The Line Between

I hadn’t had a job in two years, lingering in Alicante, Spain with my boyfriend; he was Spanish. I look back on it now and I guess I can categorize myself as a depressed person, there wasn’t much I cared about: I gained twenty pounds; sat in front of the television and watched hours of trashy talk shows; my hair grew long, and I tried to grow dreds as an excuse for not washing; I didn’t wear a belt. When I showered I bothered with only rubbing between my legs and my mid-section. I forgot the space between my toes and behind my ears. My boyfriend was always away, working, creating ballets for dance companies, being the choreographer he had always dreamt of being. I stayed behind in a small ‘pueblo’ without any friends or any desire to step out of the apartment. It would’ve been different if I would’ve tried to cross the line of my indifference. But I didn’t know what I wanted. There was no compass that existed.

But I though of traveling¾ that could be a way to get another perspective on life. When would I have a chance in my life again to make a choice independent from any obligation¾choose as I wish, north, south, underwater even.

We didn’t live too far from Africa, and I had always wanted to go visit Morocco. I had dreamt of a dinner party where I ‘d have guests compliment the carpet rug in the living room and ask me where I got it. “In Marrakesh,” I’d tell them. “Dirt cheap at the market.” They’d say, “Oh, I’ve always wanted to go to Morocco.” And I’d say, “You must. There’s no place like it.” I’d feel that I had done something in my life worth talking about.

It seemed like a good idea. Two friends living in Frankfurt wanted to come down to visit me. It was summer, hot, itchy, but they’d need more culture than a small Spanish town to keep them entertained. Cyril was French and Marthe was Swiss; a young couple of two years. We had all danced together in the same dance company in Holland¾when I had been a dancer¾and Cyril had been my lover for a few months, before deciding that he’d rather be with women. I didn’t let that get in the way of keeping our friendship. He cried as he apologized, for having the audacity to be brutally honest.

A day before they arrived in Spain I searched the Internet for affordable ways to get to Morocco. I had a bit of money saved, but not enough that I could lavish in flights and four-star hotels. I found that if we took a train down to Almeria, an hour and a half away, from there we could take an overnight boat for only fifty Euros, one way to Tetouan. It seemed like a romantic idea¾we could drink beers out on the roof deck and look at the stars as we rocked above the waves of the Mediterranean Sea. Constellations would pronounce themselves much more clearly, and maybe there’d be a sign.

Cyril and Marthe were not in the most amiable disposition when they arrived. Between expressions of affability, they’d bite each other’s words and argue about petty things, like how he should have salad instead of fried shrimp because it was better for him, and he was trying to eat healthier. Why don’t you just worry about yourself and let me eat what I want. Because you told me to remind you. But we’re on vacation.  Tsk …D’accord, tres bien. I felt like the center weight of their balance, but I was terrible at the responsibility. Whenever I’d feel any hint of tension I’d turn my palms down and let them fall at their own accord. I turned away and waited for the wind to soften.

We arrived to Almeria as scheduled, at 9:05pm, and boarded the boat El Sol del Mar. We left Spain as the sky turned purple away from orange.

At ten pm, the maintenance crew on the boat closed the roof deck because they claimed it’d be too dangerous for passengers on such a windy night that was anticipated by the weather forecast on the radio. We had to go undercover inside the boat, yet it was difficult to find a seat or even an area on the floor to put out backpacks. Every room on every floor was filled with families, Moroccan I supposed: children, women, men, hauling large suitcases and extra large, black garbage bags filled with what seemed to be presents and more fabrics. Wholesale boxes of toilet paper, packages of soap, unused bath towels, plastic toy trucks and dolls. These things were everywhere, for relatives in Africa I assumed. Every floor we checked was crowded with bodies sleeping on the floor, on seats, under seats. We heard Arabic whispers in conversation. Men played cards on the floor. Finally, we found a booth in the cafeteria and used our backpacks as pillows, and we slept a few hours until morning.

It was only four hours until sunlight crept in from the windows. We peeled open our eyes and rubbed our necks and backs as we prepared ourselves for docking. The roof deck was open again, and we stepped out and inhaled the sea air as we saw Africa on the horizon, a thin body of tan beneath a thin cover of gray clouds.

We docked, got off the boat, and everyone scurried to certain areas of the small town, knowingly as if they had all done it before. When we saw the signs in Spanish it occurred to us we weren’t in Morocco yet. We were still on Spanish territory.

At seeing our confusion, a kind Arabic man who spoke perfect English informed us that we needed to take a bus to the border in order to get to Morocco, from there we’d have to take a two-hour taxi to Casablanca, which was where we wanted to go. He was headed to the border himself so we followed him.

The ride was only ten minutes. We arrived and saw the same families that had been on the boat there with their suitcases and black trash bags. They were yelling in Arabic over a wire fence, carrying all their possessions, and filing into a long line that seemed as if it hadn’t moved all morning. Marthe rolled her eyes. We assumed this was the line we would have to wait in to get through immigration. But as we walked in that direction, the man that has escorted us told us not to go that way, and to follow him directly to the small office that stood at the center of the wide gate.

“Passports,” he told us, and all three of us obediently took them out like school children. Everyone near us, between yelling the arching screams over the fence, looked at us with a blank expression. We were the only foreigners in site.

How we crossed was simple. Small house offices were lined up one after the other: at one we gave our passports, the next we paid an entrance fee, the next we exchanged money, and at the last we retrieved our stamped passports. But along the way, walking the few steps between one office to the next, I kept looking to the right and noticing a small tunnel made of wire fencing, about a meter and a half wide, filled with the families that were bringing toilet paper, plastic toy trucks, and bath towels into the country. They were pushing and shoving. Some boys were standing on the shoulders of men, some were holding on to the walls of the fence like spiders. Women were screaming, some pleading. I had no idea what was happening. Why were they over there, and why were we over here? Orange dust swept up from the ground and stung my eyes. The man who had been helping us kept saying, “Just keep moving, keep going.” I remember him pushing my back.

At each office, two guards in dark blue uniforms stood stoic and still. Other guards were trafficking the tunnel, and the people inside reminded me of cattle. They were crowded and must have been suffocating.

Before we walked into the office to exchange our money, an Arab woman with a soft pink headscarf was pleading to one of the guards. One hand was in a fist over his chest and the other held a plastic bag filled with Q-tips and cotton swabs and a bottle of alcohol. The guard looked over her, past her head, and did not move. We walked into the office, and I heard her scream, a loud shriek, like a crow’s caw. The people in the tunnel continued to scream. It was all a cacophonous language I didn’t understand. Cyril and Marthe were silent, moving quickly. I remember my hands sweating. I too was silent.

There was a rumble outside. And I heard the woman scream again. When I stepped out of the office, I looked for her. But she was gone.

“Just keep moving,” the man said. I looked back, tried to find where she had gone, but I didn’t see her.

I turned my head forward, towards the edge of the border where Africa awaited, and saw the soles of two feet on the ground with a woman’s skirt blown up to her chest by the wind. I slowly passed her and noticed it was the woman that had been screaming to the guard. The woman with the pink headscarf. I tiptoed past her and discerned the crimson color of blood dripping down her tan cheeks. Her eyes were closed, she was not moving at all. Guards stepped over her as if she were a big stone in the way, and we continued to walk as the dirt swirled like a potion.

Cyril and Marthe rushed into the last office to retrieve their passports, and I followed with a sense of a pause in my mind as to why no one was helping her. I wrote a story in my mind, of how she had a child, or a father, and how he needed medical supplies and all she wanted was for this one plastic bag to get past the border. People on the other side waited for her.

Marthe found a taxi within seconds, before I could finish collecting my thoughts. I sat in the passenger side, and as it slowly drove through the crowd of families waiting for relatives to get across, a young girl startled me by jumping in front of the window and pressing her face against the glass. She had chestnut curls and looked about eight years old. Her eyes were the color of green marble, and I lost myself in them. She cupped her hand next to her cheek and held it there, waiting for me to give her something. But I couldn’t roll down the window. The taxi began to speed away as he got closer to the main road, and the young girl with the haunt of the country began to disappear in a cloud of dust; her eyes faded like stars. Once we reached a sense of quietude out on the road, the driver played a cassette tape of Arabic chanting, and I stared out the window towards the mountains. I stared at the land. I stared for two hours and felt pathetically inconsequential.

Sorting Light – Why I Write

Sorting Light ⎯ Why I Write

I can’t pretend to be the kind of writer that used to write stories as a child, because I didn’t. And I didn’t read books in my bedroom after my parents had gone to bed, with a flashlight under my sheets the way you see precocious kids do in movies. I never paid attention to writing, or the idea of reading a book, because I thought it was boring. When it came to writing, there was only one thing I enjoyed, and that was writing in cursive, for the mere movement of it. I’d write my name on a ruled sheet of paper until the page was covered, and start at the exact spot on every line so the script looked tidy.  Sometimes I’d change the size and style of my handwriting in an attempt to give the impression that my name had different personalities. I avoided thinking of words to form sentences that made any sense. All I wanted was to feel my hand move, to enjoy the curves of capital letters and the loops of ‘e’ and ‘o’. It was easier to follow the movement without having to think, the way one sings ‘wa-ter-mel-on’ when one doesn’t know the lyrics to a song⎯ mindless, but in complete absorption with the act itself. Little did I realize that I was reiterating to myself, “This is your name. This is who you are.” Mario Zambrano, Mario Zambrano, Mario Zambrano. And when a page was full I’d stare at it, and then forget the name was mine. Days later I would find the piece of paper buried between the pages of a schoolbook.

What is certain about those years as a child is that I was creative. I loved crayons, I loved spices, I loved pretending to be someone else, and most of all, I loved to dance. One night while I was dancing with my mother at a cousin’s wedding party⎯three feet tall, with my head down looking at how quickly our feet moved ⎯I’d look up and notice people around me in a semi-circle cheering me on, smiling and clapping their hands. I remember thinking that I wasn’t doing anything particularly special, or funny, or entertaining. I remember a sense of letting go, and how the music had found its way inside my body. My arms, legs, and torso set off like a pack of wild dogs to an open field. A sort of light turned on, and even though I couldn’t see it, people around me could, and they enjoyed watching me. I wasn’t fascinated because I was being watched, but because I owned something that could illicit admiration. My body was telling stories⎯quick, lithe, fluid⎯and it was a thrill, one in which I lifted my arms and enjoyed. After that night, I decided to ride that sensation for many years. I became a dancer. It left no room for words on paper. Reading books and writing stories were beyond me.
While I was a dancer, most of my free time was spent coming home after a day of rehearsal and playing music on the stereo while lying on the couch; on bus tours through England, with a dance company I was with in Holland, I would sit by a window with my headphones on and indulge myself with aspirations ⎯ which always had a way of consuming me; on Atlantic flights, when most of the company members were achy and anxious to de-board in New York City, I would watch an in-flight movie. Never did I open a book, especially not a novel. And when I’d feel a poet’s urge, which did come to me every now and then, I’d open my journal ⎯ filled with things to do and doodles ⎯ and write a few lines, mostly run-on sentences. I’d share them with a friend sitting next to me. He’d say it sounded beautiful, but he didn’t get what I was writing about, to which I’d close my journal and watch the rest of the in-flight movie. There were hardly any hints that I would want to dedicate myself to writing, or to ever take it seriously.

Now that I write ⎯ and think as writers think ⎯ I ponder the role of the writer, and find that my experience as a dancer has been different. Writing is an art form that I am slowly getting to know. There are certain similarities, of course (discipline, dedication, devotion), but there is a great divide between being a performing artist and a creative one. When you are a dancer you step into a studio as if it were an empty page, but you don’t write. The first sentence isn’t up to you. You don’t choose voice, or point of view. You wait to be told what to do, and what to say, stylistically; you are the ink and the font. You are a muse. You listen and pay close attention to the choreographer, and the manner in which to execute language (because the choreographer is always grappling with his intention, and what he’s trying to convey, and the dancer has to stay with him, willing to continue the revision process).

As much as I enjoyed dancing, being in the hands of choreographers, there came a time in my career when I discovered how much of a puppet I was⎯like Pinocchio, but human flesh. I compromised my creative nature for the sake of the choreographer’s. And when I discovered this, I was deeply disheartened; though I had a profound love for dance (and still do), I felt cheated. I didn’t want to be oil paint for someone else’s work. I didn’t want to be the guitar strings for someone else’s music. And though I can still recall the thrill, the lights, the music, being in front of an attentive audience, I decided to let it go. Because to be a dancer one has to have absolute commitment. There is no compromise. It includes aches in the body; being told you’re approaching something too theatrical, or too sentimental; spending hours every morning in ballet class⎯barre, center, an hour and a half⎯so that the body doesn’t forget the outlines of aesthetic principles. This devotion, I thought to myself, this investment, is for someone else’s creative work, and when I stumbled upon this way of looking at the way I was working, I no longer wanted to be a dancer, not for a dance company, not professionally. If I’d dance, I’d do it for myself. Alone, most likely, in the quiet space of a creative field that is in the mind. To me it’s a place of solitude.

I spoke to a close friend about quitting, a dancer in Batsheva Dance Company in Tel Aviv, Israel. She looked at me and said, “Don’t you believe in what you’re doing?” I looked at her, wanting to defend some sort of innate desire to be independent. “What about believing in myself?” I told her. I had no idea what I was talking about. I had no idea what I wanted to do. I had choreographed like so many other dancers do when they feel a creative itch, but I found myself too sensitive towards it. I had to see what I created, repeatedly, the way a writer reads a sentence and rewrites it, again and again.  But knowing how difficult it is to be a dancer, I couldn’t use people as instruments.

I found choreographing too impinging, and I’m too sensitive to be in the care of other artists’ egos and insecurities. I left dance all together because I felt it was the only way I could rediscover myself as an artist, a singular creative. I wanted to work alone. Never would I have guessed that I would discover writing and literature.

I started reading very late. I was twenty-two. And by reading I don’t mean reading because I was assigned something, but because I wanted to read, without regard to speed. I took my time and allowed myself the experience of a novel, the experience of a story (something I had never experienced growing up). I learned how books could have different effects on a reader, and how they could be read for different purposes. I read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in a single flight from New York to Amsterdam, but Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being took me three weeks to complete, because of its richness. I learned that novels require different attention, and different kinds of commitment. Some are meant for pleasure, a ‘reader’s holiday’; others are intended to shift the way you think about something, or the way you feel about something, and it was these sorts of novels I was attracted to: Virginia Woolf, especially, along with authors like Italo Calvino, Ian McEwan, Haruki Murakami, and Jeanette Winterson. Their work showed me how the novel could work as an art object and contain prose that worked as a sort of magic trick. I was, and am, fascinated by them.

It was when I read The Waves by Virginia Woolf that I devoted myself to appreciating literature. And it wasn’t necessarily how it made me feel after I read it (because it touched me), but how impressed I was with the orchestration of the sound, the music, and the rhythmical prose. It made me look at fiction in a new light. I found it astonishing, beyond what I had ever imagined literature could do or be. The Waves was an exemplary model of craft in every sense, the shifting of perspectives, the streams of direction following a character’s interior mind. I felt a sensuous quality in her work, and it reminded me of a grace I had felt as a dancer. I felt I had found an author I considered genius.

It wasn’t surprising to me, more sensational, when I was on the balcony of my home in Spain, reading A Room of One’s Own, engulfed by Woolf’s argument of needing time and space to write that I looked up, after I had felt a breeze, and thought Virginia Woolf was there next to me! She was present, a version of her was. And it sounds insane, I know, but it must have been the prose, the authenticity of it, and the fact that I was so immersed in the art of her language. I felt she came to life⎯a most incredible magic. I felt, Yes! That’s what I want. I want my words to come to life like that.

At the time, I was taking online literature courses from a university in England called Open University, and at the end of that year, I registered for my first fiction class. The language I had used in the stories I submitted was too sweet, the way a child drizzles maple syrup on his pancakes. I tried so desperately to sound beautiful, and I realized, too, that even though I had had a career in dance, in this new art form I would have to take my time. I would have to endure the patience that comes with developing my voice as a writer. I’d have to start at the beginning all over again, and learn the steps, the tools, the grammar and style in order to make words come to life on the page.

Luckily, I was given a Distinction in that class, encouraging enough to continue, and a year later I was awarded a Writers’ Choice Award on a website community for writers. That too was encouraging, because for three years, during the transition of art disciplines in my mind, I looked towards anything around me to see if I’d notice anyone clapping or cheering me on the way they did when I was younger. If my writing could find some sort of recognition, then I would know that I had some sort of light inside that I could nurture, and love, without fear of it not coming from the same pool I had felt my dancing had come from, a place of inherent love.

It’s clear to me now that I don’t write because I want to be acknowledged. I just like to be creative, and I like to be alone, and these two things are at the root of my disposition. That’s why when I find myself here in New York City, attending fiction workshops and literature classes, talking and talking about art, and prose, and poetry, and how to do it well, and how others do it well, I find myself wanting to walk away, past the skyscrapers, over the Brooklyn Bridge and down to Coney Island, onto a boat that will take me afar, where I’ll hopefully find a hut on a desolate island and write stories without judgment or speculation, a place where I can write for the mere creation of it. And how does one know if one has done it well? How can one know when what one has written is good? Is there such a thing? I like to think that as long as art is honest, it’s good.

I think of Virginia Woolf, and how she argued that one needed a room of one’s own in order to write. Yes, she was considering the role of woman, and how she needed income in order to afford a room ⎯ she literally meant a room. But, I think Woolf also meant something else. I think she was referring to the space in the mind, in the self, where a writer can find peace, where he can take his time to impress himself into the world of fiction. And once there, do it, without distractions and without disturbances. He can write, and continue to write until he stops and takes a deep breath.  It’s this that I love. I felt it as a dancer, this possessing, and I have sensed it in writing ⎯a sort of light that takes over. It’s why I am attracted to anything creative.

There are two books on my desk at the moment: Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf and The Essential Writer’s Companion. I think of what would happen if I were deserted on an island, alone, with only these two books as examples, as teaching tools to create a world of fiction. Besides grammar, because all art disciplines need shape and structure, Woolf’s novel could teach a writer everything ⎯ at least the kind of writer I am interested in being. It begins with a woman digging her heels into the sand, revising a sentence in a letter she is writing to a Captain Barfoot, and her eldest son, Archer, shouts, “Ja⎯cob! Ja⎯cob!” Immediately, the reader hears a voice, a character, and it’s this essential element in fiction that I find crucial when it comes to turning on the dial of that special light. Because stories, after all, are about people. And be it the voice of the characters or the narrator herself, it’s through voice that a reader will feel a sort of trust, and once done, the story comes to life. An experience occurs.

It wasn’t so much a ghost that I felt that day in Spain on my balcony, reading A Room of One’s Own, but soul. And if I were to learn anything from Jacob’s Room, if I were to read it repeatedly, I’d sense spirituality, and I’d strive towards that when I write, wanting to put myself into my work.

On the matter of finding this spirituality, I don’t think I can find it in a classroom. Other writers have mentioned it before, Mario Vargas Llosa, Orhan Pamuk, that writing is a solitary act. One sits alone. And even if he is surrounded by rattling conversations at a coffee shop, or by bird songs in a park, he is in direct conversation with the artist. He listens; he follows the direction of his imagination, and makes choices for a good story told to him from a voice whispering inside. This act is much more intimate than following the directions of a choreographer, but alas, it’s an effort towards realizing an art piece that comes from within.

If I were alone on a desolate island with the two books I mentioned, all I would need was pen and paper to exercise, which is also an over-looked importance in finding voice. Exercise. A writer can’t spend more time reading, or more time discussing, than he does writing. How will he give life to his prose if he doesn’t exercise? How will he deem any sort of grace if he never gets exhausted, and then tries again? Writing, like the body, needs to take shape. Muscles need to by chiseled and strengthened, and the body has to have a sense of ease when it’s dancing. Same for writing. I guess because of my past career, I have this innate discipline to repeat things, and not because dancing is about obsession, but because through the continuous act of trying, you learn, and get closer to the refined quality of finesse.

I like that I can feel a sense of dancing when I write, that the two disciplines I cherish (though I also cherish music, and film, and cooking, and rearranging the house, and gardening, and photography) can overlap and compliment each other. I like that I have found a certain sort of companionship with writing. Because once a voice is born, it becomes alive, and as a writer you listen like a good friend to what the voice wants to say. And like all relationships, it takes time, patience, and compassion in order to reap the benefits of a most wonderful love affair.

At a Party

So you know Louise.
It was her birthday this past Monday; she turned 47; last night was her shindig at her quaint apartment on the 22nd fl near Washing Square Park. She was kind enough to invite me.
I bought her Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – I don’t need to explain why.
I met lots of wonderful people, about 30 were invited.
I am leaning against the couch with a glass of wine in hand talking to a beautiful German woman named Sabine, and out of the corner of my eye I see Bjork and Matthew walk in.
Yep, there she is, two feet away, standing there all uncomfortable because she has just arrived and scoping the party, trying to decide how to dive into it. She checks me out -literally scans me head to toe, and I know this because my peripheries are well trained. But I continue talking to Sabine because I don’t want to be rude.
A few sips later, we’re both leaning against the couch, shoulder to shoulder, but in different conversations – Bjork and I. In a moment’s breath we turn and look at each other, and smile.
Later, while we’re both leaning over the table picking at some food, I tell her, “Can I tell you a secret?”
She looks at me and I tell her I was a dancer, and that I’ve danced for Bill. I think she knows him I tell her, and she says, “Yes, a little bit.”
“When I was younger, I improvised to your music nonstop, and I just wanted to say thank you,” I say.
She smiles, extends her feeble little hand, and I shake it.
Then I can tell she’s uncomfortable, because she just wants to be a girl at a party; she doesn’t want to be the star that she is, and so I smile, and turn towards the glass door that leads out to the balcony. I have a cigarette and look up towards the lavender clouds against a dark blue sky.

I should mention, he is very handsome, but she is absolutely beautiful.

Dancers

We were from different countries —Brazil, France, America—and paid to dance for the royal family. They had told us it was a special event. The press would be there. Cameras. Speeches would be made to honor the anniversary. Yet, we knew nothing about the anniversary. We did as we were told. We arrived everyday at 9:30, rehearsed for eight hours, and went home hoping there’d be sea salt in the canister above the sink. We wanted, always, another bath. Our muscles ached, our minds drifted, our selves let loose to an indefinable numbness – so many corrections, so many details to the choreography. We were dancers.
The sky was gray the day of the performance, five shades lighter than the cobblestone streets in Den Haag, glistening from the drizzle that had soaked the morning pavement ( this was constant, nine months out of the year). The violinists complained that it was all inappropriate. The royal family wouldn’t want dancers in the hazy murk of weather, would they? The music in the body wouldn’t sound the same. The suppleness would be ruined.
A film of desaturated mist loomed in the small town and puddles spotted the stage that was built in front of Noordiende Palace. The red velvet carpet that had been ironed between the audience had been steeped to a shade of maroon; and really, it should have been postponed. We should’ve waited for spring to celebrate the occasion, even if that meant the latter days of June.
We had been working for three months, six days a week. Our feet were swollen and no longer our own, possessed by the indefatigable hope to please, please, please the director, please the royal family: The Netherlands. And it was a special event made especially for them. It was a particular person’s birthday; no one could remember who’s. Perhaps the Queen’s.
We lived in a house that was three hundred years old, older than the memory of my great grandparents, with three floors, a grand stone staircase, and a backyard that homed white butterflies throughout the entire first year we lived there. We had hated each other at first, being so different from one another. We had our own polite mannerisms (and not) and wanted to unload the history of our countries on this small town off a coast that once saw explosions of war. We carried music in our suitcases, and our shoes were from native homes, but everything else: chair, mattress, curtains, desk lamp, were purchased in Den Haag, We bought these things together. We shopped. And after a week of sight-seeing and listening to the sound of foreign languages spoken out of habit, a new english language erupted, slowly, carefully, incorrectly, sometimes with gestures and expressions instead of words themselves, and we sat down at a long dining table to enjoy a roasted chicken. Salad with cherry tomatoes and feta cheese. We were too young for wine, but we opened bottles anyway, and smoked; we laughed and came together, not realizing until the following morning, the first day of rehearsals, that we had something beautifully in common. There was something essential in all of us that was in accord: we loved to dance.
The ballet was set to Ravel and candles were lit on seven long pipes hanging from the stage. We wore black, the women wore buns, the men wore leather boots made pliable and malleable so that we could point our feet. There were moments after the prelude, after three duets, that we all came onstage like stags in slow motion, curious about the light. This is what they told us to do when we wore rehearsal clothes and cheap socks, and worked diligently to make the choreography as graceful and effortless as possible without dismissing the importance of precision and technique. They told us we’d look beautiful if we did as they said.
But when they weren’t looking, we wanted to say things. We wanted to say, ‘We’re tired! We want more than one free day a week: Sunday! —when everything is closed.’ If we were bold and irreverent, we could’ve told them it was unfair. We were treated like slaves, we gave them everything and did as they said; and with pouting eyes we looked at them in the rehearsal studio, waiting for an acknowledgment that our efforts were appreciated, standing there drenched in our own sweat and ache after a run-through —their work, not ours! We were doing them a favor; we were the paint for their canvas— and they stared at us as if that was what our job entailed. We were meant to give up everything and assume it was for the good; dancing was meant for something beyond ourselves.
Yet the rain continued that mist-filled day. The costumes had been covered in plastic bags and the stage helpers continued to mop the slippery marley floor. We wanted to say something, to come together and speak as one voice, but it was for the Royal family, this Ravel dance, and we couldn’t be the society to dare refuse them. The men in charge, those we had danced for in the studio, considered the danger of someone twisting their ankle or falling in mid-lift, and were dashing to and from the Palace, umbrellas breaking above their heads because of the wind they gathered by the speed of their steps. The dancers looked to one another in keen interest. ‘Have you heard anything? Are we performing? Is the Queen still coming?’
Nothing was cancelled. We danced, and danced beautifully.
The raindrops dripped down our foreheads and into our eyes, and how funny that felt, having to blink as we spread our arms like wings and spun like graceful dervishes. How we stared at our partners and giggled because of the spots of rain over our cheeks. How we felt like children splashing puddles with every step —to the sound of muted strings: two violins, a cello, a viola, playing under a midnight umbrella next to the stage. We looked into the audience in one break in the choreography, when the musicians had to modify Ravel’s score and wait for the sound of movement to finish before playing again, the women dove to the floor and slammed the stage with the palms of their hands, the men stood on one foot as they looked out towards the audience; and we saw them: two boys, one man, one important woman. The strings continued playing and we drenched ourselves. We closed our eyes without thinking and danced for them: the royal family, The Netherlands.

The boy; the girl; and the second boy.

She came along in that kind of way that presumed she was independent. Really, she wanted him to lean over and say something, like: “I’ve read that”; or, “Where are you going to school?” ; “Excuse me, but do you happen to have a pen I could borrow?”
The boy was already at the coffee shop, sitting with an open book in front of him, and she couldn’t make the move.
She was the girl.

☛☚

The second boy walked in with an anchor tattooed on his right shoulder. He wore tight jeans and a striped black and white tank-top. He had long blond side-burns that made one think he was an Elvis fan.
And there was something about his eyes —they were very green and uncanny — that made the boy look at him.

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Each subject had their own books; and each book was open ( literally, open books! ) with pencil markings in the margin.
She read Milton.
The boy read Winterson.
The second boy read Dostoevsky.

They looked as though they paid attention to what he or she was reading, but each were busy with personal thoughts. The printed words were merely black and white marks on the wall, the wall that was the page they read from.

One of them thought the second boy liked the boy but was too shy to say something.

Another thought the boy liked the girl but was too proud to express himself.

And the other thought the boy was a fool. There’d be no way in hell that anything would happen between two boys without a proper introduction!

☛☚

They flipped the pages, they peeked from the corners of their eyes, they crossed one leg over the other, they looked out the window, they supported their jaws with the flesh of their palms, they read, they did more than read, they flirted, they listened to themselves, they listened to each other; and then they drew themselves.

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The boy drew a ship. Waves were drawn with the mercury of a pair of compasses, and the second boy was standing on an island opposite the ship. His arms were spread like an airplane and he had dimples in his buttocks and a mermaid tattooed around his right hip (there was no blue ink to paint her fins).

The second boy faced the overlapping semi-circles to where the boy stood, oscillating, standing at the edge of a plank where his arms were drawn from fingertip to fingertip like the tail of an orca whale diving in the ocean. It was a swan dive position.

They were boys, there was water, there was wood, there was wave. This is what the boy drew.

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What the girl didn’t know was that she was more intelligent.

Besides, Milton was lyrical, the master; he was the one her heart would go to if he walked through the door.

But for now, she had to settle; she had to hope. Her red Converse, her long hair flipped to the space under her left ear, her indifferent, almost careless expression. This proved nothing. She was not a ‘laid-back’ kind of creature. Nor did she think of drawing when she wanted someone to approach her — anyone with a pen in hand or an open book in front of him.

She read the same sentence over and over again:
“He who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye.”

This collection of words drew a sea of alphabet in her mind, and her arms flailed as she drowned in a body of water made up of this one sentence.
Only the birds flying overhead could see her face looking up to the sun. Only they could see that she was crying.

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The second boy plugged himself with music: he listened to Nina Simone, whom sang beautifully next to a piano.

He noticed the boy, and the end of his pencil digging into his chin, and the tortoise frames he wore. He noticed him staring.

He boy tore off a piece of paper and wrote his name, his address, his phone number. He folded it five times so that it became the size of a quarter. He wanted to use it like currency and put it in a gum ball machine, or a toy machine, or a fortune machine.

He wanted his wish to come back to him.

☛☚

The only voice in the air came from the waitress.
“Hi, How ya doing today? Fine Fine. What can I getya?”

☛☚

The boy noticed the second boy put his books away. He watched him get up and push in his chair under the table. He saw his facial expression say something like, ‘no, no – that’s stupid. I’m gonna leave now and get out of this.’

So he left. And the boy wanted to see the his face once more, but he didn’t. The Elvis profile walked down the street.

The girl noticed how much attention the first boy was giving to a subject outside the window, as if his aim was a mistake. She packed her bags. She stood up, and her eyes crashed with his!

She looked at him and he looked at her; she rolled her eyes, as if that’s what she wanted to say all along, “I ROLL MY EYES AT YOU!”

She changed her hair so that the flip was now on the other side of her face, She swung her bag and it landed on her back. She walked out. Her chin was up. Her eyes were blue.

☛☚

The boy was left alone in the coffee shop. Customers ( not readers, not writers ) came in and ordered things to take-away.

He gathered up a ball of saliva and spat on the table. He dove his finger into the effervescent pool and drew circles. When the liquid dried and the circles were left invisible, he got up and left. He walked down the street with squeaky soaked shoes, lifting his arms up as if he were about to fly.