traveller in those days, and I said to my parents, "My rule is:  window on domestic, aisle on international.  That way, you can get up to pee easily on international flights."  My father mused for a moment, and then he said in this very contemplative voice, "Yes...but the people in aisle seats are the ones terrorists punch in the head."  It was such a fully realised scenario, and the phrase "punch in the head" was so unexpected and unadorned, that it was hilarious - and I still find it funny.  And the best part is, I remember it every time I go on an international flight (even though terrorism is a rather more realistic prospect these days), and I'm torn between whether to sit by the window and have to climb over strangers if I want to use the toilet, or to sit on the aisle and risk head-punching.

And now, a cheerful admission, one I have had reason to re-realise and reflect upon since starting tango:  I love to be touched.  I usually say I like to be touched by the people I like to be touched by, but what I really mean is that I like to be touched by everyone except the very few people I find creepy or off-putting.  It's funny, because I don't think I give this impression (at least, very few people touch me), but it's true.  You could put your arm around me, or hold my hand (although, oddly enough, holding hands standing up I associate only with romantic partners), or stroke my arm, or ask me to do any of those things to you, and (unless I found you creepy or off-putting) I'd be delighted.  I wouldn't take it as a sexual overture, either.  I just like to be touched, and I like to touch people.  

This is, in fact, one of the very best things about tango for me.  The fantastic tango teacher (hereafter the F.T.T. - as it happens, making up acronyms is something else I like very much) told me once that although tango is about sex (since it began as a brothel dance), it's also about loneliness:  the immigrants wanted to feel close to a woman, to hold her and derive the comfort that comes with that.  This makes perfect sense to me, because although I love nearly everything about the dance, and couldn't really separate one of the bits I love out as more loveable than any of the others, I'm certainly actively aware of how much I love the experience of being in another person's arms.  This is why I like close embrace better than open embrace (although in the interests of full disclosure I must confess that I also like close embrace because, as a beginner, it makes it much easier to feel the man's directions): in close embrace you are, truly, held "in the other person's arms."  What's more, when the FTT danced with me at the milonga last week, as he got more into the music he rested his cheek against my face, and that was lovely.  I could feel his cheek, with its just starting evening stubble, lying lightly against mine, relaxed and unconscious in its resting:  delightful.  Ah, you see, it sounds sexual, but it wasn't sexual; it was comfortable.  Those immigrants got it right:  for as long as the song lasted, it felt like just being.  Not being sad, or even exactly being happy, but simply being with another person, not as if you were fully two, but rather as if that other person had melded a little into you.  When you tango, I think, you give up a bit of yourself to the other person, as you do when you have a cuddle (only more so). And that's sublime.

Oh, my, you're saying:  so metaphysical about tango.  But it's a very metaphysical experience, and it makes me very happy.  So it ends this happy post.

(incidentally, who was it that decreed that stubble is unpleasant?  I love stubble!  So I'm a sucker for puns...and stubble.)