Wednesday, July 23, 2008


One of the delicacies of Mexican cousine is the lowly "torta de pierna". The really good ones have to be ordered on the street or in "changarros" or little holes in the wall. These are sandwiches made from a specially shaped (sort of like a turtle shell) small French loaf called a "telera". The pierna part of the torta (sandwich in Mexican Spanish but cake in Argentine Spanish) means leg but my Real Academia On Line Dictionary or RAE states that not only is a pierna the lower extremity of a human being but also the thigh of birds and quadrupeds. That delicious Mexican torta de pierna then is a a pork thigh sandwich. The really good ones have to be slathered in butter, mayonnaise AND aguacate (avocado).



As we ate our shepherd's pie last night, the evening heat made me remember Mexico and its food. It didn't take long to move from a pork pierna to a human one. Pierna is Spanish for leg. While my RAE dictionary will state that birds have piernas and these are their thighs we all know that South American ostriches have patas not piernas. A dog has patas as do cats. Strangely enough the patitas (or little animal feet) is what we in Spanish call the sides of my glasses.


Argentines borrow gamba from Italian when they want to talk about women's legs. They might say, "¡Esa mina tiene unas gambas de locura!" This translates as, "What fantastic legs that broad (mina) has!"

While I have known many women in my life who had and have beautiful legs (my wife Rosemary and my mother come to mind) there are two that have legs to dance the tango with. And dance the tango I did with them. One is  N and the other Indiana.

Both Indiana and N are close to 6ft tall and few men were disposed to dance with them when I used to dance Argentine tango a few years ago. I knew better. Both women had these extremely long legs. They wore fishnets (I am barely able to type here!) and their dresses were tight with a slit in the right place. When I danced with them nobody noticed my efficient (I never went past that ) dancing. The other bonus of dancing with tall women is that in tango you must dance close. When you are that close there is no room for your head if you are short. You are "forced" to rest it on the woman's chest! I savoured every moment that I danced with this pair who happened to be friends. One of them introduced me to both her husband and her wife in one tango evening. I told her, "No matter what you want to call it that sounds like bigamy to me. "



Most men, if lucky, have one good idea in their lifetime. I may be extra fortunate in that I had two. The first one involved taking photographs of 18 different women, one at a time, in a bath tub of water. I had a show of these.

My second one revolved on the problem of taking tango pictures that had not really been taken before. I convinced Indiana to come to my studio and I photographed her using my ring flash. She was wearing fishnets and zapatos de charol or patent leather shoes. She was not wearing anything else. The session was so successful that I decided that since it takes two to tango we would invite N into the formula.



Here are some of the pictures. I have had to crop them (It was excruciating!) so as to pass my personal blog decorum.