Authors: Kristi Lynn Davis
*******
As suspected, Ashley’s home—a two-bedroom apartment on the 16th floor of a posh, Upper East Side high rise—was gorgeous. There was even a doorman to welcome me at the building entrance. A doorman! Ashley’s very thin, trendy, forty-something, divorced mom was an interior decorator, evidenced by the splendidly froufrou domicile. I was living in the lap of luxury, and all I had to do was water the plants, collect the mail, and feed the cat. What could be so bad about that?
The family had already left for Africa, so I was able to nose around at will. I marveled at the lifestyle so different from how I grew up. The kitchen appeared to be an afterthought and was about as big as a tiny, walk-in closet. On the walls hung framed menus collected from famous New York City restaurants. There was no place to sit in the kitchen and no dining room. Where did they eat? It appeared to be standing room only.
I guess that’s why the kitchen was so small: They didn’t cook. Oh, maybe they brewed an espresso, plopped a cocktail onion into a martini, or slathered cream cheese on a bagel. They didn’t even own a regular coffee maker. All I could find was a silver metal, two-story Italian contraption that sat on the stove like a teapot, but I couldn’t figure out how to use it. I assumed the family primarily ate their meals out or ordered in. Why cook when you have every restaurant and take-out delivery imaginable at your fingertips with a mere phone call? And really, New York socialites don’t eat anyway; do they?
Down the hall was what I quickly determined to be Ashley’s bedroom, which was where I was supposed to sleep. Her bookshelf was crammed with
Broadway Showbills
. “How lucky she is to be able to see any Broadway show she likes or pick from a smorgasbord of the world’s best dance classes on a daily basis,” I thought enviously. She was spoiled for culture. I sneaked a peek into her mother’s bedroom, which was draped in sexy shades of lipstick red and pink. The closet was lined with designer shoes stuffed with cobblers’ wooden inserts to keep them perfectly shaped. How glamorous her life was.
The living room furniture was so fancy-schmancy I was reluctant to sit on it for fear of doing damage and not being able to pay for repairs. In place of carpet, there was a rough, woven, jute floor covering of sorts that looked exotic but was scratchy as sandpaper. Everything screamed, “Look, but don’t touch!” I decided it would be safest to just avoid the living room altogether. Outside on the mini-balcony sat the small window-box herb garden I was responsible for watering. Peering over the edge of the balustrade, I gasped, suddenly startled by the feel of a furry creature rubbing against my leg. “Midnight, you scared me!” I bellowed at the black cat, which smugly walked away having effectively introduced himself. Was that a smirk on his face?
Jenny phoned to welcome me and to tell me more good news: “Mirmdance needs more dancers, and I got you an audition.” I was amazed and impressed by Jenny, who was already performing in two modern companies: Avodah, a company exploring Jewish themes; and Mirmdance, a fledgling troupe whose director was fresh out of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. “Mirm,” short for Miriam, the head of the company, was only a few years older than I was. I was excited and reluctant at the same time. “When is the audition?” “Tomorrow,” Jenny replied. “Tomorrow? I don’t think I’m ready to audition tomorrow,” I stammered. Jenny, of course, would have none of it. I was going whether I wanted to or not.
When I went to bed that first night, I feared every psycho in New York knew I was there alone and defenseless–a perfect murder victim. I carefully double-checked to make sure the front door was locked. There was security at the entrance, but what if some serial killer scaled the building like Spiderman and came in through the balcony? I didn’t want to become famous as a feature story on the evening news: “Gullible Midwestern Girl Slaughtered in Her Sleep.”
I turned out the light and climbed into bed, trying to calm my nerves. Just as I was about to fall asleep, out of the darkness sprang the cat, which pounced directly on my head and scared me half to death. “Aaaaaa! Midnight, no!” After carefully prying his claws from my checks, I gently but firmly placed him on the floor, then laid back down and closed my eyes, heart still racing. Moments later, I was once again jolted awake by a facial cat attack. “Get off!” I shrieked, my mouth full of feline fur. After a third assault awoke me from the world’s worst catnap, I locked him out of the room, feeling I had no other choice if I hoped to get any shut-eye before the big audition. The move proved pointless, however, because Midnight continually howled and scratched at the door. We had gotten off on the wrong foot or, well, paw.
The next morning, I dragged my groggy, pudgy, out-of-shape-after-a-month-of-gorging-myself-with-European-pastries body to the audition. I had never even tried modern dance before. Was I insane? The audition was held at 33 East 18th Street on the seventh floor. My jaw dropped as I noticed the sign on the studio door: Nikolai Louis Dancespace. “Really? The famous modern choreographers Alwin Nikolai and Murray Louis?” In awe, I stepped into the sacred space of these cutting-edge artists.
Jenny was already there warming up, a comforting sight. But I was shocked when I recognized another familiar face: Adam–also a former Impact Jazz dancer. Adam was a gay male Snow White—a porcelain-skinned, black-haired Adonis. Having danced together only one year before he graduated and left for New York, we were more acquaintances than friends, but we exchanged polite greetings. I wasn’t sure if he really remembered me from college or not. I was then introduced to Miriam, a sturdy, fair woman with tousled, super-short dark hair. “Let’s begin with Lucy’s Future,” she instructed her company. The dancers groaned. I wondered why. “Kristi, just jump right in and follow along.”
I was thrown into the middle of a scene showing a sexy siren surrounded by squid-like savages slinging their trailing tentacles. As members of the squid squad, we hurdled our bodies through space, threw ourselves to the floor, somersaulted, and groveled on our knees as we seduced the soloist in an oceanic orgy. This strenuous sea spree lasted for hours. My body ached, and I cringed at how ridiculous I looked trying to move like the other mollusks. As foolish as I felt flailing, failing, and even occasionally succeeding at synchronized squid gymnastics, the experience paled in comparison to what was about to come next.
“Everyone take your positions in line,” ordered Miriam. “Kristi, go behind Adam and rub his butt.” “Do what?” I said in disbelief. I wasn’t hard of hearing, and she wasn’t joking. She actually wanted me to caress the gluteus maximus of the male monster in front of me. Maximally mortified, I massaged away, trying to pretend I was a horny sea creature. Luckily, Adam was no stranger, but we hardly knew each other well enough to fondle each others’ backsides. There aren’t many job interviews where you are instructed to stroke someone’s buttocks. (Or are there?)
I kept watching the clock, waiting for someone to tap me on the shoulder and release me from this tidal torture before I drowned. But no one did. When was this hellacious experience going to end? Unlike my first New York audition, this was an excruciating, bizarre company rehearsal into which I was blindly inserted. I felt like I had been thrown to the lions, or tossed overboard to the squids, in this case. We finally finished for the day, and Miriam announced the date and time of the next rehearsal.
By this time, I was so wet with sweat, limp, and out of breath, I looked like I had nearly gone to a watery grave. While gathering my belongings in my dance bag, I wondered to what extent I had embarrassed myself, and Jenny too. I was so out of shape, I had barely kept up with the others. Oh well. It was an experience. I had lived through it.
Jenny ran over to me. “Well, what did Mirm say? Are you in?” “Nothing. I don’t know,” I responded, my face red with overexertion. My mother taught me, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything.” So when Miriam didn’t say a word to me, I accepted her reticence as a gesture of kindness, sparing me the scathing criticism I deserved after that harrowing performance. Jenny grabbed me by the hand. “Let’s go find out.” She dragged me over to Miriam and asked, “What about Kristi?” “Oh yeah, Kristi, you need to show up, too,” Miriam replied casually.
I was dumbstruck. My second day living in New York, and I had already been accepted into a dance company. A modern one, at that. I phoned home to tell my parents the good news. Maybe Miriam was simply desperate for bodies to complete her choreography, or perhaps she took pity on me, or both, but I didn’t care. I got the job!
*******
It just so happened that the rehearsal studio Mirmdance rented was in the same building as the Jennifer Muller modern dance workshop Jenny and I were taking. So for the next four weeks, we danced with The Works from nine to five, and on our two-hour lunch break, instead of taking a much-needed load off our overworked feet, we ran upstairs to the Nikolais Louis Dancespace to rehearse with Mirmdance. It was exhausting, for sure, but exhilarating.
I began to fall into a comfortable routine. Every morning on the way to the subway, I’d stop at the Chinese fruit market for a giant bran muffin and a coffee in an “I ♥ NY” cup to go. Those fruit markets, Chinese because Chinese people run them, were one of my favorite amenities of New York. They had fresh produce, unbelievable salad bars, sushi, a small selection of groceries, gargantuan muffins, hot coffee, and an assortment of bulk Chinese junk food. There seemed to be one on nearly every block, and they were open twenty-four hours a day. I never felt completely alone in The City, because I always knew that, even in the middle of the night, I could find an Asian storekeeper awake and tending the market.
Next I’d patronize one of the most important establishments in my Upper East Side neighborhood: the H&H Bagel shop on 72nd and Second Avenue. H&H became my all-purpose meal stop, providing lunch and dinner. Their bagels were the best I’d ever tasted, with fluffy veggie cream cheese piled on as thick as the bagel itself. I could get two meals out of one overstuffed bagel by permitting myself to eat only half for lunch and saving the rest for dinner. Practically subsisting on bagels and cream cheese and bran muffins and coffee, I wasn’t exactly ingesting the most nutritious diet, but at least it was cheap and tasty.
The day’s meals purchased, I’d walk toward the subway, gazing up at the tall apartment buildings, amazed at how people grew trees and plants and gardens in any tiny space they could, even on rooftops. Permanent New York residents were aliens to me. Their world was so foreign and exotic. I’d read names on brass placards decorating the front gates of brownstones in disbelief that people truly called these their homes. Some even grew up here. I’d never even used the word “brownstone” before.
Neither had I much practice taking the subway, which offered its own little adventure. Apparently I needed to learn the correct way to buy subway tokens. This skill was taught to me by none other than Jenny who, after observing me fumbling about in my purse for change, thereby holding up the hurried queue of real New Yorkers, their annoyance escalating by the second, took it upon herself to correct my misdemeanor. “Kristi, you are fodder for muggers if you flounder about distracted like that. You have to be prepared, know the system, appear confident, look knowledgeable, have your money ready, and buy your tokens without pause.” She showed me how to function like a smoothly oiled machine, thereby leaving little opportunity to be accosted.
Summers were sweltering, and some of the subways had no air conditioning. During morning rush hour, the stifling subways were crammed with sweaty business men and women in suits. On a typical day, as the doors were about to close, yet another New Yorker late for work would perform a kamikaze leap onto the train and squeeze into the already-packed sardine can forcing me to press my body so close to the guy next to me that I could feel the steam rising from his chest. It felt like I was involuntarily participating in one of those college pranks where all fifty-seven fraternity guys pile themselves into one phone booth, arms and legs wrapped around each other in a perverted game of Twister. The humid air hung thick with the odor of damp pressed-wool, cigarettes, cologne, and sweat.
New York City itself had its own special summer smell: a combination of subway grease, exhaust fumes, tar, sun-baked ketchup on cement, and dried urine. It reminded me of the rank aroma of my filthy jeans after I slept on train floors and park benches during my backpacking trip through Europe.
After successfully extricating myself from the subway, I’d stroll the final few blocks to the dance studio. I learned my way around Manhattan fairly easily once I realized that the avenues ran north and south and the streets ran east and west. I’d never walk more than a block in the wrong direction before being able to figure out where I was.
The Muller workshop was held at a lovely studio space called Peridance. At the entrance there was even a snack bar where you could buy yogurt, bananas, and bagels. The lobby was also where everyone hung out and stretched while waiting for class to begin. I never tired of watching all the svelte, toned, barefoot modern dancers warming up their feet and legs with their wooden foot-roller massagers and giant rubber bands.
One day, in one corner, a group of very thin but muscular men sat lacing up their pointe shoes. Is that Ballet Trockadero? It was. They were a famous men’s ballet troupe, a transvestite-ish group of dancers who dressed as prima ballerinas in real tutus and pointe shoes and performed spoofs of the classical ballets like
Swan Lake
. They were incredibly skilled ballerinas. But where did they find pointe shoes big enough to fit those manly feet? And just how did they hide those manly groin bulges under their leotards? I was unable to take my eyes off them. I had seen them perform in Detroit and was absolutely overjoyed to be in the same room with these impressive, athletic, comedic performers.