For the Love of Tango and Good Food

So what ever happened with Samantha? Well... it’s complicated. After the turbulent ups and downs of December and before I left for Punta del Este and then to the north in January, I told her straight up, “Samantha, I will always love you and have a place in my heart for you, but this game of ‘hysteria’ (one of three choices for the national pastime here in Argentina(1) ), I just can not support any longer (thanks for that phrase in Spanish Julia – No lo soporto mas!) I had finally come to the realization that it wasn’t going to work no matter what I did and that maybe I had fallen in love with Tango and Argentina instead of her. She had set a course of irreconcilable differences between the two of us and no matter how hard I pursued her she was always just out of reach. Following her all over town until the wee hours of the morning, sitting and watching her dance the night away all the while becoming more angry and frustrated and loco en la cabeza was taking its toll on me both physically and mentally. And after I finally decided that I wasn’t in love with her anymore and that I was going to put my foot down and be strong she came back with a vengeance. “No, but I really do love you and want to be with you.” But by that time it was simply too late.

And that’s about where we are today. I call her occasionally asking if she would like to get a coffee (even though she won’t drink anything but grapefruit soda) and then have to listen for usually more than an hour about what a liar I am (2) and how I never really loved her in the first place and how I am just like all of her other ex-boyfriends. Ironically when I called her last Friday to apologize for not having called her sooner she yelled and then cried and then invited me to her ex-boyfriends birthday party, which I had to decline. I also find it very hard to believe how she doesn’t understand why I don’t call her too often anymore.

So in the meanwhile I’ve diverted my romantic interests away from the world of Tango and Samantha and have taken up cooking classes, specifically my cooking instructor Marina. The joke between us is that if I want to continue with my French cooking lessons I have to cut the number of girlfriends I have down from fifteen down to five – that’s why 'It’s a JOKE’!

1 My favorite topic of conversation with Argentine cab drivers is women. Once we get past the small talk of where I am from and yes I like Argentina very much and thanks for the compliment but I think I can more communicate in Spanish than speak correctly and I understand how hard their job is because I used to be a cab driver and yes we earned much more in the US than here but its also much more expensive to live there, they always ask or I always volunteer something to the effect of – ‘and the women here, so beautiful.’ They are nothing less than brutal

2 Mentir = To Lie. The best way to explain the Argentine concept of lying is to use the national card game of Truco as an analogy (TBC).