by Zippora Karz
Not only was Kayla a great companion; she was a potential life-saver.
THIRTY-TWO
With my new doctor and insulin regime, Dr. G’s diet and supplements, and Kayla’s potentially life-saving company, I seemed to be back on track and I was enjoying dancing more and more.
While Peter Martins had been casting me as Sugar Plum every winter and giving me a few other leads, they’d been few and far between. Then, in the spring of 1992, when I’d been seeing Dr. G for only a few months, he cast me for the first time in Balanchine’s Apollo.
Mr. B had created many masterpieces, but none that I loved more than Apollo. Set to the music of Igor Stravinsky, Balanchine had created it 1928, when he was just twenty-four years old, and would later say that it was the turning point of his life. The ballet tells the story of the young god Apollo and the three Muses— Terpsichore, the Muse of dance, Polyhymnia, the muse of mime, and Calliope, the Muse of poetry—who vie for his attention.
The first Apollo I saw was danced by the legendary Edward Villella, who, along with Jacques D’Amboise, had made it cool for men to be ballet dancers. An Al Pacino look-alike, Eddie came from Brooklyn and had actually been a boxer for a while. He was tough and athletic and executed leaps and turns that made audiences gasp. But he was also an artist, who could bring everyone in the theater to tears. Although he’d already retired from City Ballet when I arrived at SAB, I did get to see him dance a solo from Apollo once when I was a student, and he invited me to go with him on a lecture tour he’d organized. Young as I was then, I recognized that his performance was spectacular.
Nordic blond Peter Martins was physically Eddie’s opposite, but when I saw him dance the same role opposite Suzanne Farrell’s Terpsichore, he, too, was everything I’d ever imagined a god to be.
My Apollo would be Peter Boal. Margaret Tracy would dance Terpsichore, her sister Kathleen would dance Polyhymnia, and I would dance Calliope.
It was an honor for Peter to have included me in this new young cast, and, as it had been for Balanchine, Apollo was also a turning point for me.
From then on, I performed the role many times that season and in the years to come. Whenever my mother was in the audience, she beamed as she always did when she saw me or Romy perform. On one occasion, I also invited Dr. G, who had seen me dance before but never in such an important role. I was happy to have him in the audience because I truly believed that he—along with the insulin—was the reason I was feeling so much better.
I continued my treatments with Dr. G twice a week. I was happy with my progress, but there were times when his behavior really bothered me. Once, after I’d had dinner with him and his girlfriend, I told him I’d been having a hard time sleeping and needed to get home. He asked if he could help me relax for a bit before I left. Why didn’t I say no?
While his girlfriend cleaned up the dishes, he took me into the extra bedroom and tried to hold me and rub my back while we lay together. I felt repulsed and angry that his supposed attempt to nurture me was so totally manipulative.
Still, I didn’t tell him what I was feeling. Instead, I thanked him politely and went home, wondering how many women in my situation had fallen for his come-on. What did his girlfriend think we were doing? He must have had some sort of understanding with her.
After a while my muscles were less sore and I was sleeping better, but there was still one problem that was bothering me. Like many dancers and athletes, I wasn’t getting my period regularly. I had discussed this with my medical doctor and even tried several rounds of hormone therapy, but the hormones had made it more difficult to control my blood sugars, and I hadn’t been willing to take on that added burden. I’d mentioned the problem when I started seeing Dr. G, and now I asked if he could focus on it.
He told me then that he’d been including possible remedies in the treatments and supplements he’d given me throughout the year I’d been seeing him. These treatments and supplements were all he had to offer, and since they weren’t working, he had something else to recommend.
“What’s that?” I asked.
If I wanted to get my period, he said, I have to start having sex.
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” I replied, slightly annoyed. “And I’m not going to have sex as a prescription for getting better.” Dr. G then suggested that if there was no one else available, I should have sex with a friend.
“Like who?” I said, suspecting what his answer would be.
“Like me,” he replied.
Because I’d spent so much time with Dr. G, he and I had become friends, and I knew enough about him that I also knew he’d had relationships with women he was treating as patients, so I wasn’t completely stunned. Until that moment, however, despite the uncomfortable evening when he’d rubbed my back, I still hadn’t realized that I was to be his next conquest.
Still, the idea that he was using my not having a period as an excuse for getting me to sleep with him was totally disgusting and offensive. I flat out told him that I wasn’t attracted to him. If that hurt him, I didn’t care. He was out of line and I was trying to make light of it.
“Oh, c’mon,” I said. “Give me a break.”
We dropped it for that session.
I should have walked out of his apartment right then and never come back, but I didn’t.
The advances continued for many months, and each time I tried to make a joke of it. I wished he’d stop, but having to push him away seemed a small, if annoying, price to pay given the benefits I was getting from his treatments. He was the first person to have taken such an interest in me, and for that I was grateful. So I kept finding ways to rationalize what he was doing. What was so wrong with his being attracted to me? Given what I’d felt about my body, shouldn’t I be glad that somebody was?
I was convinced the reason I didn’t have a boyfriend was that, since I’d been diagnosed at the age of twenty-one and my body fell apart, I’d been too ashamed and disgusted with myself to attract anyone special. But having a boyfriend, someone to connect deeply with in an emotional as well as sexual way, was really important to me.
I’d had many blind dates and introductions from friends, but I’d always felt more alone afterward than I did before the date. I was looking for someone who wanted to be with me, the young woman struggling with a disease, not the glamorous ballerina everyone seemed to expect me to be.
One guy that I met for lunch had spent the whole time asking what great parties had I been to, and whether Jerry Robbins had been at any of them.
At least Dr. G knew about my diabetes and my sleep problems and still really liked me. I was so desperate to be healed that I forced myself to stop being repulsed by him. I couldn’t help it. I deeply believed that his treatments were the reason I was doing so much better, and I was afraid to let go of him—and them. Yes, I had just begun a regular insulin regimen, as well. But, as I saw it, without Dr. G, I wouldn’t have been doing as well as I was. The need I felt for him was so great that, in the end, I was willing to put up with whatever he did.
I’d probably been slightly depressed at times in the past but I hadn’t felt serious depression until the week before my twenty-seventh birthday.
Something about turning twenty-seven and still being alone triggered a well of hopelessness in me. I was convinced that I would never find anyone to love who could love me in return. While I had always wanted to have a boyfriend, I had never before felt such an intense longing. I couldn’t pull myself out of it as I went through my days in a fog.
I didn’t want to see Dr. G, but I had promised him I’d come over for dinner that week. One evening when I was only dancing in the first ballet and would, therefore, be finished by nine o’clock, I was feeling so down and so tired that I just couldn’t muster up the energy to cook for myself, so I decided to have a good meal with him.
I didn’t say anything about what was bothering me, but he must have picked up on my state of mind and realized that my guard was down.
I honestly don�
�t remember how it started. After we ate, we were sitting on his sofa. I remember him being next to me and then somehow behind me. He started to rub my neck. Then his hands were on my breasts. Passively, I let him keep doing it, and that was his green light. Before I realized what was happening, he was kissing me and then he was taking my clothes off. I wasn’t enjoying it, but I told myself he might be right. Maybe this would help me. I was sick of myself and my problems. Maybe having sex with him would change my energy; maybe I’d be more attractive once I’d had sex. At least I knew him and we were friends.
He started to enter me. He’d been after me for such a long time, and finally he was getting me. I hated every minute of what was happening, but still, I was allowing it—until, all of a sudden, something snapped me out of my stupor. No matter how much this person was helping me, this was horribly wrong. I had to get out of there. I pushed him away and told him I had to go home.
He tried to convince me to stay. But I was out the door.
When I got back to my apartment, he’d already left a phone message. I didn’t call him back. I was as disgusted with myself as I was with him.
A few days later, I had enough distance from the immediate event to confront him and communicate my feelings instead of running away. I went back to his apartment and told him that his behavior was inappropriate and I couldn’t see him anymore. He tried to tell me I was wrong to leave, that what had happened wasn’t such a big deal. He went on about “Americans” and our “sexual hang-ups.”
Afterward, he continued to call me off and on for the next few months, but I never saw him again.
The hardest thing for me to accept was knowing that I was as responsible as he was for what happened between us. Having known that he’d had sex with other women he’d treated and that he was trying to get me into bed, I had been sure that I could handle it. So how did I end up so down and depressed that I could no longer resist his advances? I had read that blood sugar fluctuations can affect your emotions and thought processes. Is that what had happened to me? If not, how could I possibly explain to myself why I’d lost all perspective? How could I have thought that I could improve my life by having sex with someone I didn’t want to have sex with?
Yes, it was true that because of him (or so I thought), I was dancing better than I’d danced in years and I was afraid to lose his support, but that was no excuse for losing myself.
THIRTY-THREE
Once I let go of Dr. G, things started heading in a direction I could never have anticipated. As it turned out, all of my fears about losing his help and advice were unfounded. In fact, I discovered that I was stronger and healthier than I’d thought.
Now it was time for me to take responsibility for myself and work with my doctors. I needed to become a full member of my health-care team.
I also needed to stop lamenting and start appreciating where I was in my career. Yes, I might be in the corps de ballet for my entire career, and yes, I’d hoped for something more. But I had accomplished a lot. I was successfully balancing insulin-dependent diabetes with dancing as a member of the New York City Ballet. Even though my salary was modest, I was able to support myself in New York City, making my living from something I loved. How many people could say that? It was time to stop blaming myself, to trust in myself and be grateful.
I now understood that many factors must have contributed to my contracting diabetes: genes, environmental factors, stress and quite possibly a virus. Yet I still believed that I had done something to bring the diabetes on, that it was my fault, some terrible karma. It was time to stop thinking that way and to have more compassion for my body and for myself.
If I could accept that I was not perfect and that my blood sugars would not always be balanced during my performances, I could be more patient with myself. If I did these things, I could go a long way toward understanding that true health is about more than a physical state of being; it is an awareness and acceptance of one’s body. I could learn to live with diabetes and be at peace with the way that my life was unfolding.
Interestingly, it naturally occurred that as I came to accept myself as an imperfect dancer, enjoying every moment and grateful that I had not given up, I also became more interested in what lay beyond the world of the New York City Ballet.
As it happened, a number of professors at Fordham University were offering to teach classes on Monday evenings, making it possible for NYCB dancers to take college courses on our one day off. Romy and I, along with many other members of the company, signed up for the program. Over the next several years, I would take one course per semester. In time, I studied English, chemistry, art history, biology, math and psychology. Taking those courses expanded my mind and my soul.
At the same time, I was also becoming involved with Continuum Movement, a new modality created by a former dancer named Emilie Conrad that was based on a series of wavelike movements affecting different systems and parts of the body, including the circulatory system. When I practiced those movements, I could feel the oxygen getting to my muscles, which relaxed as I spiraled and undulated. In time, through daily practice, I would later come to love these movements as much as I loved the experience of dancing on the stage.
As I was expanding my horizons, something else extraordinary happened to change my life even more. Some people say you find love when you stop looking for it. I wouldn’t say I’d ever stopped looking. I’d just stopped looking for it as a way to feel complete. Ironically, it wasn’t long after I left Dr. G that I met the man with whom I would spend the next five years.
Ulf and I met dancing in The Nutcracker in Amarillo, Texas. Peter Boal and I had been invited as guest artists to dance the roles of Sugar Plum and her cavalier with a regional company/ ballet school. Ulf was also a guest performer dancing the Arabian Prince, a role for which he was perfectly suited. He was tall—six two—German by birth but more Scandinavian in looks. He had blond hair and blue eyes, a dancer’s body and an artist’s soul. I noticed him immediately. He was so gorgeous, how could I not? I tried not to stare, thinking that a man as handsome as he would never be interested in me. During the performance, I watched his dance from the wings as I warmed up in preparation for the grand pas de deux. He was commanding and mysterious, completely lost in his character. I was so impressed that when I found myself standing near him after his dance, I leaned toward him and took his arm. “I wanted to tell you how wonderfully you did. You were great.” I whispered loud enough for him to hear over the music for the “Waltz of the Flowers.”
He looked surprised. “Can I talk to you sometime?” he asked. “I’d love to get some advice from you.”
“Sure,” I replied, but I didn’t have much time. Peter and I were the guest stars and hadn’t flown in until the last minute. At that point, we’d only be there for two more days, and we had plans for both evenings. I told Ulf that Peter and I were being taken out to dinner by our hosts after that night’s performance, but I could meet him after dinner if he didn’t mind that it would be late.
I knew we were in the same hotel, so it was easiest if he just met me there.
“Why don’t you come to my room?” I said. I was tired and figured that would be the easiest thing for me. It didn’t occur to me that he might find me attractive or assume anything more about the invitation than what I had meant.
“Should I bring anything?” he asked politely.
At the time, I was drinking dark beer to unwind. Dr. G had suggested it and it seemed to work, so just because I’d given up Dr. G didn’t mean I had to give up my Guinness stout.
“Sure,” I told Ulf. “Bring some beer.”
I was so naive at the time that it didn’t even occur to me that I might be sending out a sexual signal. I was just trying to find a good time to talk, and I could use a beer.
Ulf, on the other hand, told me later that he’d assumed I was this hot ballerina who was used to having guys come over to her room and sleeping with them. When he showed up at midnight with the beer, he was clearl
y nervous. It was late, I was exhausted, and we had two shows to dance the next day. When I started asking him questions, he quickly realized he could relax.
I sat on the bed and he sat on the floor with his back against the dresser. I could tell he liked me, and I liked talking to him—so much that we talked until 5:00 a.m. We could have talked longer, but I had to get at least a couple hours of sleep. Except I couldn’t sleep; I was excited. This guy was not only gorgeous, he was intelligent, interesting and had the heart of a poet.
After our final performance, I figured that I’d never see him again. I had no idea where he lived, and I thought this was goodbye. But I was wrong.
As it turned out Ulf was living in New York and was actually going to be on the same plane as Peter and I.
On the flight back to New York, Peter and I sat together. Ulf was several rows back. He wrote me sweet notes and gave me his phone number. I really liked this guy, and his actions told me he felt the same way. I knew he would call.
Back in the city, Ulf wanted to see me every day. If I had an hour or a rare evening off, he was waiting at my doorstep. I wanted to be swept away, but I was a guarded person and it wasn’t easy for me to fall blindly in love. I was afraid Ulf would get discouraged, but as it turned out, Ulf needed me as much as I needed him.
A month into our “courting,” which consisted mainly of hanging out in the park or at my apartment, he came to me one evening scared and concerned. He was in New York on a student visa so he wasn’t allowed to work. He was doing some catering from time to time off the books, but he wasn’t earning very much money. Now he was being kicked out of the room he’d been renting and he couldn’t afford anything else. He had nowhere to go, no one to turn to. Would I let him live with me? If not, he would have to go back to Germany.