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 toiled 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.