Strip Page 6

  He was passionate about dance, had a gorgeous big muscular ass and a generously loaded crotch. He was a tight package of male body odour and lean muscle ready to burst. I only mention these qualities because that is how he danced, with a suppressed energy, as if he and everything in his tights would explode in a second. His face was Depardieu before food—the meandering nose, slightly crooked teeth and wide jaw and a kind of indefinable handsome wild aura. He had studied at the Conservatoire for the summer and we exchanged glances and nods in the hall from time to time. I wondered if he was gay—he wasn’t—and he probably wondered why the hell I was staring at his crotch. We shared a pas de deux partner, which is where our paths crossed, in repertoire class.

  He seemed to be the only one left to impress, so I tried to hide my increasingly shitty attitude. My dancing sucked and as a result I’d put up a barrier protected by a severe pout, the kind that says I expect more from myself and have danced much better than this, and you can go fuck yourself.

  His English was minimal, and most Francophones couldn’t understand his backwoods French. We managed on a different level. I’d speak my proper French mixed with Franglais, and he would reply in his French or with halting, breathy English that made him sound like he needed oxygen. In pas de deux class he would mutter profanities under his breath. He could be so particular that you thought you’d met the most precious bitch. His criticism, if that’s what it was, forced the girls to glare and huff and fold their arms. He always snapped back at temperamental ballerinas. They already hated themselves for any extra pounds or ounces gained, especially in the summer with ice cream and slushies on every corner. They’d take it out on the men, like we were the ones who had fucked up. If one had a tantrum, Bertrand would match it and not hesitate to knock her off her pointe. I found this bravado so refreshing.

  But I didn’t escape his sharp eye and tongue; one day he had a go at me. We were in the dressing room and I was towelling myself dry, wondering how I could make a quick exit without the administrator asking me to pay up. Bertrand interrupted this plan. He started scolding me while he stood naked in the shower (giving me a good solid excuse to pay attention). “Why do you bodder?” he searched for each word. “I am so sick of passionless dancers. What is it d’at you want?”

  “I want to dance, to perform. I can’t be in fucking class pour le reste de ma vie.”

  “Il faut choisir. There is nothing ’ere for you. You come home wit’ me tonight and we can talk.”

  He was boarding at his brother’s, a beautiful space, and not something any dancer I knew could probably ever afford. Every apartment in that city was huge and unusual, whereas out west, they were standard cookie cutter. After no food and a gallon of wine from the dépanneur across the street I felt I knew him. And we didn’t sit; dancers drape or lie, or squat or scrunch cross-legged on the floor. We knead our feet, open our legs as wide as possible, to not miss a moment of stretching. I lay on my front like a frog on a specimen tray and drank wine while I worked on my turnout, letting gravity and inebriation pull my hips to the floor while my knees splayed in opposite directions.

  I sensed Bertrand was a rare gentleman. I poured my heart out: “Have I made a mistake? Am I really that bad? Why won’t they take me seriously?” I cried for my dancing (but crying for Daniel was likely a large part of that). I was messy, not the tight-assed Anglophone others had accused me of being. Not tonight. If he didn’t think I was crazy then, he never would. When I was finished, it was his turn and he wouldn’t shut up. I couldn’t figure out what he was saying but it was something about a ballet company in Quebec City. He was rat-a-tatting his Lévis French. “You-stay-in-Montreal-and-train-at-da-Conservatoire-always-’oping-like-the-rest, or-come-dance-with-us-in-Quebec. The Conservatoire? Pah.”

  That’s what I figured he was saying. It’s so much easier to comprehend a second language when you’re drunk. He finished up with a question, looking at me in silence until I realized he had asked me something. “Why do you do it? Why are you ’ere?” he repeated. But I was numb by then. Why did I do it? I was starting to wonder. What was I in pursuit of? Fame? The perfect fouetté? The perfect body? Attention? Love from every one? Love from just one? How long could I go on blaming everyone else? I remember once upon a time it had felt so good.

  That night we slept in Bertrand’s older brother’s big bed and he talked for another hour, face to the ceiling, eyes wide, before he fizzled. His solid body crawled across me to turn off the light. I could feel his warm red-wine breath. He knocked my alcoholic erection with that fat bulge he’d kept in his dance belt. Was this a last shot at getting me to dance with this Quebec company? He may have meant well, but my instincts told me not to touch. I’d seen him briefly with a woman at the Conservatoire, and something else said to wait, just a few more seconds, for Daniel and an answer. I so wanted to hold out for true love.

  I rolled away from him and stared into the dark and saw a kid, me, being shipped off on a bus for a bilingual exchange. It was une échange bilingue. French immersion. Two weeks with a French family and then a boy my age with us for two weeks. I went to a town, Bonneville, in rural Alberta. Big farms and warm wooden houses under a sky so big and clouds so high it could make you say your prayers even if you never went to church. I stayed with a French Canadian family who laughed together, took pride in everything—their food, their children—asked me lots of questions, worried over me, the English kid. They joked that I was one of them. Their son came into my room during the lightning and thunder after a prairie summer day to hold me and never say or think anything about it again. I remember the sheen of his hair. He came back, for his two weeks, to our empty bungalow in Strathcona. How different he must have found us. Our humourless hand folding and knuckle wringing, the television news at the dinner table, the stiff coughs and icy smiles. We caught each other’s eyes across that vast dinner table, but we were strangers.

  Fortunately my instincts were correct. In the morning the girlfriend I had seen him with, Louise, came by for coffee before class. Sex with a man had probably never crossed Bertrand’s ballet-obsessed mind. Anyway, the fantasy of it has gotten me some alone-time mileage. And Louise was built for men more than for dance. She must have made him very happy—and he, her, if she didn’t find him too much. “You stayed over? Even I don’t get that privilege. Don’t want to dishonour the brother’s bed.” She put two pain au chocolat on the table. “Eat, eat,” she said, and we all tore bits off. “He’s told you about Madame?”

  “Madame?”

  “It’s her company. The one in Quebec.”

  “He seems pretty excited about it.”

  “Madame is a genius,” he blurted.

  “What do you think of moving to Quebec City?”

  “Really?”

  “He won’t shut up about you.”

  “But…”

  “You have potential. I mean you’re being a bit sloppy right now, but we all have our phases. You were second soloist. We saw you with the Company.”

  And I had seen her dance at the studio and, although she would never be part of a big company with a figure like hers (a woman’s, not a ten-year-old anorexic boy’s), she had a solid technique and strong natural instincts. For her to devote herself to this company in Quebec City, she must have been a believer.

  “Wow, no one has said anything that nice since I got here. Shit, I’d be honoured.” I was intrigued by the idea of running away, but I still had to convince myself that Daniel had run absolutely cold, for peace of mind.

  After our first café, Bertrand started up again. “Our company is what dance is all about—we honour the dance—we don’t let anyt’ing pass—we are not sloppy like the Conservatoire—they don’t understand how to find the dancer within a person—we are only five—with you, we will be six—you will be dancing all the time—doing what you were meant to do—the big companies they only want paper dolls who have never had a period in their l
ives—am I right, Louise?”

  She rolled her eyes—another of her big assets—brown and dark, arched eyebrows. She was the kind of woman that made you say, If only I were straight… “You see? We do need another male.”

  “We need a good male.” Bertrand slammed his hand on the table.

  “’e’s jealous.”

  “Of whom?”

  “You’re jealous of Jean-Marc, Madame’s pet,” she shouted back at him, as if jealous of his jealousy. She turned to me. “Madame would do anything for Jean-Marc.”

  Jean-Marc, the other male dancer, was their bone of contention. Bertrand obsessed about Jean-Marc. And Louise was miffed by Bertrand’s obsession.

  “We need another male for our New York tour.”

  “New York?” Music to my ears. Daniel would see.

  Madame brought the rest of her little company to Montreal to see Le Ballet Naçional de Cuba at Place des Arts. The hall was filled with Montreal dancers from the Conservatoire, Eddie Toussaint, Les Ballets Jazz and any students who could afford it. I shared the row with Bertrand, Louise, Madame and the Quebec dancers. We waited for Alicia Alonso, the blind legend, to perform with lean, brown-skinned men who swirled around her, doubling as seeing-eye dogs. I closed my eyes, pretending to be meditating. Instead saw my young self in the audience one snowy Edmonton night.

  Big old cars—Cadillacs, Impalas, Buicks—skid toward a downtown theatre. There I am, peering over the window’s ledge into a continuous stream of snowflakes flying by the car. Bored voices from the front seat drop in and out of my little window-world, blankly telling me I am on my way to see something great, that I would probably never see again.

  Ballet.

  It’s your father, (she calls him) who said, “I don’t know why we had to bring him along, he won’t remember.”

  Your mother, (he calls her) said, “It’s easier than getting a sitter.”

  Bringing me along turned unlucky for him. I could have clung to her but, no, I hung on his jacket sleeves, and the curses he muttered under his breath. The theatre was velvety and everything swirled upward. The seats were soft enough to fart silently, unlike the harsh wood pews at Bellamy Baptist. In that world of gilt and gold and plush fabric, the smells were thick, too. A woman’s powdery perfume drifted down her Dippity-do waves of hair, tumbling over the fur collar spread across the seatback, suffocating me, my throat collapsing involuntarily. And as the fur collar inched toward my little flannelled knees, I wondered if I would ever be a grown-up.

  “Don’t touch,” Father scolded.

  “Let him touch it, he’s not bothering anybody. Besides,” she whispered loudly, “it’s only muskrat.”

  They never found out about the sticky mint I glued under that muskrat collar, in the dark, or the giant gumdrop I stuck to the back of some woman’s ermine resting on the radiator. But that was when I didn’t appreciate the price of fur.

  People laugh and whisper, lips touch ears, heads tip toward me with that isn’t-he-cute nod and wink, until the sounds fade with the lights and the heavy blood red curtains obey the jab of the conductor’s baton and magically fold toward the corners of the proscenium.

  And who gave a damn about the dancing back then? Anyone could do it—twirls and twiddles. I was more interested in the ballerinas looking like they had been dipped in icing sugar, and the feathers on their costumes that tickled the men’s noses and clung to their sweaty foreheads when they all danced together. I wished, in that silent world, that someone would sneeze. But real swans were much more graceful, I told mother, and they had longer necks, and didn’t clomp on tippytoe.

  All those cotton candy distractions didn’t compare to my fascination with the danseurs. I could see myself as one of these princes so much more easily than I could see myself wearing a charcoal suit and tie. These men were strong like I dreamed I would be. They had poise, and shoulders and thighs that looked like they were carved from ivory. They flew, lithe and nimble, through the air. Not like us kids who dropped from trees, twisted our ankles, scraped our shins, or awkwardly leapt across prairie ditches in the spring only to fall short of the opposite bank and have our boots fill with icy water. They only bowed to queens and kings. Their legs were smooth, save for a bulge at the top.

  And how could this living statue love a large white bird, when he cared more about his hunting partner? Their big legs bounced them toward each other across the stage, twirled them, too. Then they whispered, touched their hearts and softly stroked each other’s shoulders, like I had been taught not to do, one Edmonton summer afternoon on my way to the river. Benjamin Weinstein and I walked toward the water, and it was my father who shouted, “Boys don’t put their arms around each other.” So we let go and held hands. “And boys don’t hold hands.” We walked shoulder to shoulder, touching, but never again without shame. But the ballet proved me right; the prince and his buddy embraced each other in front of a whole audience, while the other handsome hunters stood like living statues—firm thighs, round butts and bulges—arms draped on one another’s shoulders, waiting for their cue to join in the dance. They didn’t mind showing their round butts, firm thighs and bulges.

  “Why won’t they talk?”

  “Shhh!”

  But how could anyone understand the story if no one talked? Or sang?

  At the intermission women tipped their glasses of rye and ginger and carefully stuck their tongues in their glasses to keep their lipstick from caking, as my mother explained.

  And people kept saying new-RAYE-ev and Fon-TAIN. The men talked, laughed, whispered and belched out words into their rum and Cokes and Scotches, words like commie and ruskie, bohunk and fairy.

  “What’s a commie? What’s a ruskie?” I knew how to be a shit. The women ignored me and stroked my cheeks with the backs of their hands, and I knew, even then, that if I smiled they would say something. “Lovely new teeth—fitting for a dentist’s son.”

  For better or worse, with no brothers or sisters I was the centre of their attention. Everyone said how fortunate my folks were to have such a handsome—blond-haired, blue-eyed and lovely lipped—and well-behaved young man.

  “Your father says you won’t remember, but I’m sure you will.”

  “Your mother has a thing for ruskie fairies.” His jabs had a distinct tone; I knew what to ignore and when to pretend I didn’t understand.

  No one asked if I’d ever be the next New-RAYE-ev.

  At home my mother tucked me into a grown-up bed in my big room, far away from theirs. Indian rugs covered the cold oak floors. They probably still do. You’d never know it was well below zero outside the walls of that big warm bungalow in Strathcona, Edmonton.

  In my bedroom in the basement, I lay in the dark and wondered what it was they liked about going out. Was it the intermission? Seeing their friends? The same reasons they went to church? Or was it a chance to drink cocktails? I figured the husbands went to make the wives happy, and the wives went to dream of princes. As I dozed, I wished I lived in that world where no one spoke and everyone was beautiful. I slept and dreamt of feathers stuck to women, and closed lips miming secrets, while dancers with rock-hard thighs flew through the sky, their tights full of sticky mints.

  Intermissions, for dancers who happen to be sitting in the audience, are the side-shows of life, where egos bow and grovel to be noticed. Since they aren’t up onstage, they make sure everyone around knows they should be; the females wear their buns twice as tight, with enough makeup to ice a wedding cake, while the men wear corduroy pants just as tight, stretched over their butts, belts snug, and walk bolt upright, waddling with toes pointing in opposite directions like ducks. Then they’ll voice their opinions, refer to the stars by nickname—Misha, Rudi—and hope someone notices.

  At intermission, Bertrand’s much-spoken-about Madame, Madame Talegdi, reclined on a bench in the foyer, stretching like a Siamese cat and inhaling cigarette smoke
to her toes. If there was attention to be had, it would have to find its way to her, as far as she was concerned. She looked me over like she was about to eat a big steak and didn’t know where to begin. She was strong, lean and dark. With her dyed-black hair pulled tight to a knot, and her even, capped teeth, you could squint and believe she was a twenty-year-old señorita. Up close, she was an aging Hungarian woman, maybe with a dash of gypsy blood. But her presence filled the foyer. People pointed and whispered; whether they recognized her or not, she was alluring. Blowing that smoke everywhere, she made sure she was noticed. The attention was justified. When I saw her dance in Quebec City I understood. Her legs were rock hard, her ankles were a little thick from two infants and a newborn she hauled around. But she could stay on pointe forever. One afternoon the girls in her small company ran from the room, in tears, because she had shamed them by doing thirty-two fouettés without moving, not travelling so much as the diameter of a dime along the floor.

  Louise and the girls sat at her feet and Bertrand and Jean-Marc, Bertrand’s nemesis, sat beside her. Louise strained to maintain a graceful seated posture, despite her full chest. If she leaned forward she was just way too luscious—a no-no for dancers though no doubt pleasing for any civilian straight males in the theatre. Other, thinner dancers in the lobby would look down on her, but she would smirk because in the end she had the best of both worlds. The Company would have called her “heavy” until she showed signs of anorexia. Someday, in the real world, her body, and all the other shapely ballerina’s bodies I had known, would be appreciated. Until then, they’d have to settle for some crazed taskmaster’s petrified idea of beauty.

  Next to Louise, the other girls appeared to be corpses. Maryse, a buck-toothed and anorexic stick, ignored me outright. Bertrand admitted she could dance but then mimicked her overbite when she turned her back to him. She was all knees, elbows, shoulder blades and grey skin. She snacked on raw celery out of a baggie.