Posted: Jan 22, 08
8:05am
I can't remember how long it had been since I stayed out all night and hopped up and down like a kangaroo on the dance floor. Long enough for the memory to be shrouded in the mists of time (perhaps to reappear in extreme old age, when one's early recollections are said to resurface.) Meanwhile I have noticed that in middle-age, the opportunities diminish for decorum-abandoning, dignity-be-damned fun.
A recent trip to a nephew’s wedding in Buenos Aires convinced me that I'm living in the wrong country for serious fun. My nephew is a former U.S. Marine Corps guard at the American Embassy and he was marrying an Argentine. The wedding was to be a restrained affair, we were told -- partly in deference to the cohort of middle-aged Americans in attendance, relatives of the groom.
After the 5 pm church ceremony, we all drove to a reception site -- an estancia, or ranch, about an hour outside town. The party started with cocktails and grilled anything-you-wanted outside, to the accompaniment of a gospel quartet. After a lively hour, we went in, to dinner. It featured steak and four other choices of meat, if I recall. Then came a light dessert and coffee. No wedding cake, which I figured must not be the local tradition. But lots of drinking and dancing, much of which consisted of hopping up and down, like a kangaroo running in place. I'd never seen anything that looked so exhausting.
I was wrong about the wedding cake. After another hour, we went outside again under starlight and torches to a full dessert table—it turned out that the after-dinner dessert had been merely a dessert-appetizer. The open air spread included a many-tiered wedding cake. Then we headed back inside for coffee and cookies. It being about 1:00 a.m. by now, I thought, Ah, it's winding down. Instead, more dancing.
Hours flew by. Around 3:30 a.m., to my astonishment (and momentary dismay), pizza was served and funny hats were passed around, including a Cat-in-the-Hat one in white satin for the bride. There were streamers and noisemakers and party favors and champagne. Like New Year’s Eve! More dancing. I got a second wind, and did the kangaroo dance myself for a while -- despite the fact that the wedding videographer made a point of training his camera on me hopping.
Around 5:00 a.m. came coffee and sweet rolls. By my count, this was the fourth meal, but there may have been five. Now it was sunrise. The bride and groom took off amid cheers and presently we all hugged and kissed goodbye (everyone, not just the people we knew) and headed to our cars. We weren’t back at our hotels until 6:30 a.m., about 14 hours after we had set out.
I had never had so much fun in my life. Or certainly not in the last 25 years. My trip to Buenos Aires convinced me that we in the United States are fun-deprived. Especially once we reach middle-age. (I will be happy to be contradicted on this point, if anyone begs to differ.)
Besides the wedding, which by Buenos Aires standards apparently really was abbreviated and restrained, my evidence is tango. Tango is flourishing in Buenos Aires, where the younger generation has embraced it as enthusiastically as their elders.
We visited a tango palace on a weeknight, one that caters to locals rather than tourists. The crowd started arriving around 10:30 p.m. Young people in jeans. People our age and older in proper tango outfits. Many came here every week, we were told. To my untrained eye, everyone there could extract the full meaning from the tango, a combination of fierce sexuality and proper old-world formality.
Watching the older couples, I could see how regular tango could keeping the spark kindled in a long-term relationship. During the first part of the evening the music was recorded, though a live band was also billed. The musicians, most of whom appeared to be over 70, arrived around midnight and started warming up. When we left at 1:30, just as the live music began, the dancers were still going strong, all of them.
I'm always looking for places where it is acceptable for people over 50 to have uninhibited fun. There are so few such places in this country that to count them I need only one finger: New Orleans. But even there, and even for the young party animals, the fun on offer is nothing like in Argentina. They know how to do it and we don't. Me, I’m ready for some more hopping.
