I'm taking a class on the history of Latin American dance. We were assigned Paper Tangos to read and write about for our first academic paper. It's about the dynamics of the tango and where its tensions come from. Which sounded fantastic till I started the book - and I did give it a chance, I did...

"We felt transfixed, caught in the blinding searchlights of impending doom." [during one of her very adventurous stints into Argentina where she was forced to witness a military coup.]

"Women of the tango... often long to return to the innocent cotton dresses they had worn in the barrio."

"Mufarse involves bitter introspection, but Argentines add to this emotion a clear sense of self-indulgence when they give in to a mufa. It is a depression, but with a cynicism about the depression itself, an awareness that it can feel good to throw practicalities aside, have a vino tinto or one of the demitasse coffees over which many a tango was written, and contemplate one's bad luck and its universal implications."

I'm glad to know that the Argentinian tango is designed for wannabe beatniks - it means it'll come naturally to me, and I'll be an expert real quick. It also means I understand Argentina.

But good people do not bristle at my angrily muttered grumblings. I am, if you will forgive me, but an naive child seduced by the sweet nutella of self-indulgent sadness.

Does anyone, by the way, know a good book on the tango? I'd be especially into a book about gender roles - though I must admit our class assigned us an article on that too. It explained in equally flowery terms how tango is "a struggle for male supremacy waged between men but carried out through women." The only reason a woman would dance the tango is... uh, well, she wouldn't. Or if she did it wouldn't be worth looking at - let's just examine what the male leaders do for the next sixty pages.

So not that. But I mean come on. There has to be good tango stuff out there.