The Flamenco Academy

by Sarah Bird

  He picked up the chalk again and next to Doña Carlota’s branch, drew one leaf. Beside it, he wrote Tomás Montenegro de Anaya, tocaor.

  The sight of his name written by another’s hand had as powerful an effect upon me as if the phantasm I constantly dreamed of had stepped into the classroom.

  I didn’t realize until a loud buzzer startled me that I had stopped breathing. Most of the class vanished before the buzzer even finished sounding. Didi jumped up, then waited for me so we could join the stampede. Instead, bereft, I pointed frantically at the lone leaf trembling at the end of Doña Carlota’s branch. “He didn’t get to—”

  Didi pulled me to my feet before I could finish. “Not a problem. We’ll just grab the old queen before he escapes and pepper him with questions.”

  “No, no, don’t say anything, okay?” I hurried to wipe away such a possibility. After my humiliating experience with Doña Carlota I was actually relieved that the old lady wouldn’t be coming back to class. I couldn’t risk word getting back to her through the professor of my interest.

  “Come on,” Didi coaxed. “It’ll be great reconnaissance. He knows a lot more than he’s telling. We can take him to Cervantes and get him to spill the beans.”

  Cervantes was a gloomy cocktail lounge frequented by a midafternoon crowd of high-level defense contractors who hung around Sandia Labs and used the bar to cheat on their wives with their secretaries. Didi liked it for intelligence-gathering because of the air of betrayed trust that hung over the place. I grabbed her arm as she started toward the professor. “No. Seriously. I don’t want you to talk to him. Or anyone. It’s too early for direct contact.”

  “ ‘Direct contact’? Rae, can you hear yourself? We’re going to talk to some castanet-sniffer who’s writing about his great-aunt. How much more indirect can you get? And ‘too early’? Dude, it’s been”—she held up fingers as she ticked off the months—“May—”

  “Not all of May.”

  She bent the finger in half. “Whatever. June. July. August. September. October. November.”

  I swatted her hand down to stop the count. “I know how long it’s been.”

  “You know I’m absolutely the last person in the world to object to obsession, but even for me, this is getting a little strange. I mean, you met the guy once.”

  “Which is once more than you ever met most of the guys you groupied.”

  “Am I doing that now? Am I groupieing now? That was always a means to an end. You know that. It was a way to get to the life I’m supposed to have. This thing, what you’re doing, it’s a way to completely avoid having a life.”

  “I can’t believe this. I cannot believe that you, Poster Girl for Fantasy, have the nerve to tell me shit like that.”

  I tried to walk away, but Didi planted herself in front of me and wouldn’t let me pass. “Rae, I’m doing it. I’m putting myself out there. I’m going for it. What are you going for?”

  “Like I really have to tell you.”

  “I know what you think you’re going for. You think you’re going for love, but you’ve got that right in front of you.”

  “Yeah, right.” I gave a dry snort of fake laughter to dismiss her ridiculous claim.

  “Okay, what about Will?”

  “Will? What about Will?”

  “He’s insanely in love with you.”

  “What?”

  “Please, please, please, don’t be the only person who doesn’t know.” She studied my face. “God, you don’t. Oh well, I guess you look in a mirror, you expect to see yourself.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Will, he’s you. Hopeless, one-sided love sublimated into flamenco. Sound familiar?”

  “As a psychiatrist, Didi, you make a really good poet. Move. I’m going home.”

  “Look, you’re right, I shouldn’t criticize anyone for living in a fantasy, but at some point you’ve got to intersect with reality a tiny bit. At least on our missions, the whole idea was to meet the band, right? If you’ve seriously got a thing for this guy, let’s go to Doña Carlota and find out where he is. Huh? That’s a start, right?”

  “She doesn’t know where he is. I asked.”

  “Okay, very good. I’m impressed. I’m not sure I believe you, but I’m impressed.”

  “Didi, I have to be ready, that’s all. That’s all it comes down to. I’m not avoiding life or any of that other horseshit. I will see him again. I know I will. But what is the point of seeing him again while I’m still—”

  I flapped my hands at myself to indicate my total inadequacy and Didi filled in the blank, “You?” Her voice was soft and concerned again. “Okay, Rae, what do they say in AA? I can’t enable you anymore.”

  “You enable me? You’re kidding, right? You have got to be kidding. You, Miss Never Met a Controlled Substance I Didn’t Like? Enable me? Me? The person who got you through high school? What? Has the quality of my service gone down now that I’ve found a genuine interest in life?”

  “Flamenco or Mystery Man, Rae? Because they’re two sides of the same obsession and flamenco isn’t any better than Mystery Man. Flamenco is obsessive-compulsive disorder set to a great beat. You can dance to it, but, Rae, you cannot have a life to it.”

  “I am through with this conversation,” I said, and for the first time ever, I walked away from Didi.

  That weekend, I allowed Will to relieve me of my virginity. A part of me realized Didi was right. I’d left the realm of the rational. I thought Will might be a first step back. A first step away from Tomás. He wasn’t. Fully clothed, with one kiss, Tomás had transported me to the stars. Naked in bed, with Will laboring between my legs, I had never felt more leaden and earthbound in my life.

  There was a smear of blood on the sheet when it was over. Will held me tenderly as I cried. It was nice to be comforted even if it was for the wrong thing. Will thought I was weeping for my virginity. My tears were for the knowledge that had just been made certain that I would never be happy with anyone except Tomás Montenegro.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  At the height of the Ottoman Empire’s glory, Topkapi, the sultan’s harem, housed nearly five hundred odalisques. The most desirable women in the world—Berber, Nubian, Turkish, Albanian, Caucasian, Greek, Chinese, Egyptian, Hindu—they were all brought to Topkapi. Imprisoned behind the harem’s eighteen-foot-high walls, they were guarded around the clock by eunuchs.

  The sole purpose of the captive women’s lives, and the lives of the slaves who attended them, was to give their master, the sultan, pleasure. Slaves in ten kitchens cooked for the pampered females, making their bodies sleek and desirable with extra fat. Three slaves washed and depilated each girl, removing every hair on her body: nostrils, ears, vulvas, anuses. They painted her hands and feet with henna. The captives were instructed in how to whiten their skin with almond and jasmine paste, to darken their lashes with Chinese ink, line their eyelids with kohl, stain their mouths with berries. Mistresses of the seductive arts spent years working with each new girl, teaching the Ninety-nine Means of Giving Pleasure. She learned how to excite and satisfy the jaded appetites of a sultan who had deflowered a thousand virgins. But in order to be one of the fortunate few who managed to achieve the purpose of her existence and spend a night with the sultan, a girl first had to catch the eye of the Shadow of Allah on Earth.

  For this, the girl had to learn to dance.

  As blind musicians played—no whole man was ever allowed inside the thick doors—the girls were taught how to make their bodies into undulations of desire. How to attract and arouse with the sinuous sweep of an arm, the roll of a belly, the swing of a pelvis, how to tap out an irresistible code of enticement with tinkling finger cymbals. Then, if each movement was choreographed and executed with a sensuousness so seamless that the odalisque’s body became a fluid ripple of erotic titillation, then, and only then, might she be chosen out of the five hundred to give the sultan one night of pleasure.

  During the years I t
oiled to learn flamenco, no one ever said cigarettes were a required part of the course, but Didi and I smoked as many Ducados as we could afford. None of our instructors in choreography, improv, bulerías, alegrías, pitos, brazeo, taconeo, no one in any of our classes ever mentioned alcohol, but Didi and I became experts on manzanilla, Cruzcampo beer, Centenario brandy, and all the other Spanish liquors so beloved by true flamencos. Not a single teacher ever told me that flamenco was a seductive art, but, after Will, I took a succession of lovers. I was never a heartbreaker like Didi, who left broken marriages and suicide notes in her wake. I tended to choose men likely to be as dispassionate as I. I was generous and adventurous in bed since that, too, was part of my unwritten curriculum. Not often—twice—my lovers wanted more. A commitment, a future, something more intimate than my practiced writhing and moaning. It wasn’t hard to extricate myself without feelings being hurt. I simply told them the truth: I was already in love, but my passion was unreturned, impossible. They nodded and didn’t press. Almost everyone in the program suspected I was in love with Didi. I didn’t mind that they believed my impossible love was for her. Better that than anyone ever suspecting the truth.

  What my instructors in Doña Carlota’s Flamenco Academy did explicitly teach was the compás por alegrías, por bulerías, por soleares, por tangos, por fandangos, and at least half a dozen other palos, each with a unique feeling based on variations in key, rhythm, and pace, making a Fandango de Málaga completely different from a Fandango de Murcia. I learned that the insiders’ insiders not only put the accent on the first syllable in óle, but pronounced it with a nasal twang like singers from Valencia. I learned that all true flamenco legends lived in poverty, ending their days selling violets on the Calle de Serpientes in Sevilla or dying young, preferably of cirrhosis or a flamboyant overdose.

  I learned that in flamenco, the more you learned, the more you realized how much you didn’t know. How much you would never know. I learned that in flamenco, Spanish rules: Spanish language, Spanish heritage, Spanish blood. I learned that Hispanic is better than Anglo. That Spanish is better than either, but Andalusian is a royal flush, and in the flamenco hierarchy Gypsy trumps everything. That, ultimately, the best any one of any other ethnic extraction could hope for was to be an amusing novelty. I learned that I had started studying a dozen years too late ever to be really good. I learned that if I practiced el arte a lifetime, I would never be Gypsy, I would never be Andalusian, I would never even be Hispanic.

  Still, I hadn’t entered the harem to become the best belly dancer. All I wanted was to attract the sultan’s attention. The higher up the flamenco food chain I went, the more I heard Tomás’s name. It was always whispered with reverence. He was the heir apparent to the crown of King of New Mexico Flamenco and he had disappeared. Vanished. So, even if I’d wanted to, Tomás wouldn’t have been easy to track down. Rumors flew, though. He had been spotted at the National Guitar Fingerpicking Championship, where he’d wowed the crowd of ten thousand, then disappeared before the judges could award him first place. That the Soka Gakkai Min-On Concert Association had organized a tour for him of a dozen Japanese cities and his fans in Tokyo had demolished the hall where he’d appeared. Every few months someone whispered that he was in rehab. The rumor that cropped up most often, though, was that Tomás had come home. Not to Doña Carlota’s home, but to some mountain hideout in the north of the state. There was one other rumor, that he had OD’d.

  I never believed the last one. I was certain that the moment Tomás Montenegro left this earth, I would know it. I would look into the sky and both Ursas, Major and Minor, would be gone, heart-shaped leaves would stop appearing on cottonwoods, and my own heart would settle back into its former dull rhythm and never beat again in time to el compás.

  When Alma strode in and took over Doña Carlota’s class, Didi and I started to learn flamenco the American way. Alma picked up a piece of chalk and wrote on the board the names of all the things Doña Carlota had already taught our bodies while our brains were busy listening to her story. Knowing that the high-chested stance we had absorbed from Doña Carlota was called la postura did not make us stand up any taller. That all the magical stuff we’d been doing with our feet was called taconeo did not improve how we meshed it with our brazeo, arm work. Though I did like knowing that the word for the way we fanned our fingers, floreo, was related to the word for flower, that didn’t make my fingers unfurl into any more beautiful blossoms.

  After the beginning class, I moved on to intermediate, technique and repertory. I took specialized classes: bulerías, tangos, alegrías, alegrías por bulerías. I studied with singers and guitarists, learning the intricate code a dancer used to signal when she was ready to begin, entrada; when she would mark time, marcaje, while the singer sang; when she wanted to solo with some fancy footwork, taconeo; and how to call for any of these changes, llamada.

  For me every dance class I attended, every Carlos Saura videotape I watched and rewatched until I could dance each step in perfect time with Cristina Hoyos, every Paco de Lucía CD I listened to, every Donn Pohren book I read, every García Lorca poem I memorized, took me one step closer to entering flamenco’s most blessed state: enterao. To be enterao was to be in the know, a true, initiated member of the flamenco community, someone worthy of admission to Tomás’s world.

  It is possible, probably likely, that I would have gotten over my obsession with Tomás if I’d never set foot in the Flamenco Academy. I would have been a straight business major. I’d have taken tennis for my PE requirement. Maybe a semester or two of German with the thought that it might somehow help me on some hypothetical trip back to the Old Country to find my roots. I would have dated nice guys who drove Hondas and Toyotas, cars with good service records. Guys who never in a million years would have led me around the city on the darkest night of the year into a hidden park. Who would never have been able to joke with low-riders or hold me while we flew to the stars.

  The memory of that night would have faded because, outside of flamenco’s hothouse world, I might never have heard Tomás’s name again and my infatuation would not have flowered into such a dark blossom. But Didi had said it best: “Flamenco is obsessive-compulsive disorder set to a great beat.” Everything about el arte fed my fixation. It fattened my infatuation until it metastasized into a full-blown mania. Until my every thought was metered out according to its ancient rhythm. Until my heart did beat to el compás. Until flamenco and Tomás Montenegro had become interchangeable.

  Didi was remaking herself for the unseen audiences of thousands, millions, who would one day idolize her. I was remaking myself for an audience of one. Flamenco was always a means to an end for both of us.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  By our junior year, Didi had acquired what she’d always dreamed of having, an entourage. Not friends, but a coven of ambisexterous hangers-on who fawned on her in the way she liked being fawned on. When they went out—all the chattering boys and heavy-lidded girls—they wore whatever uniform Didi specified. One night she would declare that they were wearing shawls thrown over the right shoulder in the style she had affected. Another night they’d all have on denim jackets embroidered on the back with La Virgen de Guadalupe that they’d picked up on a trip to Juárez. The next night the boys would do themselves up like homegirls with platform sneakers and velvet running suits, the girls like homeboys with giant droopy shorts, wallets on heavy chains, forearms covered in prison tattoos they drew themselves, smearing ink from a ballpoint in authentic designs cribbed from a master’s thesis on the topic.

  Me? I became one of the novitiates I’d seen the first day I walked into the Flamenco Academy. A flamenco nun, my long skirt whispering against the floor as I went from class to studio to rehearsal hall to the small stages where I performed student pieces with student groups. Who had time for trips to Juárez?

  Of course, Didi charted a much different course. From coffeehouses, bakeries, and bars, Didi graduated to winning every poetry slam she
entered. Who else danced their poems to a flamenco beat? And if the beat was off, who at a poetry slam would ever know? Or care? A regional house published two chapbooks of Didi’s poetry and helped arrange a one-woman show to promote it. The show was Courtney Love meets Carmen Amaya by way of Sylvia Plath. There was even talk of a short LA/NY run. But that never materialized. The main venue for Didi’s flamenco poetry became the rarefied world of spoken-word performances. She was in demand at small colleges, women’s studies festivals, and celebrations of Latina writers.

  Everywhere she appeared, Didi left droves of devotional fans in her wake, all clamoring for more. They bought up her slender volumes by the dozens, had Didi write intimate messages in them, and gave them to sisters, mothers, lovers. The regional press that published her work was already talking about a boxed set. Didi acquired a rising star literary agent who was negotiating with several New York houses to reprint the slender volumes.

  Instead of reveling in the acclaim, however, Didi became even more driven. The adulation only reminded her of how far she still had to go, how short she was falling of true stardom. When the dance critic from the Albuquerque Journal wrote a mash note of a review of her one-woman show, Didi leaped for joy, whirling around the Lair until the space heater rattled, then suddenly stopped dead and demanded, “What the fuck is the dance critic doing reviewing me? I should be on either the book page or theater page. That is so like Albuquerque not to take my work seriously. They’re trying to turn me into a freaking dance monkey. Yeah, make the little Latina into your pet exotic. It’s just another way not to take us seriously.” Us. Didi had used her ability to reshape reality into whatever form she believed it should take to fully transform herself into a Latina. No one in her entourage, least of all me, would have ever mentioned Didi Steinberg, the little girl who wanted AC/DC to play at her bat mitzvah.