Smuin Ballet

When the new guy came into the men's dressing room after rehearsal, sat down and began packing cotton into a set of pointe shoes, everybody burst out laughing. My usual partner Manny shouted "Hey Paul, we didn't know you had a twin!"

Sitting with my feet in a sink while delightfully cold water made silver circles around my toes, I would have preferred to go on envisioning myself, light and beautiful, star of the annual Northern California festival for which our semi-pro choreographer had told me he was thinking of Swan Lake. But I am resident pointe man at the Acad, so courtesy bade me take out my feet, walk over and shake hands, saying, "Paul Thanasoulos. Frank and Manny here cart me around when I dance on my toes."

The new guy looked down. "You'd better stay flat today or that shin will splint."

Manny went back to drinking his fermented grass glop. No one even bothered to shrug. One more pretty diva boy, fresh from a college program and heartbroken that neither Copenhagen nor the Bolshoi grabbed him. Those types either last a season and give up and get a job, or they land the company spot of their dreams, spend a few years going balls to the wall, and give up and get a job.

In class when we got a look at the new guy's dancing, I privately ranked him fairly high. He lifted with cleaner precision than Manny, and his line in jumps was smooth as our teenaged prima ballerina, Jeannette Kwong. He might go the company route. If he looked as good on stage as in studio, he might help me carry off Swan Lake at the festival. Maitresse watched to see who he made eye contact with, which was no one, and raised an eyebrow at that, so I guess I felt delegated to propose a few combinations after she dismissed us and most of the regular students went home. I also got a name out of him, Reuben.

We began a low rise, one of my arms around his waist and the other extended. Reuben went up so light we kept going until his feet touched my shoulder. When he rested his lower ribs in the palm of my upraised hand I couldn't believe how perfectly the weight balanced. "Where are you?" I said, looking up.

He smiled down like a Renaissance madonna.

I laughed. "It's as if you disappeared."

Right away his ears got pink. "What's the joke?"

I controlled my expression. We could work pokerfaced, quiet as Carmelites if he wanted. I had been dancing for years alone or with guys who said they did pointe but meant an hour a day to improve their balance, or with Frank and Manny as a living barbell in pas de deux. A partner like Reuben for pointe work, almost the same weight as I, opened new realms of possibility.

While the rest of the group warmed down from class and worked on the day's new lessons, the two of us tripped around, doing bits we liked from the oldies, Coppelia, The Firebird, La Sylphide, testing each other on lifts and leaps and carries, climbing up and down as the fancy struck. I had never fit so well with another dancer so quickly.

In the dressing room afterward I tried a few questions while icing my shin. His family came from New Orleans, where he'd just finished the program at Tulane. I asked how he liked San Francisco. He said, "What are those blue trees?"

"Blue spruce? Eucalyptus?" suggested Manny, shaving at the sinks. No, Reuben insisted he'd seen trees covered with sky-blue flowers, one at twenty-fifth and Noe, and one out on Brotherhood Way, by the lake.

"What were you doing out there?"

"Wedding," he said.

"A gig at one of those fancy churches?" asked an older guy named Rafael. "Which one?"

"I got lost. Turns out it was Brotherhood A.M.E."

I didn't know what A.M.E. stood for, but Rafael burst out laughing. "Boy, were you lost!" Reuben didn't answer.

Manny said, "I go running on Brotherhood. Never saw any blue trees."

"How much you want to bet?" Reuben challenged, pulling off his legwarmers and tights.

His second and third toes were almost the same length, only a little shorter than the first. If he wanted, he could have danced on them barefoot. While I stood gaping, Frank and Rafael cut in joking about blue trees and pink elephants and dancing on tiptoe too much, their recognition, I thought, that this new diva boy might stay.

When I came back Reuben was still there, either waiting for me or assessing his chest and trousers in the mirror. I noticed a double string of little beads around his neck. "What are those?"

"Waist beads." He tugged the lower strand to below the sternoclavicular.

I picked them up to look, but he moved away. "Where did you get them?" I asked to cover the awkwardness.

"Girlfriend." He pulled on a t-shirt and then a loose plaid over it, leaving the beads in between the two layers and the plaid buttoned only partway up.

No, we didn't look that much alike, except for small light builds. He had to be three or four years younger and his hair was dark, not red. He tried the beads inside the t-shirt, then outside both shirts, and finally in the middle again. He must be worried. I tried to encourage him by tossing an arm across his shoulder and saying, "Date? You look sharp."

"Leave me alone," he muttered, giving a push. A slight push, but I realized we had something in common beyond pointe; we both, like many athletic guys, had done a little martial arts. His nudge came at an angle that could have uprooted me. He felt my weight drop in response.

"Sure," I said, making room. Some people arrive in the Castro district with a way to go. He stood flexing his toes, evidently trying to think of a neutral remark, while I took a white dress shirt and folded pants from the stack at the bottom of my locker.

"You keep your work clothes there?" was what he came up with.

"Yep." I unfurled the shirt with one hand and held the pants open with the other to step in. "Wash them at the laundry on Eighteenth, bring them right over. That way they stay pressed."

He frowned a little. "Have you got an apartment?"

"A room. But I go straight from here to work, and I can't afford to look rumpled. I wait." We came out of the dressing room into the foyer redolent with old wood and sweat.

"Oh, tips," he said.

"How about you?" I asked, but as he spoke we were stepping out into the wind fresh off the Pacific, and it felt so good on our tired bodies that all we did was throw back our faces and breathe. We walked down to 18th Street together, then I turned left to the bus stop and he turned right to where he said he was parked.

My friend Anna happened to drive by that corner on the way from her physical therapist at UCSF (knee ligament) to a Valencia Street pool-hall turned theater, where they showed independent videos she liked. She usually checked the bus stop and gave me a lift if I were waiting. So I wasn't surprised when a swanky black sports car with Kill Your Television on the bumper shrieked to the curb, but Reuben, now half a block away, turned at the Shriek and sprinted toward me as if I were under attack.

"Reuben, this is Anna, one of our beginners," I called.

Reuben wound up his sprint in a pirouette and ran off. "He is beautiful," she told me, staring.

"A little introverted. I don't know if Maitresse will think he's good at stage work. If she does, though, she could give us a pas de deux for recitals that will knock them dead."

"That's a new student? Him?" she asked, still gazing down the street as though he left con trails. I got into the car.

"So, did it happen?"

"He told me not to get excited yet."

She sat up and started the engine, patting my thigh with a certain condolence, as though I'd already worn my toes to shreds at the festival in one of ballet's most difficult roles and would never dance en pointe again. "Swan Lake! I'm so excited. You'll be wonderful. Those fouettes will come rolling off you like water off a duck's back. Will Reuben be in it, too? He ought to be in a company."

"You haven't seen him dance," I pointed out. It's true that one of my shoulders has an old injury that kicks up sometimes, but most dancers have a weaker joint someplace. I can lift Anna standing over my head and hold her steady, gripping her ankles, longer than Manny or Frank could hold up an intermediate lying flat on the palms of their hands.

"I know, I haven't been around at all." She gave me half a hug with the arm not guiding the wheel.

"Manny came up and put his hand on my shoulder and told me you're a nice woman. He goes, try to stay friends."

She laughed. "That's right. Don't dare break a paying heart."

It didn't entertain me somehow that the two of us attracted gossip. In the desert of tedium where a dancers' strength and beauty flowers, rumors of love and lovers' quarrels grow so prettily over a plain old wrenched joint and paying job that no one remembered how her attendance had fallen off even before the knee, as soon as she landed a spot with Industrial Light and Magic in Marin. For some weeks she had come by now and then with tales of incredible posh at the Lucas ranch. As she sank in, the irony turned to outrage at the sycophancy around George himself, then to anticipation George's Next Film and the technical feats the ranch had to perform in the meantime to make itself worthy. All the way to the restaurant she talked about the difficulty of making a herd of cows appear to burst into flame.

Sometimes I invite her in to the restaurant for coffee. Seeing Anna be nice to her waiter helps give other customers the idea. Tonight when she pulled up to the wide flat Italian restaurant where my rent comes from, I just got out of the car.

"Tired," I answered her look. The inside of my left arm still ached from a jerky lift the previous day, and of course there was the shin, near splint as Reuben predicted. He danced well, sure, but not a wit better than I do by the measurables of speed and lift and keeping on the beat. I've thought about plastic surgery, but never had enough money and time at once and besides, I don't look that bad. Not handsome, sort of a plain roundish face without anything special. It depresses my tips.

* * * * * * *

A short night's sleep doesn't usually leave me cranky, but with the various aches, I decided, sleep does less than ibuprofen can to justify God's ways to man, and the pills put my stomach out of sorts. Reuben, by contrast, entered smiling from his left foot up his body and down to the right and said hello all round. The other guys let me alone until I had done my postprandial stretch.

Warm-up is like the first blush of sunrise, before anything in the day has gone wrong. The moment I assume a stance and begin to breathe I'm shining, and every stretch describes an arc of my halo. I dwell in my body like a benevolent little god and care nothing for anything but my radiance. Maitresse says I don't connect to the audience. She's right; a crowd out behind a wall of bright lights doesn't excite me. Maybe I can't believe there's anyone out there, can't believe people would rather sit and watch than dance. But warm-up and practice are different. The mirror, the walls and floor of the studio, Maitresse and the students all straining to elevate ourselves by muscle and will, combine in a steady exhilaration as I work to keep every muscle fiber under conscious control so even the blood will flow in obedient strength.

"Your shoulder blades are sticking out like a pair of bosoms," Maitresse snapped at Reuben. She took a lot of interest in his shoulders and back. Almost every class that day she corrected something.

I got my share, too. "Foot placement! What are those baseball bats on the ends of your legs? Do you have ankles?" At that moment I didn't think so; all I had from the hip down was pain. I did the movement a few times just working on the feet, then the knees and thighs, then the torso, then all together. Maitresse had already walked away. "Not as bad as before," she said the next time she came by. Later I even got a "Good, technically," the "technically" meaning it still didn't look like it came from the heart. Reuben glanced at me in the mirror and straightened the line of his own lower leg.

Later when the intermediates showed up for their class, she let him assist, on the excuse that it was Frank's turn but he couldn't make it, though there were others who could have done it, too. I try to take all the midlevel classes; it's a pleasant way to stretch and work on basics and keep my practice hours up. Even Nora, who teaches school and has the most rigidly scheduled work in the inner crowd, dashes in for an hour at her lunch break to do intermediate. The tiny stipend for assisting would have been all right by any of us, but it wasn't worth fussing about if Maitresse wanted to see the new guy in action. We took the back row away from the mirror and let him and the middies go at it in peace.

I think one reason he astonished us so when he finally got on stage was Reuben's failure to hold his own in that class. When Maitresse called out a technique he did it facing the mirror, gazing steadfastly at himself. A lot of the students didn't realize he was supposed to be demonstrating. When they had questions, they waved to me or to Nora, who went up to Reuben finally and said, "You don't know how to instruct. Watch me do it." I couldn't hear what he answered, but I saw her raise her head and step back. Maitresse saw it, too. She looked at me.

Never come between dancers having a spat. The next time they perform together and someone gets injured, they'll blame you. So I let Reuben and Nora quibble their way through the class and did the assisting myself. Afterward, Nora handed him a book about teaching. He came into the dressing room and threw it on the floor.

I said, "If you want to help me assist for a while--"

"I don't," he snapped, and then, "Thanks."

"Don't need the money?" I asked. People had been tactfully ignoring us, but now heads turned.

"I'm all right. My girlfriend lets me stay at her place."

"She rich?" asked the old-timer, Rafael.

"She's got a job."

"Where?"

"Mountain View."

"Oh, Silicon Valley. That's a good place to have friends. If I was a young dancer trying to start out nowadays, that's exactly where I would go," Rafael told him. Later during informal practice, Mary sighed for a power babe with a pair of administrative assistants and a dancer in each of her well-appointed homes. I said I'd rather wait tables.

Nora called out from the barre, "Sure you rather. You can put down the food and walk off."

Manny sighed audibly. He doesn't like non-dance chatter while we practice. He's probably right, but I told Nora, "Nobody's criticizing you and Mary's day job. More ballerinas ought to teach school when they get to the age."

"Defensive, isn't he. You came here three years ago--"

Rafael said, "Paul, I heard about something that might work for you. Visualization--"

I went to the corner where I had left my toe shoes.

"You're not as bad as Frank is," Manny consoled, but Frank thinks it's enough to be muscular, lithe and handsome, so he didn't rise to the bait.

Rafael stopped me with a hand on the shoulder. "You've got nothing to lose. Shut your eyes."

I gave up.

"Now imagine connecting from your heart to the audience. What do you see?"

"Tubes," I replied.

"All right, good," Rafael tried to bluff. "What kind of tubes?" The rest were staring at me.

"Clear ones. Plastic. Like a transfusion."

Nora said, "That's an ill man." Frank, whose lover had died in a hospital, went back to the mirror. I shrugged off Rafael's hand and laced up one shoe. "Everybody ready for run-through?"

"No, don't give up on it," Rafael said. "The blood's going out of you, right? What you've got to do is reverse the direction, so the blood's flowing in."

Manny started the tape player. We got to work on our rehearsal piece, an old favorite bit of Sleeping Beauty we could enjoy without further psychoanalysis.

* * * * * * *

Energized by rehearsal, I took advantage of the quiet to stay and work on my entrechats when the people who had to get up for day jobs went home. Maitresse had told me I stiffened too much and that was why I couldn't cross and uncross my feet enough between the time I went up and the time I came down. Entrechats-quatre, four crosses, would not take the state festival by storm. I couldn't manage a cinq more than one jump in five or six, though, couldn't quit looking in the mirror, and began to hate what I saw. The blood-transfusion thing kept coming back, along with the sight of them all staring in disbelief that a professional performer would admit to such a low-class neurosis, something out of a tacky vampire movie like the ones Anna frequented to keep up with the latest low-budget special effects.

Slouching homeward discouraged, feet in rotten moods, I kept pausing at windows in which I looked, by the nature of darkened windows, very pale. As I passed a bar at the top of Castro, a tea-colored balding theater maven stooped across a crowd to knock on the window at me. He had produced a couple of AIDS benefits I danced in, and was waving in a manner that suggested he might spring for a ginger ale, so although the place looked jammed with tourists, I went in. We hugged and networked, shouting in one another's ears while a young thing on the maven's arm ignored me.

A peroxide blond in his fifties maneuvered close to the young thing and must have said something, because the response was an icy look and "Let's go, honey. It must be trash night here."

The maven spotted people across the room he needed to hug and charged off, date in tow. Undeterred, the blond fixed his bloodshot blue eyes on me. I shook my head.

A guy in black touched the blond's elbow and told him, "Don't forget the signing tomorrow. Six a.m."

"Yeah, yeah." The blond's gaze wandered to someone else in the room, and stopped. "Hey, look over there."

"Oh, no. You do this too much," protested the man in black. He was Asian, maybe half the age and size of the blond, and looked steadily downward with an air of refinement that made me think of old lace.

"Come on. I'll give you twenty for his number."

"No... He won't like me."

"You kidding? You look gorgeous. He'll love you," the blond insisted, leading him away to the dimmer regions near the wall. The shadow of an arm pointed across the floor as the object of their maneuvering bent an elbow. The peroxide blond lingered outside the shadow while the man in black stepped in.

The maven called out something across three or four groups to me, and I was moving toward him when a loud thump at the bar made people turn their heads and cluck. Brass rail, velvet curtains, glass chandelier, polished taps and the mirror behind the bar set the tone of this venerable establishment, not fisticuffs. Customers stepped quickly back from the peroxide blond, now redfaced, who seemed to be getting pushed. Voices told him to go home and dry up. My friend and his date hurried out. One of the people who moved away from the shadowy corner to lean on the bar was Reuben. He studied himself in the mirror while I debated whether to say hello.

His being there didn't surprise me that much, despite the way he had brushed me off about the waist beads. He could be oscillating, determined to stick with the girlfriend but given to glancing around. Or the girlfriend might be a boyfriend and he not out quite everyplace. And he might think it unprofessional to get involved where he danced. He might not want his fidelity to the mysterious partner tried. I liked that hypothesis.

The peroxide blond came up behind him. Reuben had not been looking at himself in the mirror. While the blond's fist was still a few inches away, he dropped to a squat. The blow landed on the varnished wood with a kind of slap that caused people to move away a little but didn't immediately raise alarm. Reuben stood up and the two of them jostled a bit, until Reuben tried what looked like it wanted to be a judo throw, but he was out of practice and the peroxide blond had weight. The blond scarcely lost his balance and Reuben got knocked on the floor, bumping the leg of a passerby who jumped back and bumped somebody else. While everybody was excusing and look-outing and righting tipped glasses, Reuben crouched at hip level, keeping eye contact with the blond. I noticed how carefully he watched the blond's eyes. People had begun to say "hey!" and "what's going on?" and Reuben was about to get slammed again when the busboys on bouncer duty arrived.

"You guys took your sweet time," one of the bartenders scolded, although the whole thing had taken half a minute. He got a nervous laugh from the crowd. The busboys removed the blond, Reuben still watching him carefully. People began asking if Reuben were all right and giving bad judo tips. He shrank into his vinyl jacket, moving toward the door. His eyes flicked side to side, maybe after the man in black, who had vanished.

I said, "Reuben, everything OK?"

He jumped. "Yeah." I saw his eyes find me and slowly focus.

"Get hit in the head?" I asked, looking at the pupils.

"No." He tossed his hair back. "Just had a few."

"What was that about?"

"Don't know."

"He just walked up and hit you from behind?"

Reuben shrugged. "He was picking on a guy."

"Short Asian guy in a black outfit?"

He focused again. "Yeah. What's the story?"

"I don't know. I just heard them. The blond wanted somebody's number. Was that you?"

Reuben started to button his jacket. "Guess so."

"So he was picking on the little guy and you told him to quit."

"I gave him a push with a beer mug," he said, not looking up. "It wasn't broken or anything."

I decided not to comment. "Well, if you're sure you're all right, I have to be going."

"Sure. Keep the peace," he said. He glanced at me quickly but didn't crack a smile.

I didn't know what to think of the incident. Had Anna been there, she would have thought Reuben did the right thing, defending the smaller guy. But I didn't tell her, not wanting to noise the story around where it could get back to the Acad.

* * * * * * *

Next morning Reuben and I worked en pointe before class. He was in arabesque up on my shoulder, arm and leg elevated, his hand in my upraised hand and supporting foot flat across my upper trapezius. It was beautiful. In the mirror I noticed a solemn Mexican guy in a delivery outfit come up the stairs with an armful of yellow roses, see us and stop to watch. "Ay yi!" he cheered. Reuben hopped down, an impressive descent we had also been working on.

Seeing that Reuben wasn't a woman, the guy became expressionless. "Flowers. Where I put them?" he asked.

Reuben glanced at the card. "I'll take care of it." He took the flowers down the hall to Maitresse's office, dropping the card on the way. When I picked it up, I saw Reuben's name on the front.

"Mea culpa, regina cordis mei."

Reuben was looking over my shoulder. "What's that, Italian?"

"Latin. I grew up Catholic. It's my fault...queen...of my heart. Argument with your girlfriend?"

He snorted. "That jerk in the bar."

A little later Maitresse arrived and we went down to "say hello," which meant help or carry her up the stairs and clue her in if she'd gone blank. The moments of blankness, when she has no idea where she is or decides she's back at the New York Ballet or Cleveland, are rare and brief and no doubt creepy for her as they are for us. Today she was sharp. She addressed us by name and looked down at our feet. "You dance together. Let me see."

I had only been lifting. There was no choice but to lift again and lug him back and forth, he looking beautiful while I exuded perfection as best I could. She watched us with her head tilted up and her thick eyelids nearly down, which can mean she's impressed or she's falling asleep.

"When he came to meŠ" she murmured after the wave of the hand that told us to stop. Her eyes opened. "You auditioned en pointe for me, Paul. Do you remember what I said?"

"You do not dance as well on your toes as a woman, and I will not force the men to carry you. Take any classes you like," I quoted. She'd also felt my throat to make sure I was really a man.

"Favien has spoken to you?"

"Oui, ma maitresse. He wants to do Swan Lake."

"All right. Bring me to office."

We picked her up quickly; sometimes she just sits, like Queen Victoria, to see if we'll get there before she hits the ground. After some dramatic coughs she recovered her voice to tell us to keep our shoulders down while she rode in the chair of our hands to the end of the hall.

The morning fog had lifted. Sunlight poured so abundantly through her east-facing windows that it seemed as though every corner of the Acad must be lit. Maitresse slid down to leave Reuben and I standing hand in hand before a cluster of yellow roses, open now in the sunlight. The air was full of their intoxicating scent.