Milongas are both fascinating and nauseating places.

A milonga can seem like an awful kind of mutual-prostitution-auction. Between each tanda there's about a minute of bidding-time, when men and women cast their bodies or eyes about looking for someone to bid on them. The signal is slight, and easy to miss or mistake - a raise eyebrow, an upturned palm, a hopeful stare. Then quite quickly the bidding closes off. The successful transactions take to the floor to discover if they got what they bargained for, if the other can come up with the goods. The rejected resign themselves to another 15 minutes of sitting mezmerized by the dancefloor (in the case of women), or circumnavigating it as if they're looking for the bathroom (in the case of men).

As a result, the non-dancefloor areas of the milonga are filled with women who appear to be waiting for that dream dance from someone who hasn't arrived yet, and might not arrive tonight, but who will surely turn up one of these nights. Someone who's definitely not one of those patrolling the tables glancing fruitlessly left and right.

Meanwhile the dancefloor is filled with the women who got sick of waiting for the dream and decided to try settling for one of the lesser patrollers. Some of the ladies have a visage of determined bliss, as though by shear force of will, this will be the dance they've been waiting for all their lives. Some of the men dance with a swagger, to express a shaky conviction that they are the partner she's been hoping for all this time. They came to fulfil someone's fantasy, and in turn fulfil their own.

After four tangos, it's thankyous and goodbyes, and the bidding opens again, some more desperate than last time, some more resigned. All still clutching their Cinderella tango fantasy to their hearts - a tall dark stranger and a willowy damsel come together on an exotic dancefloor, barely a word is spoken but they communicate with their bodies through the music, and despite the pressing throng on all sides, share a long moment of mutual discovery and touching intimacy, and then... they part, never to see each other again.

Sometimes I think maybe we should all just grow up.