But as I said, people really got behind me, and that was incredibly gratifying. I noticed it properly for the first time after James and I performed our Viennese waltz during movie week, to that lovely song ‘Unchained Melody’ by The Righteous Brothers. It was actually my birthday and Sharon had come over from LA. I ended the number sitting on the floor and, just as the music ended, I came out of my trance and James helped me stand up. Suddenly, I was aware that everyone in the studio audience was on their feet. I looked at the people closest to me and they were looking at me with such sweet, approving smiles, it really got to me. I don’t remember at any time in my life being so appreciated . . . so . . . liked.
That felt especially healing?
Yes, very much so. And people still come up to me and say how much they liked me on Strictly – it always feels so very nice when that happens. Sometimes they say, ‘You should have won!’ which is very sweet and supportive of them. Frankly, I was really thrilled just to make the finals. Of course I would have loved to receive the Glitter Ball, but I always thought it highly unlikely. I did, though, really want to do my best for all the people who had voted for me, who were hoping I’d win. In a way, I suppose I became a bit of a poster-child for people over forty, disabusing our society of the notion that people at middle age and beyond can’t be vital, athletic, sexy and dance well. Don’t get me wrong, it was very hard work. Like many others, I was carrying injuries. I secretly had knee surgery during semi-finals week but after witnessing the incredible stoicism of the pro dancers, I wasn’t about to complain. James and I went on to do the Strictly tour, and then it was all over. Big let down, but I had to turn my attention to finishing my latest book Sex Life.
In just six months I had metamorphosized from a depressed, lumpy, burnt-out woman to a spinning siren cutting a rug with a sexy toy boy. Even my own, brilliant husband seemed more interested in me. ‘Eh, Pamsy, any chance you could bring that quickstep costume home?’ No wonder there was a huge grin on my face. My experience on Strictly was far more than a triumph of weight loss and mood enhancement – although it was certainly nice that, after nearly thirty years together, Billy and I felt a renewed joie de vivre in our sex life! – no, more importantly, it reconnected me with all the good feelings I had experienced as a child when I went to ballet lessons and felt that it was my only chance to be truly me. I so much regretted giving it up all those years ago; if only I had kept dancing my entire life, how much happier I might have been. But I tried not to dwell on what might have been. I knew what I had to do now . . . Keeeeeep dancing!
Chapter Fifteen
DOES DANCING LEAD TO SEX?
But that was easier said than done. Now that Strictly was over, it was going to be much harder to dance. First of all, no James. Yes, I no longer had a partner, and what a loss that was! Declaring myself to be in love with Argentine tango, I went off to Buenos Aires to study and explore it. Woman & Home had commissioned an article about it, and for that I was to have some private lessons and attend as many milongas (tango parties) as possible. Oh dear. Little did I know what abject humiliation awaited me. You see, I thought I could do the tango fairly well – after all, James and I had danced a choreographed number to wild applause in the country’s main arenas every night of the Strictly tour – until I attempted the improvised form. That’s the trouble with simply following choreography, it lulls you into a false sense of security and talent. The social versions of the dances I’d learned on Strictly – salsa, cha-cha-cha, Argentine tango – turned out to be much, much harder.
With Argentine tango, I really had to start at the beginning – learning how to walk sensually and stealthily, caressing the floor with my feet. I made a start in Buenas Aires, but after I returned to New York it took many months before I felt confident to move round the dance floor. Then there was the embrace – in Argentina they often dance very, very close, your head on a stranger’s cheek – that was hard to get used to. No wonder tango’s been called the eight-minute love affair.
They say it takes ten years to become proficient at tango. After nearly a year of pretty intensive lessons with fairly illustrious teachers, I could just about acquit myself reasonably well on the dance floor. But then I had to deal with the business of attending tango evenings and relying on the kindness of strangers. Right from the start, I found the rules of the milongas were very hard to follow and, frankly, they upset me. Well, they’d upset any self-respecting woman:
You must never ask a man to dance. Wait until you’re asked. He won’t approach your table – smile at him first so he knows you’re interested, then if he feels like inviting you to dance, he will jerk his head towards the dance floor. Stand up immediately and join him there. Even if you find you hate dancing with him, you must not excuse yourself until you’ve danced a whole tanda [at least three numbers].
Seriously?
I mean, God forbid men should have to face rejection! Yet women do, all the time. ‘Men dance, women sit’ is the saying, because there are more women than men at milongas and the females who get to dance are not necessarily the best dancers. Yes, believe it or not (!), they are more commonly the youngest and prettiest. Not fair. At the end of a danceless night, a woman will say in Spanish ‘I ironed all evening’, meaning that she sat all evening without being asked to dance. And me with my rejection issues – horrible!
One night I tested the rules and turned up at a milonga – one of the most famous in Buenos Aires – with three young women in their twenties who taught English in the city. All of them were beautiful and none of them could dance one step of tango. One of the girls, a tall, slender Polish beauty called Rula, was particularly gorgeous. She was wearing a very short skirt and a pair of backless, high-heeled wedge shoes – absolutely impossible to dance in. We sat at a table near the dance floor and waited. That very day a male Argentinean friend had been arguing with me about the milonga rules: ‘Woman who dance well – even if they are older or less attractive – will always have precedence over a young, beautiful girl who cannot dance.’ ‘Interesting,’ I said doubtfully. ‘Let’s see.’
Within five minutes of our arrival, a man approached our table. ‘We can’t dance!’ chorused the three newcomers. ‘But she can!’ However, the man ignored me and made a beeline for Rula. ‘I have never even tried,’ she said, smiling. I was smiling, too, but my smile was more of a triumphant, bitter-sweet grin because my theory was being proved, right in front of my eyes. All right, there was seething anger underneath, but let’s forget about that for a minute. This guy wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. He persuaded Rula to go with him and actually tried to move her round the dance floor. Now, this is an absolute no-no at a milonga. You are not – or at least that’s what I had been told – allowed to give lessons on the floor. He was even interrupting the line of dance, for heaven’s sake – other people had to navigate around them. Rula couldn’t move at all – she was completely stuck – hampered by her footwear and also frozen in fear. I looked around at the crowd – EVERYBODY was watching. The women were absolutely livid – especially the ones who hadn’t danced all night. As for the men, they were displaying a mixture of envy and disapproval – although, given half a chance, I suspect each and every one of them would have done the same thing. Then the unthinkable happened – the man realized he was never going to get the girl to dance, so he decided to toy with her instead. For the benefit of onlookers (he was now enjoying the attention), he subtly raised the back of her skirt so everyone could see her skimpy knickers. That’s when I intervened. I dashed on to the floor and dragged her away in disgust. I don’t speak good Spanish, but I believe what I did manage to spit out at the man was suitably crushing.
All right, my fury was certainly fuelled by the fact that I had done my fair share of ironing. Some nights were better than others. I imagined that milongas in New York, LA and London would be run on a more egalitarian basis, but no – male chauvinism is alive and well in every milonga worldwide. I eventually got the hang of the cabeceo – giving
a man I wanted to dance with the right kind of inviting look – even though it made me want to throw up. To be honest, I didn’t often see men I really wanted to dance with, possibly because I had been so spoiled by private lessons with some really wonderful dancers, Omar, Giraldo, Ollantray and Leroy. No one at the milongas came anywhere near them for skill and charm, so it was particularly horrible to feel relieved and grateful when someone downright unpleasant approached me. I even started feeling guilty whenever I danced because I saw women who were better than me sitting alone for hours. All that cruelty seemed terribly, terribly unnecessary. Even if I was the worst dancer in the world, was it really so hard for people just to be kind and welcoming?
Occasionally, one of the elite ‘tango gods’ would deign to invite me to dance. When that happened I would be so surprised I’d think he had mistaken me for someone else, or I would assume he’d felt obliged because the person who ran the milonga recognized me and insisted. Anyway, the end of my love affair with Argentine tango came one night at a New York milonga. Midway through a dance with one of those accomplished, elegant, pony-tailed hotties, he whispered in my ear: ‘PamELa [he put the emphasis on the second syllable], would you like to have a sex a with a me?’ Not: ‘I want to have a sex a with a YOU.’ There was a clear assumption that the answer would be a rather desperate: ‘Race you to the taxi.’ Now, firstly, that broke one of the milonga rules, because you’re not supposed to talk on the floor. And, secondly, the way he was smirking, he clearly thought I was a sure thing. After all, by now surely I’d have had enough of sitting, ironing, hoping, praying. But, what? Was I supposed to be so grateful I’d got a dance that I’d do anything? Plus, I was pretty sure it would all boil down to a blow job in the cab. Over many years of having all kinds of fabulous sex, I’ve learned that, unfortunately, the term ‘Latin lover’ is often a euphemism for ‘Worship my willy and make it snappy!’ Did you know there’s no word for cunnilingus in Spanish? See, I may not be twenty any more, but I do know I’m sexy and I can put my money where my mouth is . . . Or maybe it’s the other way round? Yeah, I could have made him scream – if I’d felt like it. ‘Listen, you little twerp,’ I felt like saying, ‘yo te vi nacer! [That’s Spanish for ‘I saw you being born!’] You don’t know who you’re dealing with. I’m a PROFESSOR of sex; if I chose to, I could make you sit up and beg!’
Whew – I’ll fall off my high horse in a minute, but seriously, it was the final straw. ‘PamELa, would you like to have a sex a with a me?’ ‘No, thank you,’ I replied sweetly, walking back to my table. ‘The dance was bad enough.’
So, that’s the truth about Argentine tango. Oh, you’ll hear all kinds of glowing testimonies about how fabulous it is, how sexy, passionate and all the rest – well, that’s only true in very special circumstances. Most of the time, women iron. And feel humiliated. If you want to decrease your self-esteem, take yourself to a milonga. Even the nice guys you might have got to know seem to feel obliged to ask you out of pity – the dance version of the ‘mercy fuck’. Worst of all, women do not support each other in that environment because they are forced to be in competition with each other. I just couldn’t enjoy a dance that made women feel so wretched.
Pamela, I’ve been listening to your rant as patiently as possible, and I do agree about the social injustice of the situation. However I do have to bring up . . . Well, you are aware that ‘ironing’ would be a little easier for women who do not have your rejection issues . . . ?
Damn! I knew you’d say that. And it’s also the point where Freud and feminism part company. But I’m not going to waste time arguing, because I want to get to the positive part of my post-Strictly dance experience:
Thankfully, rescue was at hand in the form of a fabulous dance in which it was perfectly OK – in fact encouraged – for women to invite men to dance. Lambazouk is a Brazilian dance – originally the lambada (remember that famous song?) but it has now morphed into a more contemporary style. It’s hot, passionate and thrilling – Dirty Dancing at its finest – as well as a great workout. Best of all, there’s only one rule: you walk up to a divine Brazilian man and drag him on to the dance floor. Yippee! Brazilian men actually seem to adore and respect women. They’re kind. And the women in that scene are nice to each other too. In lambazouk you dance close to your partner, wriggling your hips in a fast figure eight, and follow him closely when he leads you into ten perilous pirouettes, or waves your head round and round in circles until you have no idea where you are. It’s the dance equivalent of the date rape drug, but I’m hooked. It’s joyful and life-affirming, and what more could you ask for? Does dancing lead to sex? Or is it the other way around? Probably the latter, but only if you do it right. Sex, I mean . . .
God, I love sex. The real thing, I’m talking about, not porn which has replaced religion as the ‘opiate of the masses’. I like jive, too, and West Coast swing. For those dances I frequent a little place near Madison Square Garden in Manhattan . . . Although, a young man once led me into a ‘death drop’ lift there and I broke my tit— Oh, that sounds familiar! Hmmm. Guess I’m almost right back where I started . . .
FORGIVENESS
Forgiveness doesn’t come easy, but for the first time in my life, I may be ready. I’ve tried many times before. In 2003 I knelt in the graveyard in Russell, New Zealand, where my parents’ ashes were interred. ‘For God’s sake, Pamela,’ I harangued myself, ‘let it go. Just . . . let it go!’ But I couldn’t. On that occasion I couldn’t even locate the elusive pain. Oh, I knew it was there – I’d felt the effects for three decades. Somewhere inside me there had to be understanding. John Bradshaw put it in perspective:
The love I learned about was bound by duty and obligation . . . I suggest that these cultural rules created a deficient form of love, and that even with the best intentions our parents often confused love with what we now call abuse.
I recognize that the hurt I sustained was not deliberately caused but, unfortunately, insight alone is never enough. More work was required. The first step was to risk connecting viscerally with my deep rage. That was hard until I learned that such a powerful emotion – the one I used to be ashamed of – is actually evidence of the courage and integrity of my inner child. Yes, now that I have fully felt the pain of that rage – its white-hot heat – I may at last be ready to cool off. Oh, please let that be true . . .
Strange that we measure fury and passion in terms of temperature; our emotions do seem to have that effect – ‘My blood was boiling’; ‘My face felt flushed’; ‘Her heart was cold.’ Even stranger, my mother spent much of her academic life studying the effects of temperature on the internal organs of small, bewildered beasties. ‘Effects of temperature on tadpole hearts in vitro’ was one of her published scientific papers. (I think that meant she actually removed the hearts, grew them in a Petri dish, and observed what happened when they froze or fried – what an awful job!) Another of her papers was ‘Temperature and other environmental effects on ammocoete organs in culture’. When she paired up with my father they wrote ‘Locomotory invasion of human cervical epithelium and avian fibroblasts by HeLa cells in vitro’ and ‘Invasive locomotory behaviour between malignant human melanoma cells and normal fibroblasts filmed in vitro’. (Well, who knew they were film directors as well?)
I don’t understand how any of that work is connected to finding a cure for cancer, but I’m sure there was a substantial relationship. I wonder, did they manage to see the Gestalt of what they were doing, or were they – like many scientists – essentially so focused on minute details they were denied the luxury of the bigger picture? I dunno. I dunno. I must say, it’s hard to get my head around what it must be like to spend many of your waking hours (for that’s what they did) waiting for a tadpole’s heart to melt. Perhaps that’s why their own hearts seemed so . . . frozen?
My first therapist, Lu, called me a deprived child. That shocked me at first, but now I accept it as the truth. Outwardly, I have presented myself as a confident, powerful woman, but de
ep down it was a different story. With few signs of love or appreciation – even encouraging words – within the family, I did what all human beings do in such a situation – I grew up feeling deeply insecure, unworthy and full of rage, and I sought validation from others. It is a precarious and futile way to live one’s life, and it can only lead to further profound disappointment.
In the past, I was always able to feel empathy for others, but not for myself. My need to feel understood, adored and loved – the right of every child, which was denied me – spurred me to find places in the world where I could, at least temporarily, achieve a sense of belonging. Initially, these were the public arenas of my career in show business, places over-populated by people imbued with longing, just like me. It wasn’t until I embarked on my psychology degree that I began to have a first inkling of just how damaged I really was. But that took a long time to sink in. I was so alien to myself that I didn’t even know that I didn’t know who I was. Things I read – Alice Miller’s wonderful book The Drama of the Gifted Child, for example – spoke deeply to me; yet at the same time my conscious mind was insisting, ‘That can’t possibly me?’
Worst of all, I must have unconsciously repeated some of the mistakes of my parents in my own parenting style; oh, I hugged and encouraged my children, and I told them that I loved them but, like my mother, I was . . . very busy. I just hope they can forgive me if I seemed . . . preoccupied. But isn’t that the challenge we working women always face? All right, we give lip service to the appropriateness of ‘having it all’, but show me a working mother and I’ll show you a guilt-ridden soul. Yes, recently I have actually come to reframe my mother’s busyness as the challenges of a highly intelligent and capable woman trying to make her way in the essentially male scientific world. She was doing her Ph.D. when she had me, for God’s sake. Back then, how many women did that? Would I have preferred a Valium-popping Stepford wife of a mother? Wouldn’t I then just have internalized an acute sense of longing – of a different nature? And Dad – he was the product of a large, pioneering, multiracial family, who undoubtedly had a less-than-satisfying portion of whatever was in the love-and-affection pot and never learned to express his feelings the right way. Yes, as my first psychology professor, Dr Joy Turek told me: ‘It’s not a matter of whether or not you’re going to fuck up your children; it’s a matter of how.’
The Varnished Untruth Page 29