How They Met and Other Stories

  Dutch was hungry again, this time for food. So we put our clothes all back in place and returned to the ballroom. We found our goth girls and their punk boys, and we ate off their plates, which they let us do because they thought that was punk, too. We were crashing, which was nothing new. But this time I actually felt like I was interrupting, too. When the DJ started spinning hip-hop and pop tunes, Dutch made fun of everyone who went to dance to them. I could tell that some of our friends had intended to dance, but now felt awkward about it. I kinda wanted to dance. The best I could do was lure Dutch away, so the goth girls could get down and the punk boys could shimmy to their punk hearts’ content. I put my hand on Dutch’s ass and whispered, “We’re not done yet.”

  We walked into the men’s room just as half the football team was peeing out the beers they’d tailgated before heading over to the dance. I thought, We really shouldn’t be doing this. But Dutch’s boldness carried me on. He held my hand and opened the stall door as if it was the door to Cinderella’s carriage. When he closed it and locked it behind us, I could hear the jeers. One of the guys pounded on the door, and I jumped. Dutch looked ready to start fighting…but soon the jeers faded. The football players left. Other people came in, but they had no idea what we were up to—not unless they looked down and saw the two pairs of legs.

  This time we didn’t go all the way. We just kissed and groped, and it was almost like the beginning. Only it didn’t feel like the beginning, because I knew the beginning had passed a long time ago. Dutch was murmuring how hot I was, how great I was, how cool this was. Usually I could lose myself in that for hours. Usually that was how I knew I was okay. That being me, that doing this, was okay. I loved that he said these things, and I loved that when I was with him I could believe they were true. Which is different from loving him. But in some ways more powerful.

  There was a spot on his back that caused him to shiver whenever I touched it a certain way. I loved that, too. I loved knowing his body that well. But it only worked when we were lying down, relaxed, quiet. When we were pressing against each other in a bathroom stall, there wasn’t that kind of vulnerability, that kind of control. It was like we were now one thing, and everything outside the stall was another. As opposed to when we were truly alone together—then we were each one thing, and the charge came from combining the two.

  After a while our mouths and hands took their usual course. When we emerged from the stall, this kid I’d been friends with in seventh grade—Hector—was at the sink, washing his hands. He looked in the mirror and saw us emerge. And then he shook his head, as if to say, What a waste. And I thought, You asshole. I turned back to Dutch and gave him a long, hard kiss, right in that mirror. Us against the world.

  Here’s the thing—even if it was just sex, even if he didn’t say “I love you,” even if I knew it wouldn’t last, you have to understand that I would have been alone without him. I would have been so alone.

  I held his hand as we went back into the ballroom. I couldn’t get him as far as the dance floor, but we found friends to talk to, joke with, tease and be teased by. I could see a few teachers and administrators wanting to say something to us about our clothing choice, but as long as we held hands, it was like we were invincible. When the prom queen and prom king were announced, I half expected it to be us. I was a little disappointed when it wasn’t, because I would’ve liked nothing more than to have walked on stage with Dutch, to give him that royal kiss in front of the whole school, to prove that we’d been here, unafraid.

  The DJ announced that there was only one more song until the prom song, and that couples should reunite and head for the dance floor. Dutch looked over at the DJ on the stage, then grinned and sparkled even wider. He held me by the hand and led me in the dance floor’s direction. Then, just as we were about to get there, he pulled me to the side, into the shadows. He pointed, and I saw what he’d seen—a small crawl space under the stage, beneath the music. “Come on,” he said, hunching down, heading inside. I followed.

  It was a maze of dust and wires and reverb. There was barely enough room to sit upright, so Dutch lay down on the floor, staring up as if the bottom of the stage was full of stars. I crawled next to him, and he immediately rolled to his side and kissed me. His hand ran over my back, then down below my waistband.

  The first sounds of “In Your Eyes” came through—the drum and the bell, the steady heartbeat. And then Peter Gabriel’s first words—Love, I get so lost sometimes. I heard them so deeply at that moment. Even though Dutch was pressing into me. Even though I was turned on and warm and with him…I thought to myself, I’m missing something. I stopped kissing Dutch back, and the minute I stopped kissing him back, he knew it and he stopped kissing me. But he didn’t pull away. He didn’t let go. Instead he pulled back enough to see me. To read me. And I stared back at him, daring him not to move. I thought it again—I’m missing something. A few feet away, couples were dancing to their prom song, holding each other tight. I was missing that. And at the same time, I was here, under the stage, being held in this different way. Looking into his eyes. Having him look into my eyes. Staying quiet. Just watching. Feeling our breath, his hand still on the small of my back, on the skin. I realized I would always be missing something. That no matter what I did, I would always be missing something else. And the only way to live, the only way to be happy, was to make sure the things I didn’t miss meant more to me than the things I missed. I had to think about what I wanted, outside the heat of wanting.

  I had no idea whether Dutch noticed any of this, or what he was thinking. When the song was over, we made sure we’d been hanging in the moment before a kiss, not in the moment after one. Then we crawled back out from under the stage and walked back to our friends. I forgot to hold his hand.

  Later that night when we were naked in my basement, naked afterward, he said it to me. And even though it was too late, I didn’t say, “No, you don’t.” Instead I kissed him once, quickly. Then we lay there, and I let time pass.

  PRINCES

  The minute I hit high school, the minute the train station was only a walk away, I escaped into the city and danced. I had been practicing since I was seven—practicing to be that kind of body, the kind that gets away. Right after school, two days a week. Then three. Then four. The Nutcracker in winter, the big recital right before summer. I outgrew my teacher and his storefront studio. Cut class to audition for a modern dance studio in Manhattan. Treated my acceptance like the keys to the city.

  When you’re a boy dancer, your progression through the Nutcracker is like this: First you’re a mouse, then you’re a Spaniard, then you’re a prince. I could feel my body changing that way, from something cute and playful to something strange and foreign, then something approaching beauty. You start off wanting to be a snowflake, to be a character. But then you realize you can be the movement itself.

  I loved watching the boys, and I loved being the boy who was watched. Not as a mouse, not as a Spaniard. But now, as a prince.

  I doubt my parents knew what they were getting into when they let me go to that first dance class. I know some fathers justify it by saying it will help when the boy grows up to be a quarterback, when he has to dance past the linebackers. I know some mothers tell other mothers that it’s so much better than staying on the couch all day. My parents never really discussed the subject with me. They came to the Nutcrackers, they came to the big recitals, and they came to the conclusion that I was gay. Not every boy dancer is gay, or grows up to be gay. But come on. A whole lot of us are.

  My brother Jeremy came to most of the performances, too. When he was five and I was ten, he got all worried that our Jewish family was starting to celebrate Christmas, with all of the red, green, and white costuming going on. It was only when he realized he was celebrating me instead of celebrating Santa that he was all for it. Five years younger than me, always a kid in my eyes. Whether he knew I was gay or not didn’t really matter to me. He wasn’t going to be a part of that part of my life. br />
  That part resided in the city. Specific address: the Broadway studios of the Modern Dance Workshop, housed in a rent-by-the-hour space between Prince and Spring in SoHo, with a view of a publishing company across the street. I had to audition four times in order to get in—there were only twenty students, mostly city, some suburban. Six guys, fourteen girls. The instructors were either older dancers who’d been worn down into being choreographers or aspiring dancers looking for a day job to support their auditioning habits. There was Federica Rich, a middle-aged footnote of the footlights. There was quiet, unassuming Markus Constantine, who looked at us not so much as teenagers but as potential trajectories, mapping the mathematics of our every movement. His counterpoint was Elaine, who’d just graduated from the dance program at Michigan, and clearly belonged to the dance-as-therapy school. She was always examining her reflection in our wall of mirrors.

  And Graham. At twenty-two, he was only five years older than me. He hadn’t gone to college; he’d danced his way across Europe instead. He was beautiful in the way that a breeze is beautiful—the kind of beauty you feel gratitude for. From the minute I saw him behind the table at my fourth audition, I knew I would be dancing for him. To make him watch, so I could return the watching.

  I was not the only one. We’d all tell stories about Graham and treat them like facts, or glean small facts and turn them into stories. Carmela had heard that he’d been an underwear model in Belgium. Tracy said he once dated one of the male leads at Tharp, and that when he’d left, the lead had drunk himself into depression. Eve said this wasn’t true; the dancer had been from Cunningham, not Tharp.

  I wanted to be the one to find out the truth. I wanted to become a part of the truth, part of the story.

  Mostly, I hung out with the girls. They weren’t competition. As for the other boys—only one or two were a real threat. Connor had the inside track with the teachers, since he’d been at MDW for two semesters now. Philippe was much stronger than he was graceful, but he was also named Philippe, which I had to imagine gave him an advantage. As for the others—everyone trusted that Thomas had been accepted because of his trust fund; Miles seemed intimidated by the sound of his own footsteps; George leaped like a gazelle but landed like a lumberjack. Modern dance is forgiving of many things, but it still discriminates against the balance-impaired.

  From the minute I got on the train, I felt I was already in the city, already a part of that rush. But when I got into the studio, the city ceased to be anything but a traffic buzz in the background. That room contained a world.

  On the train ride back, I would try to stay within it. I would replay Graham’s single nod to me a hundred times over, watching it from every angle. If he said anything to me, I would gather the sentences like a shell seeker. Sitting on the orange reversible seats, jutted back and forth by the rhythm of the rails, I would try to remember all of my movements. Inevitably, the ones that came back to me the most were the errors—the slight wobble of the ankle, the unfortunate and unintended dip of the arms. My memory became slave to the corrections I would need to make. More so if Graham had noticed.

  I could have called one of my parents to pick me up when I got into the station, but I was never ready to see them, never ready to concede that I was home so soon. So I walked the mile home. My body, having just been sitting for a half hour, reawakened to a new kind of fatigue—not the adrenaline exhaustion of having just finished, but the unoiled hinges of afterward, when everything catches up with you and your body lets you know how it truly feels. Sometimes I loved that ache, because it felt like an accomplishment. Other times I was tired of everything.

  I always stayed until the last possible moment of class, and then sometimes a few of the girls and I would run to Dojo for a yogurt shake or a cheeseburger. By the time I got to my street, suburbia was empty of cars, of noise, of movement. Even the reading light in Jeremy’s room was off, the new chapter dog-eared for the night. My parents’ room emanated a blue television glow; if I went close to the window, I could hear the sound of law-and-order suspects being caught, or the roll call of the news. By the time I passed their doorway, my parents were usually asleep, even if the television wasn’t.

  I was seventeen, halfway toward eighteen, and I had learned something nobody had ever taught me: Once you get to a certain age, especially if a driver’s license is involved, you can go a whole day—a whole week, even—without ever seeing your family. You can maybe say good morning and maybe say good night, but everything in the middle can be left blank.

  I saw Jeremy a few minutes every morning at breakfast. He was starting to really grow, almost thirteen. His awkward voice didn’t faze me, but the way his body was beanstalking, beginning to fit into itself, was strange. I knew there were probably things I should be telling him—but then I figured that I’d figured it all out without the help of an older brother. I wanted him to be independent. So I left him alone.

  Did I know him at all? Yes. He was class-president material, in a town where that was more a measure of affability than popularity. He would grow up to be the boy every girl’s parents wanted her to bring home. He was ingratiating without being grating. He was, I imagined, an okay guy.

  And did he know me at all? He knew me as the brother who was always leaving. So maybe the answer was yes.

  One of the reasons I was so happy to avoid my house was that everyone else was deeply involved in the preparations for Jeremy’s Bar Mitzvah. My own Bar Mitzvah had been stressful enough—forget coming of age, it was more like a see-how-many-times-his-voice-can-crack contest. (The answer: roughly 412 times in one morning service.) The experience left me with a sheaf of savings bonds and little else. Jeremy’s, if anything, was going to be more elaborate. Jeremy seemed less bothered by this than I was. He deferred everything but the Torah portion to our parents, and appeared grateful and interested when such things as appetizers and candle color were discussed. After my recommendation for a bacon-flavored cake, I wasn’t consulted.

  Two more weeks. I only had two more weeks to put up with the preparations. My mother had made me pick out my tie over a month ago. I was all set.

  At class, we didn’t acknowledge our parents. No, that’s not true—we were willing to acknowledge their faults. I kept relatively quiet during these conversations, because I had less than the other kids to check off on the dishonor roll of slights and abuses. Carmela’s dad had left and her mom had given up. Eve’s stepmother nearly broke Eve’s leg. Miles’s parents were in a constant state of disowning him. Although he’d never say it, the girls knew he was working two jobs to pay for tuition. Every now and then Thomas, our trust funder, would strip a twenty from his parents’ billfold and we would all draw hearts on it before slipping it into Miles’s gym bag.

  Graham never talked about his parents or where he’d come from. When he said “home,” he meant his basement apartment in the East Village. I imagined it so clearly, down to the rag rug on the floor and the incense holder on the bedside table. Sometimes I would play an infinite game of Twenty Questions with him, trying to use each question to narrow him down even further, to get to his one single answer. Did he live alone? Yes, if you didn’t count the uninvited mouse. Was he happy in New York? Yes, but in a different way than he’d been happy in Barcelona or Paris. What did he think of Center Stage? That God was cruel to make Ethan Stieffel straight.

  From the way he criticized my dancing, I knew he thought I had a chance. You don’t need to go to too many classes to know the difference between a teacher who points our your errors because they are beyond help and need to be pointed out as an obligation to dance itself, and the instructors who tear you down because they think you can rebuild in the proper way. Graham didn’t hold back his corrections, but he didn’t hold back his praise, either.

  We each had to perform in a piece, and Graham chose me to be in his. While Elaine dangled her dancers in Debussy, Markus knit together swaths of Schubert, and Federica fastened onto flamenco, Graham decided to make a suite out o
f recent Blur songs. “An aria of dislocated longing,” he called it. “A dance for the anonymously lovelorn,” I answered. He nodded, happy with me.

  Practice was different now. He would touch me, guide me, manipulate me into the right contours, the shape of his vision. I was used to this, but not in this way. This was not the Nutcracker. This was personal. I was prince now of a kingdom that was still being defined.

  There was a movement I couldn’t get. A turn with arms outstretched. I could not get my arms to match his direction—or maybe it was that he could not get his direction to match with words. My arms spread too much like wings, then too much like broken branches. They embraced too much of the air, then they did not hold the space tight enough. Graham came behind me and mapped my arms with his, held my hands and made every point align, wrist to shoulder. I closed my eyes, taking in the angles, the arcs, his breathing against my neck. When he let go, I stayed in the pose. David’s slingshot, he called it, and I knew I wouldn’t get it wrong again.

  When we were done, he asked me to join him for a drink. I knew it wasn’t a date. I knew he wasn’t asking me out. But what my mind knew, my hope ignored. It was my hope that was disappointed when I came out of the changing room to find a whole entourage waiting for me. It was my hope that faltered when Carmela said, “Are you coming with us or not?”

  But my hope was stubborn. When Graham held back so we’d be side by side on the sidewalk, my hope ignored everything else and held on to the single fact of his proximity, his choice. He led us from the back, calling out directions to George and Carmela until we made it to Beauty Bar, which used to be a beauty parlor but now served cocktails. The decor was still Retro Beautician, with half-dome hair dryers attached to the backs of many of the chairs. There were six of us, and Graham was the only one who was legal. We gave him money and he represented us at the bar, returning with Cosmopolitans stemmed through his fingers, perfectly balanced.