Strip (2 page)

But, whatever else he may have been, Daniel Tremaine was a perfectionist, and did give two shits about my technique. I still believe that. No man had ever been as direct. When we went for that coffee on rue Saint-Denis (there are some perks to being a professional dancer: you have time off at odd hours of the day; you feel physical one hundred percent of the time; you can sit in a Montreal café with the famous Daniel Tremaine while the world buzzes around you; and you can dream), he told me more, in his killer kind of way. “If you want any kind of life as a dancer you must pay attention. You started late?”

“I swam competitively until about five years ago.”

“So you're twenty?”

“No. I'm going on twenty-two. Swimming was boring.”

“The dancer's friend.”

“That's true.” It had made me supple and strong, but I needed more than endless hours of lengths at 5:30
a.m
., five mornings a week, and in Edmonton winters. “But when I started dancing…”

“It's no use starting late only to finish early. So they've given you a job after five years of this.”

“A bit longer, I danced and swam…”

“Why second soloist?”

“I was next in line.”

“You should be further along. You get paid a little more than corps. So what? If you stay on this path you'll be in a wheelchair by the time you are thirty, teaching little girls to point their toes for the rest of your life. You obviously have a gift. Don't abuse it.” These were the first positive words I'd heard him say. “And don't be arrogant. They always need males, especially in the Company. The prairies are a wasteland. Males don't last there.”

“They're born there.”

“The prairies are too limiting, too Russian. Maybe Vaganova will make you strong, but your muscles will bulge and your joints will turn to putty.”

I bit my lip, while he sneered. “You'll be bulky with t'ighs like the Winnipeg football team. What do you call them?”

“The Blue Bombers.”

“The Blue Bombers—there'll be no difference, in their white tights and dance belts.”

“Jockstraps.”

The right corner of his mouth reached the far corner of his eye, as he stifled a laugh. “You must know
tu es adorable
.” He flicked at a bag of sugar, “But your knees,
mon ami
, won't last.”

“You're telling me to give up on second soloist?”

“The Company repertoire is tired and boring.
Romeo and Juliet
is their newest ballet in what, thirty years?

“The Company's expanding.”

“Not if they want to tour.”

He was right;
Romeo and Juliet
had been a gamble that paid off. And as far as my knees were concerned, he was right; they burned every time I stepped up onto the street curb, although they were fine in the studio. The hours I had spent dancing now rivalled all of my schooling, ever. As a child I badly wanted to get up on that stage with Nureyev and Fonteyn, even if I was going to be stuck beside the scenery or in the shadows, holding Rudi's cloak. No matter if it was
The Nutcracker
,
Rodeo
or
Swan Lake
that my mother took me to, sitting in the audience while the action was onstage was pointless.

Seven years ago I stopped twirling around the basement, slipping on the carpet, wearing holes in my socks. I stopped dreaming. In fact, it was a Thursday in early December that I took the leap and lied about a trip to the doctor for a flu shot. Yes, I climbed that same narrow staircase that led to our family doctor, but kept right on going. Up. Up to the place that made the high ceiling in the doctor's office throb and sent fine plaster dust snowing down during checkups. Six months earlier, on the staircase where I had previously seen only armies of young girls with tight buns on their heads, I saw two male dancers ascend. If there were other men dancing in Edmonton, I would, too, but it took six more months of dreaming, yearning, gathering my gumption.

Soon I lied about other things—swim practice, movies, getting together with friends. All traded for a dream. (Look at me now, lying about everything, to everyone, myself included—sitting in this stairwell, now, has nothing to do with the dream.) Up I went, like Alice following the rabbit down the hole, but in the other direction, to a wonderland of Chopin played on out-of-tune pianos, the thick scent of old lady perfume, sweat, talcum powder. Bodies wafted corner to corner across creaky floors, mirrors for walls, boxes of resin in room corners, people dashing from dressing rooms to studios, draped on the barre, sitting splayed in hallways, stretching, waiting for their class to begin. In the musty windowed office Lisa, my first teacher, looked over the class list. “Are you a football player?”

“I swim.”

“We get football players. Their coach sends them. A few times and then they're gone. It can't be the tights, can it?” She smiled at me. I relaxed. “God, football. Football is some kind of abomination to human movement. It frightens me to see these guys with clunky feet and mitts for hands—banging their knees sideways. Funny, in the long run, ballet is probably going to do as much damage.” She winked at me.

“I want to dance.”

“Show up regularly and I won't charge you.”

After the class, she stopped me at the door. “Will we see you again?” She smiled. My father could have adjusted her slightly protruding eye teeth. I could tell by her openness that she liked men, a lot. She said a lot of guys who started late had careers. I couldn't believe we were talking about free classes, talking about careers, like it was a possibility and not just a dream. My whole world was starting to shift. I was involved in something I absolutely loved.

“Keep swimming,” Lisa said, “for now.”

So there I was plié,
tendu
with the beginner adults, women and the two men I had seen on the stairs. Then Lisa threw me into a room of little girls balancing on tippytoes, learning the syllabus, for a moment, and after that into seasoned recreational adults with timid wrists and tight fingers, until she figured I could rub shoulders with those who had hoped to be dancers one day, and along with them classes of serious teens with talent, strength, discipline and their dreams still in front of them. This all meant that some nights I was at the studio for up to four hours. The girls needed a male partner for their exams, and the adults wanted partners to make class more challenging. And all I wanted to do was dance. A simple port de bras at the barre was enough to satisfy the craving. I couldn't wait to get to the studio, change, stretch the soreness out of my muscles and see how much further I could turn and how much more controlled I could be when I leapt. At night I dreamt I was so much better. When I swam I reached for the end of the pool; now when I danced, I reached for the heavens.

“Just turn,” Lisa shouted, while I made myself dizzy with
tour en l'air
. “Worry about your technique later, just get around for God's sake. Be careless.”

Classmates started to recognize me as a dancer. And if I recognized them on the street, they'd introduce me as “one of the dancers from the studio.” It seemed unfair that because of my sex I was fast-tracked. Being called a dancer can be like a drug. Yet I didn't feel deserving of the title, not then.

Soon Lisa asked me to come and dance with a group of retired pros in the morning in the Company class. “Stay in the back,” she told me, “and follow. You'll get it.” I skipped school to make that class, and soon we were rehearsing for festivals as far away as Red Deer. Fantasy ballets. Ukrainian folk dancing—holding the girls by the waist on cue—them grabbing my arm, run here, run there. Jump. Kick. Wait for the applause. Bow. I begged off my parents' European tour (it was Mom who wanted me along, not Dad) with the excuse of a part-time job, but while they toured Europe, I toured the sun-baked stages at Alberta county fairs. Old ladies and the odd queer stage door Johnny off the farm were my fans. I looked like an honest-to-God dancer.

My body took to it. My brain. My balance. My thighs thickened, counterbalancing my aching butt. “You've got to stretch all the time,” Lisa said, “especially in this heat—take advantage of the heat. You need strength up the back of your legs, too.” My swimmer's shoulders screamed with each new partner I lifted. My lower back ached. And I couldn't keep my eyes off myself. I am still obsessed with the potential for beauty, proportion and line.

Lisa had said I wasn't too old, and when Madame Défilé, Lisa's wrinkled, stooping boss and mentor—and a Canadian dance icon whose old-woman perfume scent infused the place—learned I was serious, she challenged me, as if to prove Lisa wrong. “You're the swimmer,” she said in fading Queen's English. “Maybe we can make a dancer out of you, but I doubt it.” She would grab my leg at the top of a
grand battement
and push it higher, shoving her sharp nails into the back of my knee. “Don't cheat!” She shouted her commands. With her back to me she would pull my thigh from its joint, while leaning against me to keep my hip back, in a tug-of-war with my torso. Then she'd shake my arms. “You've got to press the weight of the world
down
. They aren't just there to hang off the side of your trunk. Now presssssssss!”

To get what she wanted, she slapped me and screamed until her pale powdered face turned pink. From time to time she would throw me out of the class and then ask me what the hell I was doing sitting in the waiting area and “Get the bloody hell back in here you bloody son of a bitch, if you want to dance then bloody dance for the love of God. Show some spine.” I suppose I was a whipping post for all the princes who had never courted her. Once and only once did she waver. We were facing the barre in arabesque and I tightened the hell out of my lower back while squeezing my butt to get my leg up, the muscles fighting each other to maintain the form, while stretching my leg through to the end of my foot. “Now John, that's good,” she said. Did I hear that correctly? The pianist stopped playing, the other students fell silent.

“You others would do well to follow this young man's example. He's working bloody hard to make up for lost time and though he may not make it, I have a feeling he'll die trying.” Her compliments were calculated and short-lived. “Swimming isn't enough. Do weights,” she shouted. “Cans of soup if you must, lots of repetitions, until it burns. And push-ups. Drop and do forty. Now! You wait until you have a men's class, then tell me you want to dance. Swimmer ha! Have you thought of joining the army? It would be a hell of a lot easier.” In spite of her reputation—she had garnered a Governor General's award bringing ballet to the prairies—she was slowly forgetting and being forgotten. It was obvious she would never get the perfection she demanded from anyone. In the end, I heard, she died alone.

Maybe I can blame this all on Lisa: she said I could do it.

 

But Daniel didn't have
time for these trivialities. “Everyone wants a kick at the can,” he said. “You won't be pretty forever, you know. In the meantime… you can kiss me.”

“Here?”

“You're in Montreal now.”

“And?”

“You have a
look
.”

“I scraped my nose on the bottom of the pool. I was fifteen.”

He didn't care. “No. You are more than second soloist material. Any male can become a second soloist, if he has a pulse. You have line, proportion, height. You're already halfway there. But you could be a prince. You'll reach your prime a little later than normal but you were born to be a prince.”

“That's my plan.”

“Then you are going about it the wrong way. You'll be a shabby has-been—on the prairies—and that's all. You'll be bored to tears. How many times can you dance
Fall River Legend
, or
Rita Joe
? It's a small dusty repertoire of museum pieces.”

I realized he was encouraging me to leave the Company; dancers never berated Agnes de Mille, or Vaganova or Russian technique for that matter. My head spun, this time without my body attached.

“Montreal can be your threshold to the bigger world of dance: the States, Europe.” But I only wanted to go where he would be. “It's a nice nose, by the way,” he said.

“Yours is nice, too.” Actually, his was magnificent.

“It's one of my Mohawk parts. I'll show you the rest later.” My heart swelled, my chest expanded, but it was my legs I had to squeeze tight. This was a head-to-toe solid dance master, a real man that, for some reason, I had all to myself.

I followed his steps closely. He took me back to his home, the kind of place where you're never sure if you're inside or out—loft, terrace, rooftops, skylights and trees—and that's where he wrapped his wiry arms around me. There was a ballet barre in his huge bedroom. I saw him moulding me into the next Godunov.

“Come here.” He pulled me to his mattress on the floor.

“Baryshnikov sleeps on the floor, too, but without a mattress.”

“Baryshnikov is nothing but bullshit stories about Baryshnikov.”

Up to then, only six men had touched me, physically, in my life. And each time felt like the first, and freed me once again from all the years of indecision, confusion, questioning and holding back. It had been an adolescence marked by disappointment, pretence and fakery. The breakthrough came when the swim coach offered me his Speedo, the day I forgot mine. I knew my fate when I surreptitiously took it home to spend some alone time with it, later telling him that I rinsed it for him. Our eyes met when I handed it back to him early one morning. Then, on a subsequent out-of-town swim meet, he pretended to be tipsy (as I had done up to then, when it came to begging off kissing my latest girlfriend), but it was me who took advantage of him. Desire put me in the driver's seat, but he knew exactly what he was doing on that motel bed.