A dancer’s bare feet approach the earth, toes extended. The soles, broad and thick, reach for the earth’s membrane then cushion the impact, draw history and resonance through the weathered skin from core to core. The soul is shaken free of its trance. The body again ascends—as the feet beat back at the world with entrechat and frappé—to the stars.
A door above me slams and my clothes fly down the open space at my side. I rise, look down the twenty-two-odd flights as a stray sock spirals defiantly to the bottom. Something cracks onto the floor below, cufflinks or my watch. It doesn’t matter. My belt buckle? And no one will come after me. I am in no man’s land, in the shaft of the sleek condo where I got everything I had ever asked for, or deserved, in a matter of seconds.
Sunday morning came quietly in Daniel’s tree house. We woke late, and there was no “the Company”; no daily rehearsal sheet slipped under the door; no Company class; no dour-faced dancers poking forks in lone grapes on breakfast plates and dreaming about their second cigarette of the day. Once again I was outside my safety zone. There would be no equity-minimum-for-second-soloist paycheque in two weeks. There would be no speculation on who would get what role in the coming season. Before, I had paid-for dreams and goals, but now they were replaced by free promises.
By now, the Company would be assembled in the hotel lobby for a bus to an early flight back to Winnipeg, welcoming a day off. They would later go for brunch and then put their fingers down their throats and puke, or sit in a movie theatre and worry about their 102 minutes of inactivity. Rachelle would read the Sunday New York Times Gordon had picked up earlier at the Fort Garry, spread on the floor (with the bright prairie afternoon sun filling the room, making it difficult to ignore the streaked window and the gathering dust bunnies) smoking something harsh, drinking pots of coffee, disappearing with Gordon to the bedroom at regular intervals, then making him dinner and curling up on the couch for hours of TV and wondering if the Company would make her a principal dancer someday—why hadn’t they already?
Peter would be playing with himself in his room, thinking no one could tell, or maybe he’d have his perfect feet shoved under the radiator to make them even more perfect. God bless those poor overstretched tendons. Then he’d probably get together with a few of the dancers for coffee, and not so much a chat as a series of agreeable grunts. He was social that way. They’d have Monday morning off.
I wondered if my days off with Daniel would be like Rachelle’s, until he whispered in my ear, “Come, we have a breakfast to go to.”
“So early?”
“Mon ami, it is no longer early, we have slept late and will just make it.”
When you get to know someone, you find out things about them that you overlooked—how they snore, chew, sip, wipe their nose with their knuckle, how sloppy they are or, in Daniel’s case, how meticulous: his attention to the order he dressed himself—shirt first; how many times he washed his hands—frequently; when he washed his hands—always after touching me. What did he think of me, and the way I piled my clothes on the chair, and how my bed-head looked, and how my breath smelled and how the sheets had creased my face? Did he notice?
We rushed out the door, Daniel looking far more together than I felt.
“Welcome to your first day as an independent person, not following the pack.”
“It feels strange.”
“Good I hope.”
“Good.” But I felt like the prodigal son, again.
Back at the beginning of my big dreams, I had this groovy little dance bag I’d bought at Army & Navy. After a year of dancing, disguised as swim practice, it all came out. I was between swim practice and dance class, and I had come home to wolf down my dinner. I tossed the bag by the front door and, as bags do, it fell open. Dad came home a few mouthfuls into my meatloaf. After the called Hi and the requisite, Do you want a drink? he walked into the living room with the bag, threw it on the floor, where the contents spilled—the shoes, tights, leg warmers, the layers of ripped t-shirts and sweat socks and the dance belt. “What are these?” he asked. “Something for Halloween?”
Ballet slippers. For my father, I imagine this was something that only happened to other people’s children, in other cities. This was something you only heard about and never, ever dreaded because it seemed so far-fetched.
“It’s my dance stuff.” It lay on the living room floor, deflated, dirty too.
“Dance stuff? What kind of dance stuff?”
“Shoes.” (Ballet slippers caught in my throat.) “Slippers.”
“Slippers. What the Christ?” he said. Well, wouldn’t it have been an education to see me sew the elastics on them, and carefully sew exactly where the shoe folds down? You can’t sew the elastic just anywhere, and if you want two elastics to hug the slipper to your foot, then you’ve got a little geometry to do.
“What’s this?” he asked in a confident monotone, as if the battle had been won and he was simply making a point. “A bathing suit or some queer kind of jockstrap?”
“It’s a dance belt.”
“A what?”
I wanted so badly to tell it like this: tighter than a Speedo and smaller than one. It cuts up your ass-crack. You pull it on, then grab your nuts and dick and pull up. The old ladies in the audiences watching The Nutcracker for the umpteenth time say why do they have to have those horrid bulges? It’s anatomy, honey. Arms, legs, boobs and cocks. They’ve been around for a while. So your nuts are crammed into these things because between your entrechat and anything else that slams your thighs together at the speed of light, if your nuts aren’t out of the way, you could end up seeing stars. The only hazard when the equipment is out there is turning to your Swan or Princess or Sultana and in the midst of careless fouetté or pirouette having her knee whack your nuts. The pain. The numbing, bent-over-crippling, dizzying pain. It happens to all of us at least once.
“What else? A goddamn tutu?”
“A t-shirt.” Something loose and rag-like, showing tendon. Muscle. Line. That’s the dance bag. Maybe a skanky towel for the shower. “It’s ballet dance stuff. Tights, too, for men. Black, is that okay? Male dancers wear them.”
“Part of your school work?”
“No.”
“And what about swimming?”
“I still swim.”
“In your tights?”
“In my Speedo.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“About a year.”
“Where?”
“The studio—the one near your office. Madame…”
“Défilé?”
“How do you know?”
“She’s been there for years. She came in for checkups—when she could afford it.”
He turned to my mother. “How long have you known this?” But she just took
