by Andrew Binks
“Someone made a fortune in pea-soup shag.”
“Pea-soup toilets, yellow sinks, pink bathtubs. Ugh.”
“You’re in la belle province. It’s pea soup from here on in. You lucked out. I don’t know, but if you want some furniture, some cathouse neighbours had to make a quick exit and left enough stuff to furnish this place. And it’s all in our basement.”
Right away, just like that, he said it: “You want some company?”
The stairwell was silent before, and will be silent again, after I leave, but right now it is crowded with the noise in my head, like a corps of swans running into place for the final curtain, pointe shoes tapping the stage. I just heard a door slam way below. The laundry room must be down there somewhere. But I’m paralyzed. I sit here with my hands shoved between my thighs, I can still flex them tight enough to crack nuts if need be.
There was that offer of the hookers’ furniture. Kent always stood so close. “I mean we’re practically buddies, we both know Daniel—I could just sleep beside you— shit, is that where you sleep?” He laughed out loud when he saw a sleeping bag on the floor by the fireplace. “You dancers are gluttons for punishment. I hear Baryshnikov sleeps on the floor.”
“Baryshnikov is nothing but…”
“…bullshit stories about Baryshnikov. You dancers…”
“Well I’m saving myself,” I said. “Maybe that sounds old-fashioned to you.”
“For a mattress? I’ll get you one.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I’ll get you one anyway.”
“A hooker’s mattress? I’ll pass.”
“No. Something new. I have a friend at Kresge’s. He owes me a favour.” He looked me over. “So you’re saving yourself? Does he live in the neighbourhood? Have we met?”
I’d be damned if I’d tell him it was Daniel. “Montreal.”
“Lucky guy. Can’t believe your type still exists. You’re pretty. You sure you don’t want me to stay, anyway?”
I’ll start walking. I can keep my back against the cool concrete. For fuck’s sake, I have a bedsheet on. How discrete is that? It’s not like I’m naked. I’ll start moving. I have to move. Down is easy. I’ll say I’m doing a booze run for a toga party. My clothes are down there somewhere. What the hell has come between me and happiness?
Next morning Kent was on the sidewalk in front of the door that led to the cellar, between his place and the café. He was hopping around still in that white t-shirt trying to keep warm, hands tucked under his arms, making his lean biceps taut, cigarette tucked in the side of his mouth. I’ll never forget the damned cigarette. “Where’s my cig’rets?” he’d say. Cig’rets.
He scraped open the door, and we stepped down centuries-old limestone block steps into a still life of recent bordello history, Quebec, circa God knows when. Dusty light flooded in behind us, as well as in from a narrow window in the back, which provided enough light to see things I didn’t have any use for: torn red silken lamps with black fringe, fake tropical plants with big dusty leaves, French provincial end-tables, mauve rattan dressing tables and matching purple headboards.
Kent convinced me to drag a few buried items up to my place. We made a couple of trips, exchanging glances each time we passed. Smiling. Wondering. Searching. Counting my lucky stars. Suddenly I had a furnished apartment: cutlery for ten, a toaster, pots, foam mats for a bed and more foam padding in the corner to recline on, a glass-top, gold-framed ice cream parlour table and two matching chairs to put by the window where I could sit and look into the street. And I had a friend, Kent, my real live fairy godmother.
Kent’s enthusiasm didn’t waver. “I’ll cash in on that Kresge’s favour and get you a mattress.” And he was gone.
I looked around the room. I was alone. There would be no forced-polite sharing that came with roommates: not like living at Rachelle’s or Hugues’ or Madame’s. It was all mine, at least for the moment. For now it was my own quiet space that no one would walk through on their way to the bathroom or kitchen, with their hair up in a towel, or shout from another room that the phone is for you. No noise or babies or smokers or someone else’s dirty dishes or anyone bitching about mine not being done.
There was a cobblestone street under my nose and a café terrace beneath the back windows, and lots of room to dance. Under me, four-hundred-year-old stone and timber, and I was surrounded by feet-thick walls. There is something about space, creating it and owning it—in a ballet class, onstage, sitting quietly in a corner on the floor of your room. I didn’t want to move. I wanted to sit on the floor for maybe a day or more, and not think. I had been desperate for this. I remembered security in the past: the smell of my mother’s cologne—Calèche, coincidentally—saturating her mink coat, Christmas lights, knowing that Benjamin Weinstein’s mother would always break the rules and give us cola on a school day, a warm theatre seat, my own apartment, payday, a full fridge and finally an offer to dance with the Company—one paycheque and only one job to do—and finally, thinking for a moment that Daniel was all mine.
Late in the afternoon, a cab with a mattress sticking out of the trunk pulled up, and out stepped Kent. In a minute we had it upstairs and into my room. “Happy housewarming. We’ll try this out sometime. Take it for a test run around your place. Put it into high gear, burn some rubber, when you aren’t saving yourself.”
“You’re optimistic.”
“No. You are.”
I made tea and we sat by the front windows on my Marie Antoinette dining set.
He broke the silence. “Would you like to come for dinner?”
“I can’t remember the last time someone asked me for dinner. I’m sure it’s happened. I guess we ate…”
“Who?”
“Nothing. No one.”
“Mister No One.”
“Yes. I suppose.”
“Well, I am asking you for dinner. One of us will pretend it’s a date. Most likely, me. Now get some rest. You look pooped.” He rose and kissed my cheeks, first one, then the other—“Hey we’re in Quebec now”—then he quickly left. I lay on the new mattress, stared at the ceiling and wondered what favour he had called in to get it.
I dozed and when I woke it took a moment to remember where I was—the room was dark and the streetlight fell across the floor. My body ached from finally relaxing into a quiet place. As I got dressed I got caught up in the occasion of it. I made a point of wearing my party t-shirt—tight on the biceps, worn silky thin. I’d worn it to the disco in Montreal. No underwear: when you spend as many hours as I have in a dance belt, you relish the pleasures of not being confined.
Something about being physically close to Kent made me feel sexy—a natural physical response that was new to me, and not just a hard-on. It turned me on to know I turned Kent on, knowing that he was watching me with one thing on his mind. He had become my “mirror mirror on the wall,” making me believe I was sexy. It wasn’t like my attraction to Daniel, who excited me because of his own sexiness. It occurred to me that I needed to be desired.
His apartment was old mixed with new: a pine loft furnished with French Canadian antiques, settled, mature, not like this dancer’s make-do of hooker hand-me-downs on the other side of the wall. Kent kissed me like he had been on a desert island for a spell—long and big and juicy. I sat on the instinct to pull away.
Kent was whipping up an honest-to-God grown-up meal that would scare any ballerina. It included spaghetti with homemade sauce, bread and real-France French red wine most likely out of my price range: Chateau something-sur-something. He plunked it on the counter and twisted the corkscrew showing off the working tendons and ligaments beneath his fine this skin. “That mis en bouteille au chateau phrase on the label means it should be good. I mean it better be good.”
“Because of what you paid?”
“No, because tonight is special. It’s kind of a
n anniversary I guess, a celebration of our first dinner together. The wine should be special. If it isn’t I’ll go get something else. Although I’m warning you I bought a few.”
“So what about the mis en bouteille thing?”
“It just means they squeezed the grapes…” Here, he paused.
“Isn’t that how you make wine?” I wondered if it had been just plain stupid to dress like this. I mean what the hell was I trying to show here? At this rate we wouldn’t make it to dinner. “Go on.”
“…on their own property, and then bottled it there.”
I shivered. I drained my first glass of wine.
“So much for savouring the wine,” he said.
“It has a nice aftertaste.”
“I’ll teach you how to taste wine.”
“There’s a trick?”
“A technique.”
My head was spinning from an empty stomach. “I guess I should have eaten today.”
“What is it with dancers? Are you all on self-destruct?”
“I’ll make up for it. This looks amazing—enough to make a ballerina binge, then purge.”
“Let’s eat,” he said, carefully loading the plates.
I led the way to the table while he followed, hoped his eyes might be taking in some part of my anatomy. I sat down and tucked my napkin into my t-shirt.
“Now, what I’m dying to know…” he asked (my mind kept filling in the blanks at ninety miles an hour, saying things like, know if I’ll sleep with you), “…is whether all male dancers are gay?”
“Are you kidding?” I had the feeling he was leading me on.
“Well?”
“Of course not,” I said, pacing myself on my second glass of wine. “I mean, I wish. But it isn’t fair to all the heterosexual dancers to say something like that.”
“You wish?” He grinned. “How so?”
“Well who hasn’t?”
“Fantasies are different.”
“Well I mean everyone probably thinks we’re all blowing each other in the wings before going on.”
His knees touched mine under the table. I took a bigger swig of wine. “Go on.”
I sighed. He wanted a story. “Well, I mean, when I was a teenager I spent days fantasizing about the male corps of the Caracas Ballet, the Eliot Feld Ballet, the Dance Theatre of Harlem.”
“What were they doing in your fantasies?”
“Mostly dancing naked, you know complicated lifts, lots of body contact.” My heart was racing. “It’s hot in here.” Anxiety was overwhelming me. I couldn’t stop smiling. I drew a breath. “The sad truth is that dancers have too many body image hang-ups to be that open. I’ve heard it’s the opera singers who like to eat and have sex with abandon. What about you?” I gulped and hoped he would do all the talking, so I could settle.
“My fantasies? Or do I like to eat and fuck with abandon?”
“Oh, well, your anything. Past? I feel like we’ve met before.”
“I get that feeling with you.”
“Funny.”
Now my feet were twitching. Meanwhile we polished off the wine and he opened another. I was trying not to look like a glutton, but I was always hungry, recently of limited means, and always in a hurry. And he was lean, a little gaunt maybe, or maybe just overworked.
“I’ve never seen a dancer eat so much. Do you purge?”
“God no. I just binge and starve, kind of like a cobra or something. When I was in school the more I worried about my weight the worse I looked. Now I eat when I’m hungry. Swimming taught me nutrition.” Now I was blathering. “You have to keep your strength up. Good nutrition is kind of a hobby—too bad I can’t afford it. I mean…”
“You’re a dancer. Say no more.”
I wished I hadn’t shown up empty-handed. “God you just can’t escape the food thing as a dancer, can you? Everyone is fascinated by it.”
“It’s refreshing to see someone eat.”
“I hope I’m not making a pig of myself.” At least eating kept me occupied. “This wine has gone to my head.”
“We can only hope.”
“You can.”
“Yep. So. What brought you to the land of poutine and pea soup?”
“Just looking for better opportunities, better training for my body. I’m working with an extremely talented woman now.”
“Your body looks fine to me.”
“I could have stayed with the Company. I was second soloist, but the training was… oh forget it.” Of course I’d stopped believing this long ago, but it was the official story.
“It seems a big risk to take. This woman must be something.”
“She was a principal with the Hungarian State and a soloist with the Royal before immigrating.” I wrapped the spaghetti on my spoon and tried not to think of her filthy kitchen, enough to spoil a healthy appetite, and hoped he wouldn’t ask much more about her. I didn’t want to have to start lying on our first date.
“As in London’s Royal Ballet?”
“Mmm hmm.”
He looked at me like he understood this world of the gypsy and the circus, something most non-dancers do not get. “I’ve never had an artistic outlet,” he said. “I’ve never felt the urge.” He poured another glass of wine. “I love wine, I love music, love dance but don’t have an expressive bone in my body. Well, maybe one. And to give it credit, it is quite expressive and come to think of it, it has urges.”
“Your outlet.”
“Definitely.”
“I get the point.”
“You will.”
I giggled the way I hate to do.
“Oh, I’ve known a few dancers. In Toronto mainly. The National—among others.”
“So maybe that’s your expression—doing dancers.” My nervousness was replaced with regret for this last comment, like a bucket of cold water thrown on the conversation. How could I compare with all of everything he had heard, seen and tasted of the dance world in Toronto? I held up my glass for a refill. He touched my fingers. When he took the glass I noticed how thick and rough his hands were. He steadied the glass and poured.
“Dancers don’t strike me as risk-takers.”
“No? With a lifespan less than a moth to a flame? That’s not a risk?”
“Well, not once they have a job. You’ve taken a leap into the unknown, which this place certainly is. I’m surprised you left. You’re brave.”
“Or naive?”
“Optimistic.”
“Stupid?”
“Idealistic?”
“I wish I could look at it that way.”
“You’ll see—someday.” He clinked his glass against mine.
I swallowed a small burp. “You’re drunk.”
“It takes a lot more than this to get me drunk.”
“Well not me. I guess I should have eaten something today.” I pushed back from the table. (It’s amazing how satisfied you feel after a meal cooked with care, not just thrown together for sustenance, mixed with paranoia that there might be one calorie too many.) I got up and plunked into an old velvety easy chair. Kent filled our glasses and returned to sit at my feet.
“Speaking of dancers, you ever hear from that guy, Daniel?” I tried desperately to sound matter-of-fact.
“God, no! I don’t keep in touch with every trick I have, although I’m pretty good about it. But Daniel, he seems like he’s all over the place. Who could keep up with him? Though I gave him my number, I didn’t think he’d call. But he did. About you.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing. Said you were a dancer. Said he coached you. That’s about it. Nothing special. You know. Nothing extraordinary. Don’t pout. You know how he feels about dancers. You two have a thing? That why you’re asking?” Kent pulled on my pant leg then quickly reached up and u
ndid my belt. “You still saving yourself for that guy in Montreal?”
Kent was fast, but I liked his bravado. His fingers fumbled around to get my fly half-open and pull my pants below my waist, before I pushed his hands away. God I needed to be touched.
When Daniel vanished so did my confidence. Kent somehow stirred those ideas that I might be an attractive being. Not to mention the fact that he continued at my leg with the earnestness and openness of a horny dog; you can so easily forgive them as you affectionately slap them away, believing they chose you specifically, but knowing it is merely physical. I couldn’t help but laugh, and with his innuendo and my drunkenness I couldn’t take it seriously.
He sat back and started to untuck his shirt. “This room gets so hot,” he said. After two bottles of wine, this was true. When he pulled his shirt over his head I saw that he was just lean, wound muscle, like someone whose metabolism was working overtime.
He unzipped his pants. “Do you like getting fucked? If you know Daniel, then you like getting fucked.”
“But…”
“Just kidding.”
Now I had to part the clouds of inebriation to make some sense of where it was all going. His desperation was driving me nuts, and although I didn’t want to disappoint, I did not want to start something. I remember hearing “like sticks with like” when I was growing up—the Ukes, the Scots, the Anglos—for some unknown reason, and now we fairies had to as well. Anyway, I couldn’t figure out what Daniel and Kent really had in common to bring them together, if in fact they were both tops. Then I saw Kent’s penis—a huge sloppy thing, like Daniel’s but circumcised. They were card-carrying members of the big cock club.
“Don’t move for a minute. I have to take this all in.” Just looking wasn’t complicated. I wouldn’t have to explain myself. “You have an amazing body.” Even if I wasn’t prepared to partake, I could at least enjoy the view and maybe be truthful about it.
“Well? Have you?”
“Hmmmm?”
“Have you ever been fucked?”
“No. Don’t see how I’d enjoy it anyway.”