Milonguero style? Where?

I’m at the studio and class is starting soon. Music is playing and a few couples are warming up. A man I’ve never seen before, about my height, lanky and bearded, is standing alone. He nervously shifts his feet, hands dug deep into his jeans pockets. I ask him if he’d like to warm up, and he smiles, a shy animal smile, little sparks leaping from his eyes. I like him – for a few seconds. A few seconds is how long it takes me to realize he has no chest.

You know what I’m talking about, right? The man does something with his arms that could pass, to an outside observer, for close embrace, but there’s no there there. Where his chest should be -- that nice broad open plain you want to either gallop a horse across, or lie down in a soft sweet nest of sun-warmed grass – there is a perplexing concavity, a shallow unexpected valley. There is emptiness. There is not the smallest hope of connection.

Why do men do that? How do they do that? He didn’t look hunched, when he was just standing there. Is it that all of their body parts, including their brain, think they want to connect but when the embrace actually happens their chest chickens out? Did someone tell them not to make contact with our breasts? Please explain.

So my bearded, cave-chested leader begins some very fast, long steps with lots of carpa, and it just doesn’t work. I do my best but there is jostling and ambiguity, with a gaping hole in place of the information I need. I try to rely on signals from my right arm but he’s not talking to it. I try to pull back a little so at least I can visually glimpse what he’s doing but his arm around my back is an unyielding vise. I try harder to disengage, intending to abandon altogether the pretense of close embrace and transition to something open, and again it’s like pushing against a steel band. Finally I give him a good strong shove, and he stops moving abruptly, making startled eye contact with me.

Me: “I need a little more space please.”
Cave Man (shocked): “What, you don’t like milonguero style?”