Strip. Andrew Binks

she said in fading Queen’s English. “Maybe we can make a dancer out of you, but I doubt it.” She would grab my leg at the top of a grand battement and push it higher, shoving her sharp nails into the back of my knee. “Don’t cheat!” She shouted her commands. With her back to me she would pull my thigh from its joint, while leaning against me to keep my hip back, in a tug-of-war with my torso. Then she’d shake my arms. “You’ve got to press the weight of the world down. They aren’t just there to hang off the side of your trunk. Now presssssssss!”

      To get what she wanted, she slapped me and screamed until her pale powdered face turned pink. From time to time she would throw me out of the class and then ask me what the hell I was doing sitting in the waiting area and “Get the bloody hell back in here you bloody son of a bitch, if you want to dance then bloody dance for the love of God. Show some spine.” I suppose I was a whipping post for all the princes who had never courted her. Once and only once did she waver. We were facing the barre in arabesque and I tightened the hell out of my lower back while squeezing my butt to get my leg up, the muscles fighting each other to maintain the form, while stretching my leg through to the end of my foot. “Now John, that’s good,” she said. Did I hear that correctly? The pianist stopped playing, the other students fell silent.

      “You others would do well to follow this young man’s example. He’s working bloody hard to make up for lost time and though he may not make it, I have a feeling he’ll die trying.” Her compliments were calculated and short-lived. “Swimming isn’t enough. Do weights,” she shouted. “Cans of soup if you must, lots of repetitions, until it burns. And push-ups. Drop and do forty. Now! You wait until you have a men’s class, then tell me you want to dance. Swimmer ha! Have you thought of joining the army? It would be a hell of a lot easier.” In spite of her reputation—she had garnered a Governor General’s award bringing ballet to the prairies—she was slowly forgetting and being forgotten. It was obvious she would never get the perfection she demanded from anyone. In the end, I heard, she died alone.

      Maybe I can blame this all on Lisa: she said I could do it.

      But Daniel didn’t have time for these trivialities. “Everyone wants a kick at the can,” he said. “You won’t be pretty forever, you know. In the meantime… you can kiss me.”

      “Here?”

      “You’re in Montreal now.”

      “And?”

      “You have a look.”

      “I scraped my nose on the bottom of the pool. I was fifteen.”

      He didn’t care. “No. You are more than second soloist material. Any male can become a second soloist, if he has a pulse. You have line, proportion, height. You’re already halfway there. But you could be a prince. You’ll reach your prime a little later than normal but you were born to be a prince.”

      “That’s my plan.”

      “Then you are going about it the wrong way. You’ll be a shabby has-been—on the prairies—and that’s all. You’ll be bored to tears. How many times can you dance Fall River Legend, or Rita Joe? It’s a small dusty repertoire of museum pieces.”

      I realized he was encouraging me to leave the Company; dancers never berated Agnes de Mille, or Vaganova or Russian technique for that matter. My head spun, this time without my body attached.

      “Montreal can be your threshold to the bigger world of dance: the States, Europe.” But I only wanted to go where he would be. “It’s a nice nose, by the way,” he said.

      “Yours is nice, too.” Actually, his was magnificent.

      “It’s one of my Mohawk parts. I’ll show you the rest later.” My heart swelled, my chest expanded, but it was my legs I had to squeeze tight. This was a head-to-toe solid dance master, a real man that, for some reason, I had all to myself.

      I followed his steps closely. He took me back to his home, the kind of place where you’re never sure if you’re inside or out—loft, terrace, rooftops, skylights and trees—and that’s where he wrapped his wiry arms around me. There was a ballet barre in his huge bedroom. I saw him moulding me into the next Godunov.

      “Come here.” He pulled me to his mattress on the floor.

      “Baryshnikov sleeps on the floor, too, but without a mattress.”

      “Baryshnikov is nothing but bullshit stories about Baryshnikov.”

      Up to then, only six men had touched me, physically, in my life. And each time felt like the first, and freed me once again from all the years of indecision, confusion, questioning and holding back. It had been an adolescence marked by disappointment, pretence and fakery. The breakthrough came when the swim coach offered me his Speedo, the day I forgot mine. I knew my fate when I surreptitiously took it home to spend some alone time with it, later telling him that I rinsed it for him. Our eyes met when I handed it back to him early one morning. Then, on a subsequent out-of-town swim meet, he pretended to be tipsy (as I had done up to then, when it came to begging off kissing my latest girlfriend), but it was me who took advantage of him. Desire put me in the driver’s seat, but he knew exactly what he was doing on that motel bed.

      And though Daniel was number seven, that afternoon he took the number one spot as he ran his finger down my sternum. He pressed his palm onto my chest, as if he were trying to leave an imprint on my heart, and I let him. He tickled the ridge of my lips with his fingers until they twitched in anticipation of him touching his lips to mine. He worked on my flexibility, every night for a week after that first afternoon, stroking my inner thighs—to start with. As far as I could see, having him make love to me was the only thing that would cure that blankness he said he saw. I was still technically a virgin; I wanted Daniel to change that.

      Sure I’ve had moments where I thought I could see what was going to save me, change me, open me up, turn me into a great dancer. I never believed it had anything to do with love. Every new teacher I encountered held new hope, and many of them fulfilled that hope, with a gem of their knowledge. I owed my grand jeté to these gems (think of jumping after you’ve left the ground; if that doesn’t work think of a hot poker up your ass). Then, with another, my body changed its interpretation of a tour en l’air (think of one side of your body trying to catch up with the other, think of the stability of a brick shit-house). But after all is said and done, it’s love that fills in all the empty spaces and makes you dance better, love that transcends the physical plane, love that couples the true material with the ethereal, joins the dance with desire. I became weightless for that week, and for weeks following the Company’s departure. All I could think was, This is my moment at last, and God, I am so ready for it—from now on, things will be perfect. But it was lust, that’s all. And I’m starting to think that the uplifting effects of lust, like caffeine, alcohol or cigarettes, eventually wear off and leave us feeling and looking like shit.

      My Winnipeg roommates—hunky Peter, a solid and story-book-prince stunning Ukrainian, and the chain-smoking Rachelle (who was our landlady, also happened to be our roommate while on tour, and also happened to be a co-corps de ballet member, pas de deux partner and confidante)—both forced me to come clean in an empty coffee shop, one rainy morning on Rue Crescent. We sat in idle chat, commenting on stylish or down-and-out passers-by, dreading the matinee, until Rachelle spoke. “So? Come on. You’ve made up your mind haven’t you? Is it love? Are you moving in with him?”

      “It’s time to move on,” I said. “I can’t get comfortable with the Company. I’ll end up rotting on the prairie.” I actually had myself convinced. Looking back I can see how easily I can make myself believe anything.

      “Rotting on the prairie? Mr. Rottam is rotting? They’re planning The Rite of Spring and The Firebird and you say rotting, Rottam?”

      “They’ve been planning those for years. It’s some kind of publicity stunt. Do you actually think they’ll get around to it before we retire?”

      “Kharkov has started running ideas for Serenade.”

      “More Tchaikovsky?” I teased