Last Dance with Mary Jane

She still has that molten hair. I can't believe that. It was the same color twenty years ago when I first met her, and she was a toddler, running around in a sailor suit bedecked with sequins at one of her mother's talent shows. Except, now she is twenty something and living in LA, delivering my Pelligrino with enormous boobs that just don't look right there. Has it been so long? She is shocked to see that I, Er-Bear, Murphy, her older sister's favorite fucked up friend, am holding down table 16.

"Omigod, omigod, omigod! I can't believe you're here!"

We hug thrice and talk about mutual friends. She tells me that she is a Pilates teacher come waitress come budding actress. I tell her that is great, and I mean it. She asks me what I'm up to, and I tell her I am an interior retail designer and soon-to-be published author, information I only offer because I am too old to be shy about accomplishments. She says, "That's awesome!" with sincerity. She, her sister and her mother were always alike in their easy expression of affection. It was one of the reason I had to limit my time in their presence.

"So what are you doing at the restaurant at 3pm on a Tuesday?" she asks. A valid question. I rose early that morning to PMS and my pernicious ex-boyfriend sharing my space. I made haste to the spa, where I picked up every cancellation, sloughed myself raw, saunaed myself sick and then burst into tears in the facialist's chair when she told me my pores were enlarged. I whined about my hormonal problems while she kindly wiped my tears away, and later, when I found out that she was hiding an eight month old fetus under her lab coat, I felt like a total asshole.

I say, "Oh, went to the spa," because I'm not easy with words like she is.

She cracks open my Pelligrino for me. I have to ask the question. I don't want to, but I have to, so I blurt, "How's your dad?"

--

The bulletin went out during winter of my sophomore year of high school. It said, "School musical tryouts Monday night--42nd Street (the show, not the address, ha ha)." There was a lot of hullabaloo about it among my friends, who were all dancers and singers and intending to show at auditions and do vocal warm-ups and all that, "La la la la la la la la la" shit. They asked me if I was coming.

I said no. I always said no, because I was immovable. My day was, at best, Pavlovian. My whole thing was "Fade back. Fade away. You are not here," and so it was with the greatest disregard for corporeality that I zombied my way through highschool, never socializing, never joining and never, not-ever, making a spectacle of myself on a stage...lit up like a Christmas Tree, in a spandex leotard. I sat in the back of the class and did everything but listen. I pulled my eyes out of focus. I was the most apathetic dancer at Lorainne School of Dance. I simply refused to be present, because with consciousness, everything would collapse thusly.

I was an incognizant earner of straight A's, and it was perhaps my best asset, for if I was good at school, nothing else could be askew. Shhhhh, quiet down, because Erin will be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a scientist someday. Everyone leave her alone. Perhaps I could have said something about feeling like the seventh circle of Dante's vision of Hell, but I didn't want to make a scene. Instead, I relegated any show of emotion to abstract spasms of pen on paper in art class. Art was eighth period that year, and it was sort of a respite for me. It was in the basement of the school, not well regarded as a discipline (because it was not football) and wholly unfunded. We had white paper, and we had pencils. It was an Appalachian art program for sure, but I loved being there. I could zone out and draw my fierce exploding self-portraits, pictures of my body on fire, what it looks like on the inside of Dante's Hell, all of it more real to me than reality.

On the day the musical tryouts were announced, I was working on my vision of circle seven, drawing in all sorts of baneful demons. Even there, the kids were talking about the musical, art kids, skater kids, kids with criminal records who should have been saying, "That is the gayest shit ever." Instead they were saying, "Oh, its going to be so great. They're doing pyrotechnics, and a rain machine, and all this high wire stuff."

Fire, eh? You like fire. Maybe you should go to tryouts, Erin? Perhaps they'll let you be the person who gets to start the fires? Wait...no. Just no

I drew on and considered the idea. Tap class wasn't so bad, because I could stomp and make noise, and I liked that. It was nice to fuck up the quiet with tap shoes. Maybe tap dancing in a musical with fire wouldn't be all that bad.

I finished off my drawing by labeling the top, as I had done with circles one through six, "Seven is the circle of Violence, and is divided into three parts (colon)." Then I drew angry circles around my three groups of meanies, and inside them I wrote "Violence Against Others, Violence Against Self and Violence Against God, Nature and Art." Surely dancing in Spandex for the people of Jamestown, New York met all three requirements.

[I still have that drawing. Its good.]

Later, in the hallway, trying to dodge socialization, grab my bags and winter coat as fast as was possible and walk home alone to listen to "Smell's like Teen Spirit" for the seven hundredth time, I ran into Leah, older sister of my molten-haired waitress. She was chipper as ever as she asked me if I needed a ride to tryouts. I told her no, that I wasn't going to try out and her response was, "That's ridiculous. We'll pick you up at 7. My mom's choreographing it. This'll be so much fun."

Okay. If she shows up, I'll go. But I'm NOT singing in front of anyone.

--

I could not have been more horrified. I was seventh in line, vulnerable in my tap shoes, shorts and tee, waiting to sing (OUT LOUD) a verse of 42nd Street in front of two hundred of the most virile and popular students at JHS. I mouthed over and over, "Come. And. Meet. Those dancin' feeeeet. On the avenue we're takin' you to...Forty. Second. Street." Holy shit, this really is Hell. Fuck Dante.

When it is my turn, the whole auditorium goes black, and my mouth opens, and something comes out. I cannot bear to think of that sound as my voice. Damn these infernal lights, and I got the words wrong, and fuck fuck fuck, what am I doing here, and what is this faggoty motioning I am making with my hands, stop moving your hands, STOP MOVING YOUR HANDS..."streeeeeeet."

I exit stage something. My friends are waiting for me with open arms. "You did okay." Liar. "Really, it was fine. I don't know what you were so nervous about." Filthy liar. Leah puts her arm around me and says, "I love you, Er-Bear." How does she do this? How does she just open her mouth and say something that horrifying, and how can I learn to do it to? She stands there with her arm around me while the last of the singers do their verses, and it is terrifically awkward this show of affection. Comforting too. It is broken when her mother, Mary Jane, an irascible midget with salt and pepper ringlets, claps loudly and invites all tappers on stage. There are nearly a hundred girls here to tap. I try to stand in the back, but Leah doesn't let me. "Up here, Er-Bear."

Mary Jane starts us out with a basic time step. This is like tapping 101, and reads in tap language as flap, heel, step, shuffle, ballchange. "Shuffle" as in "Shuffle off to Buffalo." I do this nervously next to Leah. She hops around obliviously, her own curls bouncing in time to the music. How does she not know we are in the front row and everyone is looking at our zits?

Mary Jane calls for us to do a more complicated Time Step, the Double--flap, heel, flap, step, shuffle ballchange. Then a triple--flap, heel, shuffle, step, shuffle ballchange. Girls begin to sit down, for we have surpassed their level of experience. Losers. I am totally into this. Mary Jane ups the ante with some trickier shit, steps called "Wings," vaudevillian moves that look like out-of-control jumping, "Pullbacks," the advanced cousin of the Time Step, and intricate toe-heel combinations I breeze through. I am a whizz. Watch me go. Within a half hour, only Leah, Mary Jane and I remain on stage, and for all intents and purposes are the standouts.

"Can you do this?"
"Yep."
"Wow. How bout this?"
"Lemme try. Yep."

It is fun, fun fun. Years of tap class I paid no attention to are being dug up and utilized, and I am actually enjoying myself in a school setting, zits and all. Is anyone watching? Fuck yeah, I can move.

The following Tuesday, the casting list goes up on the bulletin board outside of the auditorium. I glance as I pass. I stop in shock. I have been cast as "Lorraine." I have to sing a song. By myself.

MOTHERFUCK!

What have I done?

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Posted by: SteveinBoston at September 15, 2006 01:05 PM

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