danceislove

After we finish our sandwich we stroll toward the top of Church St.  “Is that an American Apparel?” I exclaim.

“What’s American Apparel?”

“It is!  What do you mean, ‘what’s American Apparel?’”

We enter the store, which is large and extremely well-organized, perhaps owing to the lower real estate prices in Burlington as compared to in Manhattan and on Newbury St.  No one else is inside except the adorable sales assistant, at whom both of us stare as she greets us and assures us that we should let her know if we have any questions.  “All right, we will,” Kendall sings through a grin that I can hear although I’m already fingering the thigh-high striped tube socks.

“Wait a minute.  What are you wearing?” I suddenly ask the girl.  She has boyish figure similar to mine except my cup size is larger.  Of course she is much prettier than I, her short blonde hair and button nose infinitely more eye-catching than my dowdy Eastern European features.

“Here, let me show you.”

“It looks great on you.  I love it.  I’ve always wanted to wear that dress but thought it was too bare for dancing.  I can never figure out a type of bra that would work.  Having a T-shirt on underneath is brilliant though; it looks fantastic.”

She shows me to the dresses and T-shirts.  I try on a gray dress, like hers, tied around my neck halter-style.  Underneath I wear a plain thin black T-shirt, unlike her turquoise version.

“I’ll take both of them, and these,” I say at the counter, adding a pair of the tube socks.

“So, you’re a dancer?” she asks as she slides my credit card.

“Yeah.  I have my own business teaching classes and running dance events.”

“What kind of dance?”

“Lindy hop.  It’s like swing dancing but more intense.”

Kendall elbows me in the ribs as we leave the store.  “Hey, you could have said something about being my partner.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.  I guess I didn’t want her to think -”

“Nah, she wouldn’t have thought that!  Chicks love guys who dance.  Anyway, you’re wearing a ring.”

“Of course.  Silly me.  She was super cute.”

“She was awesome.  OK, I’m gonna get a beer at this place.”

Dance Is Love by Liz Miller
- first 5 pages -

What type of dance do you do?
“Look,” Rosalie said one night, before she left town. “That’s Jennifer’s new boy.”

On top of the admissions table sat a very young man, not boyish, wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans.  He had planted his palms widely behind his torso, dropped one foot on a chair, spread out his limbs the way men do, claiming space.  Between his stubble and dark curls an earring glinted quietly.

“He’s pretty good,” Rosalie said.  She meant at dancing.

“How old is he?” I asked.

“Twelve,” she harumphed.

A song began.  I recognized the orchestra’s brass blast, Ella Fitzgerald’s piercing wail.  It dropped down in increments before it revolved almost chaotically, like cars negotiating detours around Boston’s sunken main artery.  Without pausing for inhale, her voice resolved into the most recognizable word in all of American music: “Baby!”

Then: “Take me down to Duke’s Place!”

A tall guy, graying hair, suburban family type, slid a few feet along the floor toward Rosalie.  He gave her an open-mouthed happy stare.  She let him put his right arm around her, then jockey her forward and back before swinging her out.  Rosalie can execute powerful and mesmerizing hip movement, which the tall guy was smart enough to let her showcase by releasing her in frequent free-spins.  When he did lead patterns, he finished one and started the next too early for the music, before the beat.  Most men do this.

But we overlook the faults.  Dance is like relationships.  We want someone we can count on, someone to guide us, without messing us up.  For that reason Jennifer and I never taught the guys any technique.  We wanted them to stay relaxed, to stick around and dance with us.

“It’s funny that Jennifer’s still teaching lindy hop,” I said to Rosalie, later.

“Why?”

“Because she’s never out dancing.”

“Yeah.  Like you go out so much, Elizabeth,” Rosalie pointed out.

“Not many people like to ‘jump, jive, and swing’ anymore.”

“So?” She twirled one long, light brown curl from beneath the black-and-gray wool cap I had lent her several winters previously.  Rosalie always looked better in my clothes than I did, an annoying quality which usually caused me to relinquish whatever item she’d borrowed.

“People want ‘sizzling salsa!’” I continued.  “Or the box step, to keep from looking like Frankensteins at their wedding.” I held up a hand next to my head, opening and closing it like a duck bill as I mimicked my students in a nasally voice, “‘Just basics, please.  Nothing elaborate…’”

Rosalie rolled her eyes.  “I don’t know how you tolerate those people.”

“They’re just scared, Rosalie,” I said.

“Scared of you!” she countered.

“Well, looks aren’t everything,” I replied.

“Elizabeth,” said a male voice beside me. “Where have you been?”

I looked up to see a smiling old friend, in a maroon a polo shirt and khakis.  Taking both my hands, he gave me a slight push away so that I glided back toward him.  Then he caught me in side-by-side position, his right arm around my back.

“Here, waiting to dance with you, of course,” I answered him.

“Flattery will get you everywhere.”

We glided along the blond wood floor as I followed the twists and turns he set up for me.  This particular friend of mine likes to gaze into his partners’ eyes and dance close with them.  Behind his back some of the women call him “sketchy,” unfairly, in my opinion.  The dance is a roleplay.  Even before either of us were married, I found him particularly harmless.

He led hard and early, though, and I didn’t have time to push into the floor, to feel it deep in the groove between my toes and metatarsals.  I couldn’t rely on his arms to absorb my momentum like responsive springs.  Instead, I got pulled abruptly in different directions.  But he also lifted me into the air.  More than once.  What girl doesn’t love to be swept off her feet?

After the end of the song, and the expected but sincere hug, I drifted toward the stage.  Most of us automatically do that. It’s a good place to sit and watch the room, near the DJ equipment and admissions table, from which Jennifer’s new guy had disappeared.  What did Rosalie say his name was?

Before I could reach the stage, though, Lloyd intercepted me and I danced with him.  You’d never know that Lloyd is older than most of the lindy hoppers, a bit older than even me.  “How’s life, Elizabeth?” he asked me.  “Still teaching lindy hop?  Still working with autistic kids?  What was it - dance therapy?”

I smiled.  In truth I spend most of my time teaching out-of-control pre-schoolers how to ask for food or toys, say hello, and use the bathroom, in the same school system where my husband teaches middle-school history.  Colleagues regard my penchant for dance as a charming novelty:  “Do you want to dance with the kids before snack?  We have about five minutes.”   I’ve given up trying to explain to them why I think rhythmic movement is helpful, or for that matter why occasionally after work I mingle with otherwise perfectly normal adults to indulge in a style of dance from 1930s Harlem.

Lloyd updated the 30’s, as he always had before, with hip hop body movement that not many other white men can match.  Also, I let him dip me incorrectly because his arms alone are strong enough to support me when his weight is aimed toward the floor.  Think about it:  if you are leaning far over the girl, both her body weight and yours are headed in the same direction.  Down.  This is the way most men dip, and the reason they sometimes drop their partners, even when the girl is light.

Lloyd stuck mainly to twirls and dips. The room reeled past my eyes and I felt a pleasant dizziness. When swung me out, though, he left me with no energy, pushing himself off my back to complete the required 360 degrees of rotation.

The next song was Lionel Hampton’s “Lavender Coffin,” with its strident brass melody over gospel handclaps.  Even the awkward dancers and the extra women on the stage couldn’t help nodding their heads and moving their shoulders.  I caught Rosalie’s eye.  She threw her arms to the sky and swished her legs. I went over to her.

She said, “Every time this song comes on I think of that competition piece you did with what’s-his-name from California.”

“Yeah, just mimic me, I don’t mind.”

“Well, jeez, you don’t have to get so prissy about it!”

“Who wound up winning that division?  Probably Belinda and Clark?  I think they were already dancing together by that time.”

“Please,” Rosalie rejoined, rolling her eyes again.  “I’m SUCH a better dancer than Belinda.”

“And she’s a little on the heavy side.”

“Pff.  I’m way thinner than her.  She needs to lose a few pounds.  I mean.  Clark should be able to throw her fifteen feet in the air, not just ten.”

“Hey, what about Jennifer’s boy?  Is he still here?”

Rosalie emitted one syllable on several pitches, unequivocally communicating the phrase, “I don’t know.”

I flicked my eyes once around the room before saying, “Well, my dear, I have to go.”

“Say hi to Peter, and pet the cats for me.”

As I emerged from the church, an unfamiliar calm spread through my body and warmed my face in the February night.  I didn’t know what was going on.  I darted my eyes both ways along Mason Street, up toward Radcliffe as I strolled the bricked sidewalk.  Mentally I groped for the inner self-evaluation, the conviction that anything I do is automatically nonsense, by definition shameful.  That inner judge had gone, but surely was just on break, would be right back.  I peered into the drop-cloth of night over bare branches and halos of streetlight in Cambridge Common.  From some unknown source emerged the idea that the movements of my head and the input from my eyes were all exactly right, because I had chosen them.

What an exquisite thing: to exist, without apologizing for taking up some of the earth’s space.

Perhaps I need to go dancing more often.

Why did you stop being a professional?
The first thing I usually remember is a specific moment.  Running.  Running, almost stumbling, toward the big rectangular brown water jugs at the back of the ballroom.  Running away.  From, who else, Alexander Boom.  We had just danced.  Twice.  He had said, casually, “We should catch up sometime,” and I had said, just as casually, “You always say that.  Why don’t we catch up now?” We were not, technically, dating, but we had been at his sister’s wedding only a few weeks before.  That is another story, for another time when you have maybe five hours, not now.  So we danced, twice, and that was already too much, too much of feeling what we felt for each other.

At the water jugs, I found Joel, with whom I had swung out more than any other guy; Joel, who had a lead like the perfect, unpredictable motion of water, and who made me fall in love with him regularly.  We had danced earlier that night, and I couldn’t bear not being good enough for him.

This all occurred at American Lindy Hop Championships 2000, where I competed with my hotshot partner from California.  Alexander had inexplicably shown up, to watch us, he said.  We weren’t that good, though, my partner and I.  We had good ideas, not well-executed.  We didn’t win, didn’t place, and when our friends approached us and told us how well we had done, how much they had liked our costumes (elaborate churchgoing garb supposedly appropriate for the gospel tune to which we danced), I smiled and felt acute stabs of pain: I was not a good dancer; I was practically 28.

I would never be a good dancer and I would never escape the pain of love, as long as I stayed in the arms of the lindy hop.

So I finished graduate school, and got married….

Dance Is Love is the true story concerning three years in the life of a Liz Miller, a professional swing dancer based in Boston.
Synopsis for Dance Is Love by Liz Miller
When my husband, a handsome former navy pilot, says he is too busy to help me teach a beginner swing dance class, I decide to replace him with a new young dancer whose talent has begun to revitalize the Boston scene.  Kendall wants to do more than just teach a beginner class, though, and soon I am working as his partner in performances and competitions.  I stop watching movies at home with my husband and forget to arrange double-dates with co-workers.  I make a commitment to working as an artist.  Kendall’s charismatic charms affect me profoundly, but instead of pursuing a romantic liaison I train and diet as hard as I can to be the best possible dance partner.  Simultaneously, I know that to Kendall I’m only a stepping stone, and that he will soon leave Boston for the more visible and lucrative international scene.  Now will I keep dancing, or choose to save my marriage?

“Wanna throw something?” Kendall asks.

“Sure.”

“Pancake?”

Usually he doesn’t even make a suggestion:  leaves it up to me.  But I like his idea, even though we haven’t thrown the pancake in a few weeks.  At this point it doesn’t matter.  Briefly I flash to Saturday afternoon of Swingin’ New England, when, in Kendall’s and Lisa’s and my hotel room, Clark described his and Tommy’s show.  They were going to do a pancake, with Clark throwing.  “I’m not gonna even practice that shit,” Clark declared.  “I’m just gonna fuckin’ do it.”

Kendall and I go in the jam.  Around us, Jacques and Janna, Babs and Christopher, and a few other Boston dancers clap.  We have staked out a carpet square of space next to the stage in the MFA auditorium, where The Kendrick Oliver Band is rocking the bejeezus out of “Jumpin’ At The Woodside.”  Kendall’s and my swing-outs feel stretchy and snappy yet relaxed.  He leads me into tandem and then I follow his variations, remembering to send energy out through my limbs, like Spiderman, as Bonnie suggested.  I’m Ellie, watch me go! I think to myself, and then I hear Jacques on the side hollering, “We’re going to do California after this!” just as Kendall leads a circle and I know he’s going to tuck me out and throw me.  He answers Jacques, “Yeah,” and immediately says to me, “Ready?”

“Ready.”

I wait for the stretch and then rush Kendall, plant my hands through his legs and behind his heels, let my legs fly up and crunch my abs as he throws me.  My time in the air feels at least twice as long as normal, and my arms hook in back of his neck as my insteps cushion the floor for an instant before he pops me up again so high my knees catch not so much around his waist as just beneath his arms.  Then he carries me to the side and we get in line with the rest of J. Bucket.  Kendall doesn’t change the grip for the lamppost, which feels as easy as a swing-out but with air, high and fast.  “Here we go,” he says, just before the A-frame, and I yell “yeah,” and push down through my hands with everything I have in my chest and shoulders and arms.  I float.  I land.

Saturday, January 19th, before going to a lindy hopper’s 30th birthday party at her studio apartment on Beacon Hill, Peter and I had dinner at Martsa’s on Elm.  We’d waited two weeks for the place to re-open. Unfortunately the new burnt-orange decor - dominated by large metallic rectangles enclosing awkward branched designs - accompanied a decline in food quality: everything tasted sweet.  I had to write notes to Peter because my laryngitis was now full-blown.  We discussed, among other things, Kendall’s penchant for removing his shirt after dances and leaving it off.  He had done this the previous night, in the conference room of Springstep.  Peter and I agreed that such behavior was disrespectful.

Shortly after I relinquished half of my stir fry to the bus boy - who had earlier cleared Peter’s dishes; the place was bustling and crowded - I’d suddenly had my fill of noise, and of cold wind as folks arrived and departed in a steady stream.  On one of the yellow stickies I’d brought, I scrawled, “I’m going to the liquor store.”  I bolted up, squirmed around our small table and exited while Peter went for the bathroom.

I didn’t know that the smaller bottles of good whiskey lived behind the counter, so I had to wait for Peter to arrive and counsel me as I frowned at the $50 price tags on the store’s accessible shelves.  A skinny, chatty, extensively pierced girl rung us up for a Johnny Walker Black.  “I like your shirt,” Peter said to her, and I wondered if his comment was calculated, since its benign black and white stripes contrasted with everything else in her outrageous visual presentation.  For example, a huge belt buckle over tight ripped low-riding jeans screamed, “LICK ME.”

The party was forgettable from my point of view.  It was pleasant to hug a warmly buzzed birthday girl, but when Kendall saw me he mocked me, hoarsely exclaiming, “Evelyn, what?  What?  What did you say?”  I tried to just ignore him and instead smiled apologetically in turn at Cara, Lloyd, Babs, and Christopher.  I wrote a few notes to them and they graciously bore with me.  The one good thing that came out of the party was that I found out the Kendrick Oliver Band was to play at the MFA on Monday, Martin Luther King day, and lots of dancers were going to attend.

“Lynn, come over here.” Kendall pointed me in the direction of a cute little brunette talking with Jake.

“I totally want to learn lindy hop!” she said to me.  I gave her my card, then smiled and nodded in response to the rest of her chatter.

“The question is,” Kendall took up a few minutes later, “is Jake going to get laid tonight?”

I heaved a sigh and scribbled, “Ask me if I care.”  I put the yellow sticky in Kendall’s face.  Next I wrote, “I think we’re gonna head out.”

“Oh.  Are you taking this with you?”  Kendall lifted the mostly-empty bottle of Johnny Walker.

I shook my head.

“OK.  Then you can go.”

From: Hannah Arista
To:  Evelyn Graham
Monday, January 14, 2008
9:07pm

Clark Giordano sent me an email saying that you and Kendall might be interested in coming to Baltimore for the Leap Year Lindy Weekend we are having.  He actually said that you might teach one day in exchange for taking Clark and Amy’s classes the other day.  Do I have that right?

If so, then let’s do it!  We arranged to have four 75-minute classes each day….

I’m including the list of classes that Clark and Amy are teaching.  Thanks!

love ya
Hannah
___________________________________
“What does he say?” Kendall asked as he drove me and Jake to the Monday night dance after the three of us had held a practice at Seaport.   Will Dailey’s “Madness” was on the stereo.

I recited:
If I fall asleep tonight, you could be in my dreams
Yeah, what I’m tryin’ to say is, will you sleep next to me?
Yeah, what I’m tryin’ to tell you is you should come over
‘Cause there’s a piano here, and I know you like to play till your fingers bleed.

Then I said,  “Put it back.  ‘If I fall asleep tonight’.  I love that.”

He scrolled the song back. His new car, a small red Honda Fit, for which he’d traded his old Volkswagen and a few grand (the latter supplied by Debbie, I think) had an iPod jack, and now I could DJ anything when we were in the car together.  Jake occupied the passenger’s seat this evening, though, so my musical desires had to be requested verbally.

“Now what does he say there?” I asked, as Kendall hooked the car around on Mass Ave toward Garden St.

“‘I’m holding on so carefully/ ‘Cause lust roots itself alone, at sea,’” Kendall sang.

“Hmm, okay,” I said uncertainly.

The next day, Tuesday, as I walked along snowy sidewalks beneath ice glazed trees, I texted Kendall:  “‘Lust roots itself in lunacy.’”

“You’re right,” he responded.  “awesome.”

All things considered, I have come a long way since the night I sprinted through Harvard station and met with pain and stiffness in my knee, followed by retreat and disappointment in my life.

When Kendall first entered the Tavern that night, I let his eyes move in search of me just a beat longer than I would have anyone else, enough time to think to myself, he is looking for me.

I waved him over, accepted his hug, the brown All Balboa Weekend hoodie with white trim, American Apparel brand; he wears it nearly all the time.

“I started a tab,” I informed him.

“Hot.”  Slowly, he shifted his center of gravity to lean on the bar.

The lovely blue-jeaned bar gal came over and he ordered a specific beer.  Then somebody called his name.

“Hey hey, kid.”  He turned to shake the hand of some preppy longhair, undoubtedly a friend from Andover.  “This is Lynn, my dance partner.”  The prep raised his eyebrows at Kendall.  Both of us updated the friend (whose name I promptly forgot) on Kendall’s swing dance prowess and expanding fame.  Then the guy went to rejoin his girlfriend, and I took another swallow of my syrupy cocktail.

Kendall and I chatted while watching the Celtics maintain a 30-point lead over the Raptors and I attempted a veiled slinkiness.  Bar stools are good for that.  Of course, anything veiled is lost on most men, especially men under 30.

Peter arrived just as Kendall began the story of how he met Cara:  the North End bar, the witty conversation, the men who asked him what he’d said to command the attention of no fewer than four girls at a time.  As he spoke, he grinned, darted his gray-green eyes about, swayed subtly and gracefully with laughter and appreciation at his own desirability.  As I watched him fairly dance on the stool, I noted something tense at the center of his carefully built aura, something that tinged his story with insecurity and arrogance.  On top of that, I realized, after a few minutes of listening - while by contrast, Peter focused only on the game over our heads - that Kendall’s story was boring me.

Thus the mirage I’d construed around Kendall - no doubt with his help - melted; inspiration born from infatuation drained away, leaving dopamine swirling uselessly in my brain.

The light and life ignited thirteen months before at Seaport Hotel, over a Bellini and Mediterranean plate, with students we undoubtedly hoped would become our fans, was now concluded.  He was still sexy in that All Bal jacket, but when he took leave of me and Peter to go to a house party, I knew everything was finally over.

I was stumped.  I didn’t want to go home, but in the absence of anything more appealing to do, and with my buzz completely dead, that is in fact where Peter and I went.

“Hot date with Cara tonight?”  I texted, and continued tearing through the house.  Just before I got in the shower I received his reply:  “no plans yet.  game’s on at 7:30.  u?”

He’d taken my bait.  Of course, this is one reason I like Kendall.  He enjoys interaction.  Many people eschew it.  Stella, for example.

I flew in my rehearsed comment:  “I’m going to EMS to buy boots and a sweater, then to Casablanca to drink my dinner.  Anyone can join.”

“where’s casablanca?” appeared immediately.

At that moment another message popped up, this one from Peter:  “Is it OK if I get a beer with the coaches?”

“Sure” was my response - no punctuation.  I switched to the screen with Kendall’s conversation and keyed, “Brattle St.  Next to EMS.  Below Cafe Algiers.  It might be fun to watch the game in a bar.”

“it would,” he agreed.

I showered, shaving everything, thinking crazy thoughts.  I put on a black knit turtleneck dress from American Apparel, thigh-high gray socks, fringy crimson shawl, big hoop earrings.

“i still have to eat something and shower.  call me when u are done shopping,” was Kendall’s last text to me before I finally left the house.  I was out!  Thank god!

On Friday December 7th I got up early to drive in with Peter and teach a new client in Weston.  While waiting for the train back I took out my iPhone and keyed an email to Kendall briefly expounding on the concept of the anti-hero in the book Lolita and the film Thank You For Smoking. He had run out of steam reading the former and I wanted him to finish it.  The fact that his thoughts on novels and movies ran only marginally deeper than Peter’s (as a tangential illustration, Peter enjoyed The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, loved the horrible movie Waitress [with Keri Russell and Cheryl Hines], and he’d probably eat up anything by Nicholas Sparks) did not deter me from hoping the younger man would join me in intellectual discussion.

My hope was not currently founded on much.  Recently, even our musical debates produced only short bursts of energy.  Some of the CDs I’d carefully made for him had not inspired a half-conscious listen, much less spontaneous comment.  That warm September day I returned his car after dropping him off at his manicure and unloading equipment at my house, I left CD entitled “Folky” in plain sight on his passenger seat.  It made no impact.

Perhaps he had simply not liked that mix as much as the others I’d made for him.  Not so long ago, he witnessed my arrival at an important musical realization.  I was describing to him an interview with Dave Grohl I’d heard on the radio.

“I think you’d like the interview.  I’ll try to find a link to it,” I’d said to Kendall.  “Grohl’s a pretty smart guy.  It was especially interesting for me to hear him describe his experiences writing songs for Foo Fighters.  He said that it was hard to follow Kurt Cobain’s act because, apparently, Cobain’s stuff was so beautiful and simple at the same time.”

Kendall didn’t say anything right away and I mulled over the comments I made.  Suddenly I spoke again.  “Hey, who do you think is better?  Nirvana or Foo Fighters?”

Now Kendall did not hesitate.  “Foo Fighters.”

“That’s what I think, too,” I mused, realizing it for the first time.  “Maybe it’s blasphemy to say that since Cobain’s dead.

However, Kendall did not respond to the email about anti-heros that I sent him on December 7th.  Instead, as I was winding down for a nap at 3pm, I got a call from Cassandra: she could go to American Apparel and look at T-shirts.  I suggested 5:00.

Inevitable winter darkness closed in around the studio as I pushed through reps of yoga and pilates poses, then dumbbell rows and leg lifts.  Sex in the City episodes played on my laptop.  My heart rate had not been elevated in over a week, and my mood was suffering.

Lying on my purple yoga mat, legs splayed and stretched up the wall, I called Cassandra.  My phone actually worked in this corner of the condo.

When she answered I was thinking of how I’d doll myself up to go shopping, commandeer several dressing room mirrors to admire my still-slender figure in new AA-wear.

“Oh, I realized that I’m going to dinner with my boyfriend,” Cassandra was saying, “and I need time to get ready.”

I flopped my legs to one side and stood up.  Blackness pressed the windows.  It was 4:56, another two and a half hours at least before Peter would be home.

For once I lacked any desire to work.  Nevertheless I went to the big computer and tamped the space bar.  The Gmail window emerged, showing a small orange-topped box in the lower right corner.  Kendall had tried to initiate a chat, just before leaving work at 4:22: “Did you reserve any more times at the Dance Complex?”

I called the venue, then texted Kendall the new times, adding, “Call me when u get a chance,” though there was no need.  Anyway, he was doubtless at the gym, currently.

Something had to be done with this Friday night.  I put on Will Dailey, did the dishes, and attacked my closet.  It was time to get rid of all these stupid clothes, buy decent boots and a sweater, especially since with my knee bones bruised I couldn’t work myself warm.

I’m a chemical, yeah it’s natural

A good time is the gift that keeps on giving.  My mind played back the show at the Paradise, Kendall turning to me, singing the lyrics early, exaggerating Will’s inflection.

I filled three Whole Foods paper bags with cast-offs, cleaned the bathroom, and sang along with Will.  The opening piano octaves of “Bipolar Baby” brought rapturous surprise to my soul, despite having heard them now hundreds of times.  Every fifteen minutes, I checked my phone.

Kendall texted at 6:24:  “i had a chance and called u.  those times look good to me.”

I keyed, “Sorry, I thought I’d found a spot in my house where I actually had reception.  I guess not.”

Five minutes later he responded, “that’s why i’ll never get at&t.”

As I fought with myself over whether and how to keep this conversation going, a switch tripped.  It’s the one that, up until now, I’ve held back against its spring, sometimes with all of my weight; other, longer periods, seemingly without effort.  It’s the one that keeps my blood in my body, prevents the exchange of my entire life for a momentary rush, tethers me to security and tolerable self-image, holds off public suffering - my own and that of others.  Dread, desperation and darkness fed a small flame of mischief: perhaps I would bleed, but it was too late to worry about that.

The T-shirt discussion seemed close to either resolution or impasse.  I was advocating for using a small New York City screen printer that Peter and I had visited while in Manhattan over Thanksgiving.  Cassandra was for some reason trying to convince us to buys cheaper, less well-fitting tees, telling me I could cut them down and sew them however I wanted, as if that appealed to me in the least.

“So,” said Kendall, looking up at me - I had already stood up to put on my coat - 
“we’d get the shirts to Kayla, and she’d ship them back to us?” He was referring to his New York girlfriend.

“Yeah, it does sound like a lot of hassle,” I said.  “I don’t know.  It was just an idea.”

“Lynn.  You keep saying that.  And now you’re putting your backpack on.”  He was regarding me with a neutrality that possessed more power than anything I could imagine.

I froze.

“It’s OK,” Peter said, mumbled, half-asleep, from the couch near the door.

“You can stay for another minute,” kendall continued.  “I mean, I was just asking what Kayla was going to do with the shirts.”

I frequently equate a mere question with criticism or censure.  Now, not only had Kendall helped me to understand this, he was being patient in the process.  I felt gloomily undeserving.

As we finished the discussion - Cassandra getting one more word in about sewing my shirt - I said my goodbyes.  Kendall held out his fist.  I knocked it with mine, looked at him and said, “Thank you.”  I couldn’t elaborate in the presence of Cassandra and Peter.

Kendall held my gaze for a moment.  But to be sure he understood, I emailed him when I got home.