7 minutes reading‘
There, at the beginning of the seventies, a beautiful woman like no other, went to work in recording-verification at Siam Di Tella. She monopolized all the male gazes, including that of Juan José. At that time of the explosion of large computers (IBM360), her sector brought together many pretty young women, but she was the most beautiful of all: “Her big gray eyes caused short circuits in anyone who resisted her gaze,” says the protagonist of this story.
Her name was Mirta and the first approach was in December 1970, at a company party. Juan José sat next to her and as soon as he had a chance, he asked her to dance just as others had already done.
With the beginning of the new year, the exchange of glances through the immense glass that separated them began to become common. There was a special and evident connection between them. So noticeable that Isabel, a companion and confidant of Mirta, noticed the chemistry immediately and asked her about her feelings for that skinny boy, not pretty, but certainly with someone who was special and different from the rest. She felt something, she confessed, but it had to remain in the looks, since she had been dating a man approved by both families for six years and with whom they were going to get engaged in a few weeks.
The story began to take color with Isabel as matchmaker, who organized and shared some lunches with them at El Palacio de la Papa Frita in Lavalle.
From then on, they began to meet for coffee during work breaks, usually at the Bom Café across the street, in Florida and Tucumán. Sometimes, these break rituals were moved to a little cafe in Rivadavia and Cucha-Cucha (Estela Maris), hidden from the monitoring that the very jealous boyfriend maintained towards Mirta.
The fire began to take over the two co-workers, until On February 20, they went out dancing together Enamor, in Vicente López. There they had their first kiss: “That lasted the time it took for José Feliciano to say goodbye to his hometown, in that beautiful song from San Remo 1971: ‘Que sera, que sera’”Juan José remembers and hums.
That kiss sealed their lives forever, because from then on Juanjo felt that there would be no return and he ended his own five-year courtship with his girlfriend at the time.
“But Mirta was pressured to go ahead with her commitment,” Juan José continues. “The gifts for the couple had already arrived at their house for their engagement and they continued to arrive during the trip to the San Bernardo house where her future in-laws took her, until the 18th, to celebrate the event. They were also finishing paying (from the well) for a brand new apartment in the Flores neighborhood.”
Mirta quit her job at SIAM and went to work at the Caja de Autónomos, in Pellegrini. The days following February 20 passed for the clandestine couple in a climate of uncertainty and nervousness. Despite Mirta’s wish, expressed to her father, to cancel the engagement, it was celebrated on March 6 with seventy people, with a typical party that was still popular in those years. Juanjo, meanwhile, was desperate and could not contain his anxiety to see her again.
The next day, he called her on the phone and hung up two or three times until she finally said ‘hello’. He asked her out and that same day he picked her up at her house: “She was more confused than ever.”
They went to Palermo and gave free rein to their contained passion, without going beyond the kisses: “The beauty was wearing a deep black long-sleeved T-shirt, which had a life-size green apple painted in bright colors in the middle of her chest, which looked amazing on her, a white tube skirt, with buttons fastened every 8 or 10 cm from the waist to the bottom,” Juanjo describes.
On the way back they sat at a table in a bar on the corner of Rojas and Rivadavia. Juanjo gathered his strength, and with a terrible fear of losing her, he asked her to leave her boyfriend because he couldn’t stand sharing something he wanted so much. Until that happened they would stop seeing each other.
The days passed and Juanjo, as he had announced, did not contact her again. Mirta knew what she had to do. Finally, she gathered her courage and left her fiancé. Her relationship with her ex-boyfriend had never touched her deepest fibers and, at the time of the breakup, all she wanted was to fulfill what was agreed with Juanjo. Her mother and grandmother were in charge of returning the gifts and, meanwhile, she could only think about her reunion with Juan José, both of them, finally, free.
Mirta called her old confidant, Isabel, who planned a meeting at the little bar ‘Canoba’. Isabel, on March 31, told Juanjo that when he finished his schedule he should go to Canoba, that a surprise would surely await him. His heart raced just imagining that what finally happened could happen: “When I arrived and went up to the mezzanine that was for those who wanted relaxed talks, she was, alone, waiting for me at a table,” Juanjo recalls.
They had a kiss similar to the one on February 20, only without that unforgettable music in the background. They had a coffee, they went dancing Zum Zum and upon leaving they went to a hotel. The beautiful lover told him that never before during the six years of their courtship had she been naked in front of her ex-boyfriend out of modesty, but that now, with him she felt protected and without fear of showing herself: “That was a magical night, with all the additional things you can imagine.”
That night it became day, he left her at home and she received a reprimand from her mother Tota and her grandmother Fedora, still incredulous at the ‘madness’ she had committed by breaking the engagement.
A lot of water ran under the bridge. Over time – not much – Fedora and Tota understood that nothing and no one could stop that love. They ended up adoring Juanjo, especially because he had restored Mirta’s laughter.
That Mirta that he saw enter his work one day in 1970, a woman who captured all eyes, but who placed her hypnotic eyes on him to finally unite in marriage, have children and create an unforgettable life: “Mirta, my great love, the person who came into my life, gave light and meaning to my days. Between the two of us we formed a couple that was born from a great love,” Juanjo concludes.
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