"The Tingling, Tangling Tango as 'tis Tripped at Coney Island," by Djuna Barnes

B O A R D W A L K , C O N E Y I S L A N D , J U LY 4 , 1 9 3 6 . ( B R O O K LY N P U B L I C L I B R A R Y, B R O O K LY N C O L L E C T I O N )

the TinglING, tangLiNG TAngo as ’tIS TripPEd At cONey IslE Djuna Barnes

Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) was born near Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York. Barnes led a bohemian lifestyle, first in Greenwich Village (in the 1910s) and then in Paris (in the 1920s and 1930s). She was an important figure in the modernist movement, writing avant-garde poetry, fiction, and drama. She is especially known for the novel Nightwood (1936), notable for its early depiction of homosexuality. While living in New York City, Barnes wrote for several newspapers and magazines, including the Brooklyn Eagle, the New York Press, the Morning Telegraph, and Vanity Fair. Several of her pieces for the Press and the Eagle—such as “The Tingling, Tangling Tango as ’Tis Tripped at Coney Isle,” published in the Eagle on August 31, 1913—are about Coney Island. Its free-spirited qualities appealed to Barnes, and she was particularly interested in the dance palaces and the women who frequented them. To read more of these sketches, see New York (1989).

has been emptied; once, twice, thrice the wheel has ceased to spin and run down; once, twice, thrice a girl, leaning across a polished table top, has learned that only a strip of wood separates her from the garden of love. And each time the cup has been refilled, and each time the wheel has been set in motion once more, and each time the maid finds that the garden has tears upon its flowers instead of dew; and yet over and over the same scenes are thrown upon the screen that is the heart.

So, at Coney, the night in a fashionable hotel sees the same play out to the end. Beneath the glare of the electric lights, under the seductive charm of the band behind the palms, the straight black eyes of Therese glow; the large, red mouth is smiling; the low-coiled hair gives to those eyes the magic that the undertow gives to the swell of the wave.

ONCE, TWICE, THRICE THE CUP OF LIFE

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With her chin upon her jeweled hand, she watches the gliding, attentive waiters, the sense of the colored goblets, the red and purple and gold, slowly removing her gloves as manifold women remove theirs in the great mirrors. A queen in black, with a hat of a thousand feathers, she scarcely looks at what is laid before her. Her fingers never close over the stem of the wine glass; she holds it easily because she is certain of it, as one holds accustomed affection. Her eyes drift over the vivid red splashes of silent sea crab laid out upon its bed of green—the sea and the land united in their fruitfulness; the color scheme that art with hunger wrought.

But never one step did she lose of the dancers clinging, gliding, twisting, losing grip, coming together, mocking gravity with jeering feet, caressing with slurring slide, the man bowed above the little woman held close, like a butterfly pinned to his breast.

“What a gown,” murmurs Therese above her glass, leveling her languid eyes, noting the bright spots among the smoking men, the telltale, highthrust feather that shows some woman has consented to be someone’s partner for the dance.

“See that glide,” the man behind the lights advises.

Semiprofessional, the dancers who specialize for the company are matched against the dancers who may have had some experience before the public. They are daring, yet within the bounds of propriety because they are daring with averted head; they make the dip in gowns that are meant for strolling and, because they see nothing, are aware of nothing.

Sometimes the proprietor walks close, and a couple learns that there are limits. So Therese learns, as with scornful steps she masters the wonder of the tango.

“Shan’t we order a dinner?” he suggests, to get out of the uncomfortable position of a person who has been stopped in the excess of a wonderful motion; the catch in the music that makes the feet move. Therese nods, puts her hair back with crinkled white fingers, and moves among the drooping figures of women scattered through the room, hardly more substantial, hardly more resistant than the chiffon in which they are gowned. The cloth begins its mission just below the white throat and ends just above the jeweled slipper, the lace peeping out softly in sheltering folds. There are the sounds heard nowhere but at a pleasure resort: the popping of corks

T H E T I N G L I N G , TA N G L I N G TA N G O A S ’T I S T R I P P E D AT CO N E Y I S L E

and the guarded, high laugh of the bored beauty, touches of vivid lightning striking across a shifting scene to the low thunder of the laugh of a man.

The professional dancers go back to their places and order refreshments. Those four old women admire the man dancer’s dark face while he, with conscious eyes, sips sarsaparilla, one black pump just behind the other; trim, self-possessed, aware that adulation is being poured at his feet.

The middle-aged women who have motors and painted cheeks are going to spoil him if they can; they lean upon his table, throwing back cloaks that reveal wondrous evening creations, and try to charm. The dancer, becoming bored, arises, walks among them a bit, drops a comforting word in this ear, smiles into that face, passes one white hand over the other, bows and steps out into the open as the band strikes up. Somehow the pink-gowned girl who dances with him comes to him, as a sunset comes over and claims the mountain, and is borne away upon the shining floor.

“To think that he is a prize,” murmurs Therese, who follows him with her eyes. “To think that in a moment the old woman in black and green will be dancing where that lovely young thing is now. Ah, here they come.”

And come they do. The man behind the lights smiles, but he is not thinking; few people get a chance to think on such an evening.

“Shall we take a stroll?” inquires he, but she shakes her head. “I think I’m going to order some—” Her voice trails off as she listens to the bit of gossip behind her: “Gone to the mountains, won’t be seen here for some time; ran off, you know, with the stenographer or something. . . . They say that she is thirty if she’s a day, and yet she comes here. . . . The only man in the place who does not use perfume. . . . He’s only here to get life on the wing. . . . Don’t drink any more, you’ll be sick.” Therese shrugs her shoulders and thinks that perhaps her own conversation would make an interesting feature among those others. She throws this out as a starter: “You have never taken me down the walk, where the spray reaches clear across. I think you are afraid.”

“Afraid of what?” he insists.

“Afraid of getting—wet.”

“I’m not afraid of anything,” he says boldly. “I’m not afraid of spiders or policemen, of gowns with thirty thousand hooks up the back, or of the society notes in the evening papers; why, I’m not afraid of the floor manager.”

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She shrugs once more. “Give me my wraps,” she says languidly and turns her eyes upon the room.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the evening comes in with the tired couples who have done the vulgar end of Coney and have been done by Coney in the end. Tired of the hurly-burly of the amusement parks, tired of the popcorn and the candy, tired of the moving pictures, sated with the sand and the sea, dragging listlessly, they come in, search out a table, languidly, with one hand, pushing the loop over the button of their evening wraps; the man just behind, turning his head from side to side; the child hugging its tiny doll. Utterly played out, they gamely drift across the floor, drop into chairs, and say something about “Oh, my, I’m fagged out!” Fumbling for matches follows, “What will you take, dear?” The light flutters, and smoke issues from a mouth already drooping from fatigue. “I could blow pillows instead of rings,” he murmurs, and she orders soup. She is almost too weary to take interest in the gowns on show but not too weary to notice one or two of the most startling ones. The purple crepe with the red sash and the redheeled slippers catches her eye; she is being soothed, without knowing it; fashion is reviving her spirits, and his, too. He crosses his legs, leans back, and watches the dancers. It is the logical end of a day that has been too full.

The late arrivals get more out of it than these who are in for the opening notes of the orchestra, because they are conscious only of the contentment that comes after entrance and the worry of ordering the dinner and the removal of wraps; they are in on the dessert, as it were.

Half past twelve comes, and everyone is drifting toward the door: the stout woman on whom pearls are wasted, for they are lost in the folds of her neck; the thin, tall woman, who adds sharpness to her figure by steel buckles and diamonds; the men who are conscious that they paid for it all, aware that they are a part of the changing life at Coney, the Coney which a few years ago tolerated nearly any kind of dance and which now tolerates nothing that borders on the sensational.

“Let us walk in the moonlight upon the sand,” Therese suggests, “where the waves look like sheer strips of broken beer bottles.”

The old Coney is closing down; not stopping, mind you, but changing.

We are tremendously interested to see what the evolution is going to be; we are interested to know how shocking society is going to become when it’s proper.