Tango trade

Contributed by Aaron (thanks!)

There was a dirty secret within the Falklander Freddy McWorther. He just wanted to dance tango, but knew he would never.
When, 36 years ago his father and mother moved to the anachronistic archipelago via a UK government initiative to increase the island’s population, he was just a typical Birmingham kid. Slightly long in the face, and with fat red lips, he would never have been given the great opportunities in life, but his shoulders were broad and he stood tall, and gained respect. He was uniformly affable, to the point of jealousness from those around but not close to him.
It all started the year after they arrived, when he was 14. Coastal Argentine and the local UK council offices began an initiative to mix the cultures. It was an under-funded exercise that fizzled out but did result in an Argentinean barbecue on a beach near Stanley that ended in an argument between two fathers whose sons had tried to catch a seal in a fishing net, an uneventful sheep herding competition in Chubut, and a Morris Dance in Santa Fe that went down well with the local Argentineans, but was never repeated.
That year however, the Falkland Islands Community School in Port Stanley successfully exercised a cross cultural exchange between its students and those of the rather catholic Colegio Carmen Arriola de Marín in Buenos Aires.
Freddy's exchange friend was Matías. A kid of cool, a boy out of his body who led others and made girls swoon. Short, dark and slender. He brought three VHS videos and gave them to the family as way of presenting himself. The first was a short film from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism on the way of life in the Pampas, in Spanish, the second a politically-charged comedy feature-length film, in spanish, and the third a documentary about the dance 'Tango'. The family could understand none of them, and soon after Matías left, and Freddy's father denounced all Argentineans as 'Poofs', the videos were pushed into the dark cave of the cupboard where all that shit goes.
Nobody could have known about Freddy's feelings. His younger brother thought it was funny that he would find Freddy watching the Tango video when their parents were out, and he would prance around the living room laughing at Freddy. Freddy instinctively wanted to get up and give him a dead arm, but as he rose he quickly lay back down on his front, scared that his median erection would be revealed.
As the years passed Freddy built his own collection of videos, which he transferred onto DVD in 2002. The death of his father brought no relief as his wife held similar beliefs about their Latin neighbours. So, he built a secret compartment in the shed out of plywood. It was taken up mostly by a large soft chair but when he finally managed to exchange the bulky 21" false wood TV for a flat screen, he could finally add a foot stool to stretch out on. He was thinking about how he could get wireless out that far. The collection of DVDs took up so much space. He usually watched the dance with headphones on, but sometimes he would watch without sound to really concentrate.
How could he practice, how could he learn, how could he find a partner? How how how? He would run through ridiculous scenarios most days, even when people were telling him the dimensions needed for their new kitchen to which they expected him to fit. One oft-imagined scenario would involve him hijacking a fishing boat from the Port, heaving it through the wild southern ocean and arriving on a decked jetty at sunset to find his partner in a long black dress, laterally split up to her waist, waiting for him. It was impossible, surely.
For the reader’s interest, he was committed to the more traditional 'Tango Canyengue' where the couple stand very close indeed.