Buenos Aires

Photo property of La Cumparsita Tango Bar

Sunshine beams white through stripes of blue in the city of Buenos Aires, where airport staff commence year's end by hammering hand drums inside the terminal, where taxi drivers tile the car with dreams of race cars, family, Jesus, and—if you dig hard enough—nearly naked women, where your problem will never be someone else's problem, where you can't find dinner at 8 p.m. because it's still too early to open, where lane lines on the street only matter as much as the cop beside you.  

Buenos Aires gushes like the falls of Iguazú above, like the Río de la Plata beside it. Whether tarnished, faded, or fraying, the flag is found on every corner, above groups of friends who sip mate together and pretend not to notice the Americano walking past them.

The birthplace of tango—dance's most pornographic form, where adroit hands delicately crawl and dance and flick along shoulders. A sudden flash of thigh disappears before anyone knows what they saw. She sings, lamenting her loss and heartbreak with delicacy and tiptoeing deliberateness, like the accordion player behind her who whispers a minor chord before erupting an ascending scale. Tango is the great and powerful storm hidden within Recoleta. A graceful passion that agonizes and consumes from within a stony composure, longing to be set free.

When you're greeted in Buenos Aires, be it a salute in the morning or an introduction to a new face, you are kissed. All are betrayed with a kiss.