Polo day

Today we learned how to play polo. Or at least, how not to. We'd seen polo a few weeks ago, a professional game, where crowds of one ton horses would come thundering down the field at 40 miles an hour, with humans leaning from their backs (as if they were attached with adhesive) failing huge hammers. In some ways it looked like a game that might have been played in Valhalla among those confident in their ability to reattach severed limbs at the end of the day: players went flying and horses crashed into one another. But it was also an incredibly delicate game: I saw one player juggle the ball with the head of his mallet for half the length of the field, while riding at an all our gallop. It's a game of fast, delicate, brutality. It's the precision of golf, the speed of bicycle racing, and the destructive power of a monster-truck rally--that, of course and the imitable beauty of horses motion. (And this bellowed by a gravel voiced Hell's Angel: Sunday, sunday, sunday! It's full combat, monster-horse, velodrome, golf classic, madness! Followed by the Electrik Sexx Chickens!) Imagine Jack Nickalaus trying to hit a long drive, while being chased down by a crew of American football players, on horseback, and you get the idea. We left suitably awed. But that was two weeks ago, and by this afternoon I was reasonably confident that I would probably master the sport with the practice of an hour or two. That was because before putting us on horses our guide and teacher took us to a club to watch his 14 year-old nephew play. At the same club we saw two teams squaring off in what looked like the under-ten league and they were still riding at a full gallop, and leaning intrepidly beyond what could reasonably be considered anywhere close to the center of balance. The only reasonable explanation? It must not be all that hard.
Our guide Estani took us to his farm to give it a shot after lunch. "This way," he explained helpfully, "if you die, at least you die full." This remark stirred unfortunate memories: I was not exactly what you might call an accomplished horseman. I'd ridden twice before, and on one of those occasions I had thrown up. But if my confidence ebbed a bit it was more than refilled by the addition of a piece of meat approximately the size of my head, served rare, or jugoso (juicy). Thus fortified, we mounted the especially docile animals that Estani picked and rode out onto his field. After a bit of walking and turning (even cantering) my confidence rose even more. The horse moved almost intuitively, as if it knew what I was thinking. That would turn out the be the high-tide mark for the day, because immediately afterward I was handed a mallet, and things began to spiral downwards. The problem with the mallet is that it fills one hand. The other hand is occupied with the reins, which leaves precisely zero hands for the all important business of holding on. I mentioned that my horse was chosen for it's obedience, but I began to suspect it of a hidden truculent streak as - perhaps sensing my uneasiness - it began more and more frequently to blow and shake it's head downwards, loosening the reins.
Riding this horse reminded me a lot of my oh-so-limited experience of dancing tango with strangers, who, as soon as the felt the cringing, double-clutch nature of my lead, would begin showing the whites of their eyes, as if looking for some way to be rid of me. The communication of motion from one body to another can only be accomplished if it is clear who is leading, and if that person is steady and decisive. Which raises the obvious question? Given that initial failure tends to make me more faltering and tentative how is it that men ever learn to either to ride or to dance? The answer can only be that they muster through, and indeed, Argentine men do seem to be fairly unshakable, even when venturing beyond their depth. If you want to generalize about national character (stipulating of course that all generalizations are false) in this way the Argentines are the opposite of the English who have made embarrassment a form of art (of course the English have also made getting fantastically drunk a form of art as well, perhaps as a sort of embarrassment relief valve - and maybe it's because Argentines seem almost immune to embarrassment that drinking to excess here really is a rarity. A highly informal survey of the three people I asked reveled that the slang words for "drunk" consist of "borracho," and sometimes "pedo" here. While of course in English we have plastered, pie-eyed, pickled, plotzed, and put to bed with a shovel - just to mention the p's... by this measure, we take inebriation more seriously then Eskimos take snow. We literally have hundreds of euphemisms from addlepated to zonked. Even if Argentines have more than my informal survey revealed, it's almost certainly less.)
In any case, though I had had nothing more severe than soda, I was starting to feel a bit quartzed on my horse. We'd entered a vicious feedback loop in which she would interpret my hesitation as a indication that she should take liberties, and I, sensing that my mount was losing faith in me for good reason, would quail further. This sort of thing might not be so bad if you can pretend that the somewhat random meandering is your idea, but it is especially humiliating if you are supposed to do something very specific like chase down and hit a little white ball. After I had trotted off to a remote  corner of the field, a perplexingly subtle tactic, Estani suggested that I ride "A little closer to the ball." I came back, slowly. At a walk, I found I could hit the ball, then follow it and hit it again. This, however, I am sure was entirely the accomplishment of my horse, who clearly knew just how to position herself in relation to the ball, and how to follow it. When I reached the ball again I leaned out over my right stirrup, twisted into a windup, and brought the mallet arcing down. For a moment, I felt a bit like real polo players looked. The ball leapt forward with a satisfying chunk, and, filled with false confidence, I urged my horse forward. She went for it. The gallop was smoother than I had expected, so I did not fall immediately, and I even, as we neared the ball, swung manfully. I manfully missed completely, the mallet passing through empty space with alacrity and carrying me forward with its inertia. I caught myself, not with my legs as I should have, but with the reins, pulling on my poor horse's head. She stopped, wheeled, and then to my horror, rose on her hind legs before swiftly shifting her weight back to the rear. I was calculating what form of descent would break fewest bones when I saw Estani appear directly in front of me. "Bring down the reins," he said. "Lean back." Although I did my best to accomplish these relatively simple tasks I think it was his presence that quieted my horse. When he saw the look on my face, he covered his own, but I'm pretty sure he was laughing.
Meanwhile, Beth was galloping around, smoothly whacking the ball from one end of the cancha to the other.