Time

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It smells like spring or maybe that’s an ocean breeze like you taste in the tops of a beach house.

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Dear Mother, she wrote, if you are not happy with your situation why don’t you fix it? She paused in her writing and thought. Dear Mother, she tried again, if you don’t like being at home, why don’t you get a job? She took that page and dropped it to the floor of her messy room. Dear Mother, if you hate cooking why do you cook? Dear Mother, if you want to get out, get out. Dear Mother, the world doesn’t revolve around you. Dear Mother, maybe you should’ve gotten a different husband. Dear Mother, it’s not my fault. Dear Mother, I’m learning to do what I love; you should too. She put the half done letters in the trash and listened to her mother scream through her floorboards.

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You were diagnosed with a disease, but I believe it was only a label so that your mother would have an excuse for your inability to move effortlessly through society and to allow you to sleep during class and to get away with being a bitch. I hate people like you who complain about having a disease though you hide behind it and find ways to twist it to an advantage that you shouldn’t have because you were incorrectly diagnosed, making a bad name for all those who really struggle.

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She had a dream. No that’s a lie. She never had a dream, just reality when she was sixteen and he was sixteen and they dated for half a month before he went back to his ex. She had reality when two months later, him going strong and steady with his girlfriend, he told her he wanted sex. When he cornered her in the bathroom at prom, she agreed to it, knowing well enough that he was a virgin and he wanted to know how to do it so as not to make a fool of himself with his girlfriend. There was some thrill that he wanted her still, that they were doing something illicit, like cheating. But he was doing it for all the right reasons, to make his girlfriend’s night, and her all the wrong. She thought this could not be her reality when he let it slip as he was fumbling up her dress that his girlfriend had agreed to this. She dropped her arms and pushed him away and told him he didn’t want his first time to be in a bathroom on a shitty toilet seat anyway.

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It’s a seedy learning space, in the basement of her teacher’s house. It’s an unfinished basement with only a few naked light fixtures. But over the wood framing, instead of drywall are white boards. Covered in colors and smeared variables replaced by crooked numbers. There’s five of them in a class that shouldn’t exist, but they’re learning the basics anyway, because their teacher needs a team to bounce around ideas and they want extra credit. Only the senior is doing this for the right reasons, because he wants clean energy for everyone, for his family back in some third world country. She’s doing it for knowledge and she’s pretty sure their teacher wants the money that will come from it.

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A studio that she has outgrown, puts on a show where no one but her takes on the opportunity to perform.

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Hos and the bows in the fucking droves.

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She owns a ballet studio with mirrors on three sides, with the fourth a wall of windows. It’s on the fourteenth level of a skyscraper and there’s a little jut that goes out over nothing, a glass room where she can make believe she’s dancing on air.

At night, when no one else is out, she goes into the studio room with only a bathrobe on and the moonlight to see by. She drops her robe and looks at her lean reflection. It’s in these moments she loves her body, loves the fluidity and strength of bend and flexing of pointed toes and tightened under thighs. Her stomach contorts with rippling muscle as the shadow shows the outline of the hard ridges. She feels like a goddess, dances like one naked and in the moonlight, dancing for nothing, no one but herself.

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Why don’t you listen to my words? I swear, I say stuff for a reason, unlike you who babbles nonsense that just supports my idiotic view of you, that supports my view of you as a lazy fucking bitch who can’t do shit.

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I’m going to tell you a love story. Some love stories feature a girl and a girl or a guy and a guy, but that’s only some love stories. This one is a male and female duet, girl loves guy and guy loves girl.

When she was a junior and he was a freshman, that’s when they first met each other. He was young and innocence, bribed into spinning for a season. She was a seasoned vet of love and sadness shows of betrayal and lust, Ballywood and nature. If you ask the high school coach now (still teaching because she ferments like grapes do into wine), she’ll tell you that she knew the two were in love, even at such a young age.

She, the one featured in this love story, wagered twenty dollars and a twelve count solo that he’d leave after two weeks of the season; she lost twenty dollars and a twelve count solo to her best friend. Her best friend gave it to the freshman that they’d bet on, and their high school coach took it back and gave the solo to its rightful owner. She danced the twelve count solo and drew the sabre through the air like she was carving Rodin’s Thinker. He cheered for her every time she finished the counts, even when they were on the floor competing and no one had breath left to spare. She never heard him until she listened to recordings of the show, too caught up in the moment of performance.

As a senior, she was captain. The best there had ever been at her school. She was honest and kind and helped whoever needed guidance. He asked for her help a lot, and she gave it whenever she could, showing him how to fix his plane and how to throw sixes on gun, and how to do what he didn’t like as much, how to dance. Plès and then relevès and tondus.

Once, after a competition, when he needed to go back to the classroom, and no one else could tear away from the show, she went back with him. Someone had left the speaker system on, which she was livid about, though it was playing a three-step waltz that she couldn’t help but hum along to. She asked him if he knew this dance. He said no, pausing between shoveling the stuff he needed into pockets. She motioned him close to her, moved his hand to her hip and then placed hers on his shoulder. She showed him how to dance the waltz until the song finished, when she dropped her arms and said how her grandfather taught her to waltz. It turned out she had left the system on by accident.

After her last show with her high school guard, she came off the floor crying, even though their show was about teenage partying.

He was the first to hug her, tell her not to cry, and then wipe a tear off her face before the other seniors came to mash her in a pile if sweaty, tearful love.

On retreat, she gave the other girls a chance to be in front, and stood at the back behind him. She squeezed his hand the moment they won second and got bumped up a division.

At the goodbye dinner, she pulled him aside, and made him swear that he wouldn’t let the guard disentigrate without her, even though he was only a sophomore who joined freshman year on a bet and she was a senior who had the passion to spin and dance since she was barely out of the womb.

He promised her they’d win first for her as she marched an indepentdant. She didn’t have the money to march, and barely made it to the state school on the little she had in her college fund. She studied hard and couldn’t not watch guard shows online. Her fingers itched to spin again, to be with her guard.

His junior year, he made captain and she drove three hours to watch the championships show. He blew up all over the place and dropped his solo eight. He laughed it off, though they barely placed in the top half of the division. He said he hadn’t been expecting to see her at the show, and he was sorry that she had seen that mess. She said she was too.

The instructor said hello to her, all grins, but she saw the disappointment. The girl in our love story told the boy that he had promised her he wouldn’t let the guard fall apart.

He replied she had promised to march independent.

She didn’t have the money.

He set up a collection for her, and with the help of alumni, their guard members, and other guards, she marched world. He got to see her eight times in performance, and each time she was flawless. She was stunning in movement and equipment. A true perfectionist, she spun three times under a rifle and then four under a lofty sabre, because one was no longer good enough for her.

She drove four hours after her day job to see his final high school show at ten o’clock.

She got front row seats and helped pull out their floor. After he had set his rifle and flag, she went up to him and wished him good luck. He gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

She screamed until she was hoarse as they marched a show that she never could’ve marched in high school and came home with a first place trophy.

After retreat, he showed her the trophy up close, and told her he did it because she had upheld her part of their bargain. They took pictures and she went with the guard back to the hotel. He stayed out late with her and, taping glow-sticks to their equipment, she showed him what she had learned and he showed her what he had.

The other members watched. Before lights-out were called, before she could go through with her goodbyes, he grabbed her wrist and asked to waltz again. She flushed, and looked at the little members all around. He put on the song, and he guided her hand to his shoulder.

They glided under the moonlight and the glowing weapons were like teeki-torches. He had learned how to dip her, or maybe it was just a natural instinct as he was older now, stronger.

Next year, the WGI foundation gave her a scholarship to march in her world guard again, and this time, he spun with her. They spun as one, despite being on different lines. But it was a different kind if experience than either had expected, no time to talk or reminisce outside of their practices and competitions.

She took up an extra job and the next year off so she could march the year after. He came to her dorm regularly, not for anything romantic, but there were cheap waltzing lessons at a studio downtown. He marched the year she didn’t and taught her everything she missed.

Her year back marching, she got the soloist position opposite him. They spun the whole show as a duet, throwing tosses to one another, clinging to one another, swinging under legs and arms, and at the end, he died. Every run through, every show, he died at the end, right before the girl character in the show got a chance to kiss him.

Their coach sent them on bonding missions to “authenticate” their performance, and the other members teased them relentlessly.

But it wasn’t perfect. They screamed. Oh they screamed at each other when tosses weren’t perfect or he held her wrong or the counts were off or she smelled like shit and felt like a slimy oozing jar of jelly.

In one part, she sat right in front of him, and he had to catch an six. He missed it during a show and it smashed her whole foot to pieces. He spun the rest of the show around her, blocking her path when she tried to move. At the end, he tried to carry her off the floor, but she sprung out of his arms and limped off herself.

They didn’t speak for two weeks, even though after four days she was back at practices, despite her smashed foot. She danced through the pain. And refused to meet his eye until the director marched them into a closet and refused to let them it until they fixed it. They were ruining her visual effect!

She broke down crying. He promised never to let the rifle hit her ever again. It’s been a long time, but he hasn’t hit her since.

At Dayton, when he was supposed to turn his head away in the last seconds, he didn’t. Her lips met his and he took her to the floor with him, curling his body around hers to end the show.

She stood up smiling. Smiling more than she ever had for any show, and it hurt. The crowd was roaring, like they do in Dayton, but it was more than she was used to. There was a fierce ringing in her ears.

They matched three more years, soloists and duets, surpassing every other member, trying to out-trick each other, catching under the back and between the legs and doing four to five spins under epic tosses. She managed a double pirouette under a quad.

Their fifth year together, the whole show was beautiful, another show written around them. About young love and growing love, it was beautiful. At the end she improv’d the last thirty or so counts as he did some fancy soloist work.

At Dayton, he caught his eight, dropped to one knee, pulled out a ring and proposed to her the last thirty counts of their show. They didn’t win first or even top ten, but it’s a show no one forgets.

They routinely checked back in at their high school, watching the potential members, filtering through contacts to get them spots of different independents if they wanted. They sponsored anyone who wanted to spin as he ran a software company and she pulled in money from guest-teaching guards. (It all went to the scholarships.)

For years, they marched together, the couple to be, igniting each time they met on the floor, drawing everyone into the story they were telling. They were unstoppable, unbeatable, creative, powerful, gorgeous.

Then, one day, she didn’t get the solo part, but he did. There was a new girl. The independent wanted someone fresh. The new girl could juggle three rifles. It was the best show, they won first, but it was a terrible season. She cried and he had no time for her, since he had to practice and practice with the new girl because their movement patterns didn’t seem to match up.

At the end, they never went back to the guard, though offered whatever help they could give. They went back to their high school and watched a show, beautiful and marvelous though it was only high schoolers performing. Even if they couldn’t do all the tricks, suck in the audience, connect, there was something powerful about watching them.

He took her hand in his and whispered in her ear, that that used to be them on the floor. He snuck her away from the show and into one of the classrooms where someone had left out speakers. He plugged in his iPod and their waltz breathed out.

They danced and danced and in a year, they had twins who watched guard shows before bed, and their own independent guard, novice level.

Everyone starts somewhere.

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There was a couple that spun for years together in each other’s arms and on the floor before a thousand adoring people. But then, one day, she fell behind in the steps, and a younger girl spun to replace her on the floor, threw tosses with her lover for the heart wrenching show because she had gotten old. 

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Ideas always seem better in the shower where you’re all nice and warm and there are droplets of security running up and down your arms. When you turn off the shower and actually think to do what you just thought, the ideas seem terrible and you let them get lost.

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I’m not asking for a magic trick or to fly with no wings; I’m just asking for you to impress me.

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There are five tables lined up, going down the cafeteria. One person sits at each table. They all know each other, have held long conversations. But they sit alone. At their own table. Waiting for the others in their groups to arrive.

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