On the corner of Avenida Almirante Brown and some muddy, unfinished street in La Boca stands – or rather squats – the Blues Special Club. It ain’t Mississippi, but it’s about as authentic as you can get. The other storefronts on that forlorn stretch of street are so run-down that their hopeless owners don’t even…

The last time I saw a circus goat. She was walking across a narrow plank three meters off the ground. She was not at all sure of her footing and her gold-fringed caparison was slipping indecently off to one side. She did it all led by a shrill circus announcer in sequins who bribed her…

The other night at the milonga a couple near me fell to the floor. I heard them before I saw them: a heavy thud and a gasp that rippled out across the room as people sensed a disturbance in the tango force. Behind me I saw two bodies where they did not belong. She was…

Her embraces were the stuff of legend. They were of the full-on, milonguera-style variety: no empty space left between the bodies, no crevices ignored, nothing held back. I found myself gravitating towards her in spite of myself, inventing excuses to swing by. When I walked into the milonga, she was at the entrance in conversation…

The man stood in the bathroom at El Beso, gathering up his belongings. He had just risen from the chair that is always left in bathrooms at milongas so that you can change in and out of your dance shoes in privacy. Now he was putting his dance shoes into a cloth bag and tucking…

You made me beautiful, she answered, after seeing the photos. In my world, there could be nothing more fulfilling than hearing those words. To find beauty – even better, to help someone see their own beauty – is the highest act, the greatest good. For me, creation is celebration. I celebrate this world as it…

I’m mostly a bus kind of guy – I like the hoi polloi. But I was running late and grabbed a taxi across town. The driver seemed genuinely glad to see me. I soon learned that he was gladder still that I didn’t have a cell phone in my hand. I’ve been studying the porteño,…

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – I want a bold love, the kind that flows like a steep mountain river, roaring over the rock bed, pushing fallen branches and stones out of its way. I want a love that overflows and missteps and clamors back, a little wiser for its mistakes. I want a love that throbs…

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – At the back of a closet, in a box that I was sure had been lost, I found a treasure trove of old diaries. As I write in my journal most every day, come rain or shine, depression or ecstasy, I have plenty of old journals lying around. But these were…