danceislove

Boston
“I’ve started playing guitar again,” Kendall said to me last night at the Vietnamese restaurant we went to with Eva and Jack, after they helped us demonstrate some basic swing moves for the local TV station talk show.

“Really?”  I held his gaze.  His life has changed because of me.

“Last night my roommate and I were singing-”

“They sing every night!” Eva cried.  She is staying at Kendall’s place for a week, following up her New Hampshire camp experience with tourism in Boston.

“Last night we sang ‘Mr. Jones,’” he finished.

“Without me?” I bantered, the internal switch flipping, emotions tunneling under before anyone saw.

It wasn’t his reaction to our showing at Wicked Lindy, nor his mother’s confidence, that has done this as neatly or entirely or distractingly as the fact that I made him play: I believe that he loves me.  And so I despair.
_____________________________
“I feel like we’re not connecting, like I can’t feel your hips.  There’s a disconnect right here.”  Kendall leads it again.  We are at J. Bucket practice, one week after Labor Day.  “Do you feel that?”

Even though I am not looking in the mirror for once, I can see the sheepish tension in my shoulders as I answer, “I don’t know.  I think I need to warm up.  I feel like I haven’t danced in days.”

I find a midtempo Basie tune on my iPod and we dance to it.

Number one is relax.  Number two is find the floor.  Three is center, over your feet.  Feel the connection through your ring finger.  Let your pecs engage.  Don’t kill the momentum.  Breathe.  Follow.  Where’s the floor.  Relax.  Find center.  Keep your arm loose.  Go.  Keep going, keep going.  Keep turning, with the velocity he gave you.  Love the connection.  Oh yeah, hips!  Let’s see if I can find that stretch.  Where is it?

He says, “Cool.”

I say, “Was that any better?”

All of a sudden he sighs and turns away.  Then he faces me again and exclaims, “I don’t want to evaluate you!”

“Okay,” I say.  I’m scared. He’s not supposed to lose control.  I’m the one that gets to fall apart and repent and await his judgment.  What happens now?

What happens now is Babs.  As Kendall tries to lead me through some of the material we learned at camp, Babs helps diagnose what Kendall is doing wrong.  She keeps saying how ridiculous the footwork is for the follower.  Kendall’s manner is not that welcoming to her but she perseveres, neutrality and lightness pervading her comments and demonstrations, until it’s time for Kendall and me to go teach class at Springstep.

We are down two flights of carpeted hotel stairs and out the revolving door before I find the courage to say, “I’m sorry if I made you mad earlier.”

“Well, we need to talk about us.”

“Ha ha ha, that’s funny.”

We get in his car.

“Do you want to talk now?” I say. “Or -”

“We need to really connect, to move like one person.  And that’s hard because we dance together every day.  If we mess up it’s not a big deal, you know?  It’s like Bonnie says, variations come from fuck-ups.  It’s like, oh, I didn’t have my balance so I put my foot there, and that turned into something awesome.  I need inspiration - that’s what I get from these dance weekends I go to.”

He misses dancing with the best gals in the world.  He wants me to inspire him now.  I’m more scared.

“What did you think of the stuff we were trying tonight?” he asks.

“I was just trying to be a blank slate, to follow as best I could, so you could do what you wanted to do.”

“I think the time for that is over.  You have good ideas.  You don’t give yourself enough credit.”

Thursday
We teach a good class but afterwards but my dancing sucks.  Left foot in front of my body before one of the swing-out.  No finger tone.  Arm tension.

“Keep turning.”

Kendall leads the move again, switching my direction as I travel down the slot.  He still has my hand but I am supposed to let it wrap behind my back.  I should have understood this instantly, not just at the third iteration.

“Oh, OK, now I get it.  Duh. I think I was just having a freak-out moment.”

“Three times?!” he laughs.

Before class we went to the Fountains of Wayne show in Copley Square.  I belted lyrics at the summer sky, staring at the Hancock tower, then the guitarist’s beer, then to my right where the cute girls danced, before finally glancing at at my sunglassed dance partner, singing also, knowing all the words.  In between songs we discussed, as we sometimes do, our recent workout schedules.  “My arms are so sore,” he complained.  “I worked them out two days in a row, ‘cause today I was at the gym with my buddy and he wanted to do arms.”

“I’m a hundred and three pounds now,” I bragged.  “My therapist thinks that’s too thin.”

“Haha.  No it’s not.”

Now I am exhausted.  Part of me knows it.  Another part says, “Pretend you’re Ellie from Montreal! Keep going! Just dance!”

But Kendall calls it a night and gives me the longest hug ever.  “I don’t want us to get mad at each other,” he says.

“I’m not mad at you,” I answer.

Friday
I want comfort from the one who exacts the most from me: money, blood, work, time, strength.  When I said the longest hug ever, I just meant the longest I’d ever received from him.  Recently I’d told Peter that what I seemed to need from Kendall was, for lack of a better word, affection, and last night, Kendall delivered.

In my world, everyone is honey, baby, sweetheart.  With these endearments I claim wisdom, experience, age, status.  As the old married lady, I’m free to love anyone I want, which is what I’ve always wanted.  Something tells me that this is the other side of sex.  I’m not sure what that means.

Today was awful.  I felt so sad and tired that I canceled hip hop class and blew off a show put on by former students.  I lay on the couch with my iPod but couldn’t get into any of my audiobooks or guided relaxations.

Wednesday night I said, “I practiced with Glenn today and he helped me a little with counterbalance.  I tried stretching my hips away more.  What do you think?”

Kendall swung me out.  “Better.”  He nodded.  I thrilled to his approval as he repeated it, in different words but with the same matter-of-fact mildness, over the next several swing-outs.

But when I tried stretching my hips last night, fatigue translated effort into tension.  “You’re stuck in the ground,” he said.  I pictured the old fortress on top of Prospect Hill in Somerville.  Unwieldy, outdated, chunky, comical.

Today was awful.  I woke up sore, taught one lesson, and canceled the whole rainy afternoon.  I lay on the couch with my iPod and most recent journals.  They did not give me what I want.  I wanted more of Kendall.  What of him do I want?

At the light near the Capitol theater, Kendall glanced at his phone and burst out laughing.  “That’s my old buddy from Andover,” he explained.  The light changed and he continued on Mass Ave. “Once we were at a Mappari show, and they started playing a song in six-eight.  And I was like, ‘Who writes a song in six-eight?’ And then he named like twenty different songs in six-eight.  So when that other band was playing, that opened for Fountains of Wayne -”

“Sarah Borges,” I supplied.

“- and she did that song in six-eight, right? So I texted him ONE 2 3 FOUR 5 6.  And he just texted back, ‘who fucking writes a song in six-eight?’”

“Which Mappari song is it?” I mused aloud.  Kendall couldn’t recall.

Violet is an avid lindy hop student, so much so that she doesn’t mind driving all the way from Watertown to JP Swings.  It’s not a lot of miles, but the way is confusing, and that is more than enough to keep most people I know away from JP Swings.

Tuesday morning she was scheduled for a private lesson at 9:30, and I got in the shower at 9.  I was feeling bad.  “I am deathly depressed,” my mind said.  As soon as I’d toweled off I punched two little red cold medicine pills out of the packet I keep handy in the bathroom, and washed them down with Crystal Lite.

Then, my day turned great.  All my classes were fun.  I felt like doing everything I had to do.  JP Swings ruled, with eighteen enthusiastic students showing up, many of them staying for practice.  Kendall and I social danced and then ran our jam sequences.  He still rattled my arm from time to time, but later as we stretched I asked if I’d been stopping, and he said, “No.  It’s better.”  We made plans and goals for subsequent practices.  He liked my ideas.

On the ride home - I drove - Hunter and Kendall and I belted out the words we knew to Eminem’s “Drug Ballad,” probably to the chagrin of the two students I was driving home, crammed in the back with Hunter.  Then I harmonized on “Sweet Child of Mine” while Kendall flubbed the lyrics.

I got home and talked to Peter, and ate some vegetables and a spoonful of almond butter and five crackers.  Ella curled up next to me on the bed.  I read a few pages of my book on confidence while Peter finished his Tom Clancy novel.

“Oh shoot,” I said.  “I forgot the clicker.  Ella, will you turn off the light?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Peter said in a high voice.  I petted Ella’s head a couple more times, trying to summon the energy to get up.  She purred and gazed at me, her endless whiskers tickling my neck.

“Oh, I’ll do it,” Peter said, and got up and walked around the Tempur Pedic and hit the remote on top of the dresser to turn off the overhead light.

In the car, Cambridgeport.
“Lynn, you’re killing me.  I thought you said you knew where you were going.”

“I do.  I just always get confused at this part.  I never know how to get over to River St.  Should I turn left here?”

“Yeah.” (Kendall).

“This area is really confusing,” (Hunter).  “So, what happened after that?” (I have been telling a story.)

“Never mind.  Now I just feel really stupid because I never know where I’m going.”

“Oh!” (Hunter.  Expression of extreme disappointment at my refusal to continue the story.)

“When I asked you if you knew you were dropping me off at home and you said yes, to me that meant you knew where you were going.  Left. The next one.” (Kendall, patiently.)

“I thought I did.  I usually just feel my way there.” (Me.)

“Lynn, if you don’t know, you have to tell me.” (Kendall.)

In my heart, I am devastated.  I am so embarrassed and ashamed.  When I get home I want to email him and say, “I’ll try harder.”

Dreams
Going to a big party.  My parents are there.  I will meet them at home beforehand.  I’m supposed to drive east through Virginia but find myself in Kentucky.  I am going the wrong way.  Sun sets over dark tree shadows.  I keep going, with a sense of resignation.

I’m sleeping.  Two large carp that I’ve forgotten to feed jump out of their bowl, drifting to the bed, mouths opening and closing.  I must return them to the bowl.  Where’s the fish food?  I’m paralyzed.  They die.

After a long weekend of teaching, I went out to dinner with Peter.  “I have a dream,” I said to him.  “I’m going to make a wedding dance instructional video and sell it online.  I’ll make lots of money, and you won’t have to teach anymore.  Just coach basketball.”

“You could also sell a video of movement warm-ups.”

“No, that won’t sell.  Just the wedding video.”

“You know, those warm-ups you do with your students in the beginning of class.  They help people learn how to move.”

“Well, partially.”  I frowned.  “Most people getting married passionately fear looking stupid at their wedding.  It’s not going to occur to them to buy a warm-up video before learning to dance.”

“No, really, it’s a great idea.  It gets people to really move around and teaches them what to do when they dance together.”

“I know that.  You know that.  But it isn’t something I want to try to market.  Of course I’ll include warm-ups in the wedding dance video.  I even know what to call it.  It’ll be Survive Your Wedding Dance.”

“And then a separate warm-up video.  You could sell them like a package.”

“Look, okay, I know my clientele.  I know what they are likely to buy and not buy.”  I said it too crossly.

He exhaled sharply and sat back in his chair.  “Screw it,” he said.  “I don’t care.  This is when I want to stop running Blues Cafe, too.  I should never tell you any of my ideas.”

We paid the check and walked around the South End, arguing.  I cried but wouldn’t let him give up, and we came to a kind of exhausted and sullen peace.

Next night was practice.  The new couple from LA, Jack and Laura, joined us.  While social dancing with me, Kendall occasionally rattled my right arm, as a signal that I should relax it.  Whenever he did that I’d hang my head, try to put more energy into my core and my right ring finger, and breathe looseness into the arm.

The four of us discussed differences in swingout conventions, particularly interesting since Jack and Laura have a Los Angeles perspective.  At one point the topic came up of the follower stopping her momentum, which is a common feature of bad technique here in Boston.  I was trying to verbalize a distinction between that mistake and the style of rotating a bit later between counts two and three.

“No,” Kendall disagreed.  “That’s just stopping, like what you do sometimes and it feels like shit.”

We were standing there in open position, and I took in his words and knew they were true.

Jack said quietly, “Why don’t you tell her how you really feel, Kendall?”

I said, “I haven’t been doing that tonight, have I?”

Kendall said, “Yes, occasionally.”

The dance was fun, but when I got home it was all I could do not to email Kendall and say, I just want you to know, I’m really trying hard, I’ll keep trying.

Last night at MIT I danced with beginners, whom I prefer to all but my favorite dancers, because beginners are still just discovering the joy of lindy hop.  Dancers who know something, often known as intermediate dancers, tend not to thrill me as much because they either apologize all the time, or think they are much more skilled than they are in reality, and as a result are unmotivated to improve. For most of the evening I danced with Kendall, who showed off for the unusual proportion of beginners in the room.

He hollered, “Westify me!” because “Natural Man” had just come on.

When he wasn’t doing flamboyant walks and body rolls, he led me in blues moves: elaborate, long sequences in an in-connection interspersed with complicated dips and swirly lifts.  At the end of the dance, after everyone helped slide the tables and chairs back into their normal cafeteria formation, Kendall swung my legs in the air around him and put my butt on his left hip so my legs stuck straight into the air: a saxophone, which we will teach a week from Saturday at Chuck’s dance.

“How would we do that into a backflip?” I asked.

I screwed up the first few preps, but then finally kicked up correctly into a baby doll position with tons of momentum.

“i could have totally flipped you on that last one,” Kendall commented in one of his emails to me today.

How many emails do he and I send back and forth per day?  Let me look…. It’s like five.  Five per day.

On Monday, at the beginning of practice, something happened that never happened before:  I was early.  7 pm sunshine streamed through the enormous windows, caressing the wall of mirrors opposite, and spilling over the reflective floor.  I cued up my favorite song, “Far and Wise.” The whispered and syncopated strumming, emphatic orchestration of drum and bass and guitar and vocals, dissolved all of my barriers of inadequacy and released the part of me that is connected to everything else and hence needs no explanation, no justification, no excuse for its existence.  I danced.  I felt the summer in my ice-cream pink camisole and overlarge gray pants, waistband folded over.  I released into stretches and shapes, filled the room with melancholy falls and leaps.

For now I’m just her human
With a desperate telescope
Not a thing in this universe could miss her more than I
She’ll do fine
I’m surrounded by her life
She’s far and wise
I’m too grounded in this life.

(To listen, see below)

Before it ended, Kendall walked in, laughing.

“This is my favorite track by Mappari,” I reported to him earnestly, “which means it’s my favorite song.  Ever.  I love this band.  Thanks for giving me the music.”

“I think Will - the front man, I told you about him, right?  He’s gonna come out with an album soon.”

Half an hour till the cab.  I’ve made iTunes playlists into CDs for this trip, because gyms in Florida’s panhandle apparently don’t have iPod capability.  Two of the four CDs are for practice, because I’m hoping to persuade Peter to do some lampposts and pancakes with me this week.  The others are for ballet and general working out.  It was while playing the latter two that I noticed all the pop music I’ve been listening to for a significant period has to do with my “buddy,” as Peter refers to Kendall.  They are songs Kendall and I quote and sing to each other sometimes.

So who cares.  I am dancing my little tight body and overflowing heart; this week I’ll write and visualize and train and lie on the beach but first maybe sleep, at some point.

Far and Wise by Mappari, former band of Will Dailey

Competitions over, social dancing ensues.  After a short series of charming but apologetic men I head for the lounge area.  I buy a Diet Coke and hit up Kendall for a shot of Jack Daniels to put in it.  He’s on a couch in front of a huge TV screen, watching our performance in the competition.  I can’t watch us yet so I sit down and look at him instead.  He tells me that he’s talked with some of the judges who have reported that our swing-outs need improvement.  “We have to really get that stretch,” he says intensely.  I can smell the alcohol.

Drinking after a performance is a tradition I’ve maintained since a long-ago ski-resort gig fueled by dot-com money.  Tonight I feel the presence of Peter.  He’s put-out, wanting to leave, and it makes me want to leave too.

Before we drive back, I run into a dance event promoter from Montreal that I haven’t seen in six years.  “Evelyn!” he gasps.  “Is that you?  You look younger than you did the last time I saw you.”

Right, because I was fat and ugly then.  In my wedding I was fat and pretty.  Prettier than now.  But not as hot.

People (okay, fat people) have expressed concern over my present shape.  I’ve been told, “You’re getting smaller and smaller,” and even, “Are you okay?”  To which I lied, “It’s hard to keep the weight on when you’re doing a lot of crazy dancing.”

In America, being thin redeems everything, perhaps second only to making a lot of money.  Smallness is the saving grace in the face of my many inadequacies.

I can’t believe Kendall returned from the dance before I had a chance to put on my pj’s: thin black T-shirt, white shorts with baby-blue trim, shorter than short.  I wanted him to see me in that.  When we met in the hall I was still wearing my babydoll top over cargo capris, a dowdy sweater thrown over everything because it’s cold in Beverly in June.

The three of us are staying with a benevolent friend, in her mother’s enormous, school-sized, crumbling, mysterious beige stone mansion: farmhouse kitchen, walls in pink, blue, peach, deep green; a room full of hardwood floor, mirrors and a high ceiling; peeling wallpaper and cracked walls everywhere.  Crickets.  Mosquitos.

Somerville

A week has passed already.  There’s an hour till the cab.  I’m fucking myself over, not sleeping at all.  I am going to miss myself, my Boston dancing self.

Today Glenn and Kendall each were nice enough to email videos of our dancing.  Kendall emailed the drop-flip.  Oh, it looks so good.  I like how he’s said, “You jump to the sky on that one.”

The video of Glenn’s and my social dance has its sloppy moments but on the whole I love the way we look: neat and synchronized.  The kicky swing-outs came out energetic and smooth.  My swivels are decent, almost inspiring in one or two isolated moments.

Best of all, I am so little.

“So, how many people are competing?”

“I have no idea.”

“Are they going to be from Boston?”

“I don’t know, Peter.  I really have no clue.  I’m just trying to get out there and do the best I possibly can.”

Our Corolla takes us over the curving slopes and valleys of Beverly, Massachusetts.  Miles of white picket fence unroll at our left.  The night before, we had some trouble finding the college where this dance camp takes place, but now what I call Peter’s “built in GPS” serves us admirably.  Tonight, Kendall and I will compete in Strictly Lindy, the division which partners enter together but do not choose the song, hence their performance cannot be choreographed beyond short sequences.

“OK.  I’m just asking questions,” Peter protests, quite reasonably.

“I know, and I’m sorry.  You know this stuff kills me.  It kills me and yet I have to do it.  I avoided competing for nine years.”

“Why?”

“I can’t believe you are asking me that.”  I am misbehaving, badly, egregiously. “In my twenties I vowed I would never compete again, because it destroyed me.  It has to do with my parents.”  I feel like a miserable idiot: grown woman in her thirties, complaining about her childhood.

“Oh.  Because of the piano stuff?”

“Yes because of the piano stuff.  Because of the competitions.  I was always so ashamed for not doing better, that I hated the whole experience.  In dancing I discovered that I was holding myself back because of my past, and I’m not going to let it stop me anymore, but still it’s really difficult. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah.”

“So I may not memorize all the details about who’s coming and who’s competing, because I want all my energy to go into the show.”  I take a deep breath.

In the lineup, Kendall and I stand next to arguably the foremost competitive lindy hop couple in the world: Ellie and Pierre.  On our other side is Jacques and a gal he brought from Providence, the one who is teaching with him now that Teresa has left for Rochester and medical school.  Jacques and Kendall know everyone; they high-five Ellie and Pierre; Jacques jokes with Pierre in French.  Jacques is wearing a yellow button-down tonight.  It looks good on him, sets off the blues behind his glasses.  I’ve managed a second-hand-shop twirly skirt and sheer black top with a black camisole underneath.  Kendall’s wearing a maroon button-down and black pants.

We’ve drawn second, and I’m glad to go out early.  Less time for nerves.  “This is slow,” Kendall whispers to me unnecessarily; I can hear perfectly well that it’s Lionel Hampton’s classic version of “Flying Home,” about 170 beats per minute.  The music fades out on the first couple, a married pair who have taught and performed in Boston for years.  Their lines are crisp and clean, but Kendall and I have much better tricks.

At the start of a similar, mid-tempo song, Kendall swings me into the broad space, which, despite the moved-off tables, still looks one hundred percent the university dining hall.  As I smile brightly at the audience semi-circled around us I catch sight of colored fliers dotting the bulletin boards on the far wall.  One more swing out, then a right side pass, go.  Drop.  Jump to the sky.  Roller-coaster-style, the ceiling wheels past my eyes as Kendall hurls me over his back.  Piercing cheers and thundering applause greet my landing, clear across the room from the spot where Kendall stretched me.  That drop flip does take up quite a bit of space.

Everything’s groovy for our spotlight.  Kendall leads the new moves we’ve been working, and the tempo makes them easy.  We throw a lamppost and a rabbit hole as well, all neat, smooth, with non-chunky landings.  I breathe out hard on the throws and breathe in hard for the swing-outs that follow each.  We grin widely in celebration.  I love performing with a performer.

We know we won’t win, per se.  Ellie and Pierre can do some of the craziest air steps that anyone has seen.  For a small-time comp like this they scale back to things like the pancake, except that as Pierre pops Ellie up after the exit she does a 360 in the air and he catches her across his knees.  Together the pairs of their legs and lines of their torsos, perpendicular to one another, synergize the power and clarity of the human body with the elegance of negative space.  They wait an instant, for the move has occurred at the exact moment in the music to bring waterfalls of thrill down the spines of all who watch, then catapult into the creamiest of swing-outs.  They wear ripped tight jeans and casual black tops, yet their air of mastery and grace renders them fit for the red carpet of the Academy Awards; this apparent contradiction in their mere physical appearance heightens the charge of their lindy hop.

Then a couple from New York performs with an entirely different aesthetic.  Where Pierre and Ellie are arrow-sharp and precise, this next pair employs deeper bounce and greater softness, but with no lack of power.  Compared to the rail-thin Ellie, this gal has more heft, and her hips swing hypnotically through each swivel.  Her wiry but tall partner throws her like lightning in a rabbit hole, letting go totally.  She lands yards away, her back to his back, where from my vantage point I can see her young, full, beaming face.

Even as Kendall stands next to me, cheering for this couple (for all the contestants cheer each other on) I hear his voice in my mind, I should be able to let go of you, and you just fly.

En route
“I had to stop listening to Green Day.  The CD played through about five times.”

“So you were ready for a little more subtlety.  Who’s this? Oh -

“Fountains of Wayne,” we both say.

“Silly me,” I add.

“I need some driving music,” Kendall says.

“Clearly I have to make you a new mix.

“I just burn through your mixes.  I listen to them over and over and over -”

“Till finally you’re like, ‘I never want to hear this CD as long as I live!”  I pop the last of my lemon Larabar into my mouth as we cross, in his little red GTI, the McGrath Highway bridge.  Soon we’d pass my house on our way to Harvard Square, and I’d think of Peter, seated at the computer, doing nothing by choice.

Still chewing, I chatted, “So, what’s the update on Tessa?”  I wanted to know if she made it to Brooklyn; she’d had trouble at the Canada/ US border, and now she wouldn’t be paid for her New York internship, so apparently Kendall had told her, “Why don’t you come to Boston and stay with me and I’ll pay for everything.”

Now he says, “We talk to each other daily.”

That wasn’t as interesting as a hoped-for second chapter of immigration saga, but I went with it: “Oh, you guys really like each other.”

“Yeah. We do.”  He pauses.  “I don’t know, every time I talk to her, I feel the five years between us.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I just think about how I was five years ago.  Senior in college.  Doing a lot of partying, dating a lot of girls, and, you know, not always dating them -”

“Right:  hooking up, sleeping with, hanging out, whatever.”

“Yeah.”

“Um, so what?”

“Yeah, I just feel like we’re doomed.”

I laugh.  “Everyone’s doomed.  Every relationship ends in breakup or death.”  Plus, I thought, you’re still doing all that stuff you did five years ago.  Plus, you’re jealous of the guys Tessa has yet to hook up with.

I can’t say I blame him.  When I found out her tender age, I immediately remembered the way she’d told Camera Guy to take of his shorts and watch for the broken glass.  She seemed so comfortable telling someone what to do.  Then I recalled how lovely she looked in her bikini as floated in Kendall’s lap.  He’s all yours now, I thought, but he’s more mine than any other woman’s, except possibly his mother, and I’m a little sad you’re going to take him away later but I don’t want him for sex anyway.

Recently I’ve looked back over my journals and confirmed what I’ve always suspected:  I’ve never wanted any man for sex for more than a moment, except in cases of men who had me and then left me.  Men I never had - even Joel Fielding, the one who swung me out more than anyone else from 1999 to 2001 - I have mostly wanted for other things.  Men who stayed with me, well, it was only a matter of time.

The extent to which my emotions and motivations fall so predictably culturally female exasperates me.