How They Met, and Other Stories(31)
Author: David Levithan

I had no idea whether Dutch noticed any of this, or what he was thinking. When the song was over, we made sure we’d been hanging in the moment before a kiss, not in the moment after one. Then we crawled back out from under the stage and walked back to our friends. I forgot to hold his hand.

Later that night when we were naked in my basement, naked afterward, he said it to me. And even though it was too late, I didn’t say, “No, you don’t.” Instead I kissed him once, quickly. Then we lay there, and I let time pass.

PRINCES

The minute I hit high school, the minute the train station was only a walk away, I escaped into the city and danced. I had been practicing since I was seven—practicing to be that kind of body, the kind that gets away. Right after school, two days a week. Then three. Then four. The Nutcracker in winter, the big recital right before summer. I outgrew my teacher and his storefront studio. Cut class to audition for a modern dance studio in Manhattan. Treated my acceptance like the keys to the city.

When you’re a boy dancer, your progression through the Nutcracker is like this: First you’re a mouse, then you’re a Spaniard, then you’re a prince. I could feel my body changing that way, from something cute and playful to something strange and foreign, then something approaching beauty. You start off wanting to be a snowflake, to be a character. But then you realize you can be the movement itself.

I loved watching the boys, and I loved being the boy who was watched. Not as a mouse, not as a Spaniard. But now, as a prince.

I doubt my parents knew what they were getting into when they let me go to that first dance class. I know some fathers justify it by saying it will help when the boy grows up to be a quarterback, when he has to dance past the linebackers. I know some mothers tell other mothers that it’s so much better than staying on the couch all day. My parents never really discussed the subject with me. They came to the Nutcrackers, they came to the big recitals, and they came to the conclusion that I was g*y. Not every boy dancer is g*y, or grows up to be g*y. But come on. A whole lot of us are.

My brother Jeremy came to most of the performances, too. When he was five and I was ten, he got all worried that our Jewish family was starting to celebrate Christmas, with all of the red, green, and white costuming going on. It was only when he realized he was celebrating me instead of celebrating Santa that he was all for it. Five years younger than me, always a kid in my eyes. Whether he knew I was g*y or not didn’t really matter to me. He wasn’t going to be a part of that part of my life.

That part resided in the city. Specific address: the Broadway studios of the Modern Dance Workshop, housed in a rent-by-the-hour space between Prince and Spring in SoHo, with a view of a publishing company across the street. I had to audition four times in order to get in—there were only twenty students, mostly city, some suburban. Six guys, fourteen girls. The instructors were either older dancers who’d been worn down into being choreographers or aspiring dancers looking for a day job to support their auditioning habits. There was Federica Rich, a middle-aged footnote of the footlights. There was quiet, unassuming Markus Constantine, who looked at us not so much as teenagers but as potential trajectories, mapping the mathematics of our every movement. His counterpoint was Elaine, who’d just graduated from the dance program at Michigan, and clearly belonged to the dance-as-therapy school. She was always examining her reflection in our wall of mirrors.

And Graham. At twenty-two, he was only five years older than me. He hadn’t gone to college; he’d danced his way across Europe instead. He was beautiful in the way that a breeze is beautiful—the kind of beauty you feel gratitude for. From the minute I saw him behind the table at my fourth audition, I knew I would be dancing for him. To make him watch, so I could return the watching.

I was not the only one. We’d all tell stories about Graham and treat them like facts, or glean small facts and turn them into stories. Carmela had heard that he’d been an underwear model in Belgium. Tracy said he once dated one of the male leads at Tharp, and that when he’d left, the lead had drunk himself into depression. Eve said this wasn’t true; the dancer had been from Cunningham, not Tharp.

I wanted to be the one to find out the truth. I wanted to become a part of the truth, part of the story.

Mostly, I hung out with the girls. They weren’t competition. As for the other boys—only one or two were a real threat. Connor had the inside track with the teachers, since he’d been at MDW for two semesters now. Philippe was much stronger than he was graceful, but he was also named Philippe, which I had to imagine gave him an advantage. As for the others—everyone trusted that Thomas had been accepted because of his trust fund; Miles seemed intimidated by the sound of his own footsteps; George leaped like a gazelle but landed like a lumberjack. Modern dance is forgiving of many things, but it still discriminates against the balance-impaired.

From the minute I got on the train, I felt I was already in the city, already a part of that rush. But when I got into the studio, the city ceased to be anything but a traffic buzz in the background. That room contained a world.

On the train ride back, I would try to stay within it. I would replay Graham’s single nod to me a hundred times over, watching it from every angle. If he said anything to me, I would gather the sentences like a shell seeker. Sitting on the orange reversible seats, jutted back and forth by the rhythm of the rails, I would try to remember all of my movements. Inevitably, the ones that came back to me the most were the errors—the slight wobble of the ankle, the unfortunate and unintended dip of the arms. My memory became slave to the corrections I would need to make. More so if Graham had noticed.

I could have called one of my parents to pick me up when I got into the station, but I was never ready to see them, never ready to concede that I was home so soon. So I walked the mile home. My body, having just been sitting for a half hour, reawakened to a new kind of fatigue—not the adrenaline exhaustion of having just finished, but the unoiled hinges of afterward, when everything catches up with you and your body lets you know how it truly feels. Sometimes I loved that ache, because it felt like an accomplishment. Other times I was tired of everything.

I always stayed until the last possible moment of class, and then sometimes a few of the girls and I would run to Dojo for a yogurt shake or a cheeseburger. By the time I got to my street, suburbia was empty of cars, of noise, of movement. Even the reading light in Jeremy’s room was off, the new chapter dog-eared for the night. My parents’ room emanated a blue television glow; if I went close to the window, I could hear the sound of law-and-order suspects being caught, or the roll call of the news. By the time I passed their doorway, my parents were usually asleep, even if the television wasn’t.