dancing for the devil

I got my first pair of ballet shoes when I was five years old. I started taking ballet classes in the UK because “all the other girls were taking it” and I liked all things pretty. I was the only paradox in my ballet class, sporting a bowl shaped haircut and a pink tutu with leotards as the other girls had their hair in buns.

I was a paradox in other areas of my life too. I liked math but in my free time, I wrote stories and fairy tales. I liked to draw but I also liked to play with Legos. I took karate classes and did martial arts but insisted on trying out for the lead role in Swan Lake. I didn’t get it, it went to Gwen, my best friend who I played King Arthur and Guinevere with after preschool. She played it perfectly as I watched with simultaneous jealousy and admiration on the sidelines.

Growing up, I felt like the ugly duckling. Technically underweight and taller than all the other girls in my grade, I had a complicated relationship with food. I loved good food but hated how it changed my body. I wanted to be thin and pretty, feminine and girly.

In fourth grade, I passed the admissions test for Juilliard in the pre-college piano division. I started taking piano classes there on weekends. But one day, I passed by a dance class. Lines of girls twirling and pirouetting to beautiful music. Art being made with bodies in motion. I immediately fell in love with this ideal that perpetuated femininity and grace, an ideal that I aspired to be. I went into the class and asked the dance teacher if I could enroll in her class. She agreed, and that was the start of my dance career.

My teachers at Juilliard said I had the opportunity of a lifetime, to be at the best school for music and the performing arts in the world. I agreed and vowed to make the most out of my time there. I took music composition classes, studied piano diligently, practiced ballet and even took the occasional vocal class here and there.

Piano was stressful. The maestro constantly berated me for my technique. Wanting me to get better, he yelled at me in front of my classmates. I would break down crying in the bathroom, having the worst imposter syndrome. Dance was my only outlet in the school. Movement was my best friend, not the other girls whose friendships I gained only to lose amidst the competition and drama. I danced to feel alive in my skin. Not half dead while crouched over a toilet bowl vomiting the contents of my last meal.

I progressed. In middle school, I made the lead role in The Nutcracker, playing Clara. I gave free tickets to my friends for Christmas and they came and watched me on stage. I loved being in the spotlight, craving attention and validation more than a slice of cheesecake.

I wanted more. I needed more.

I won the role of Odette my sophomore year of high school. My teacher said I was the best dancer in my class and gave me a standing ovation after my audition for the role. Later, I lost it to a pretty snitchy blonde girl who claimed she was more Odette than me due to the color of my hair and skin. They gave me the role of the Black Swan to compensate. Made excuses of how it was more technically difficult than Odette’s role and I was more fit for this role.

Clawing at my skin at night, I hated myself. Hated that I lost the role, the role that I coveted for so long since that day I saw Gwen dance Odette on stage. Hated life, hated the world for being so unfair, hated school. I wanted to give it all up.

But I didn’t. I ended up channeling my rage and angst into the role. I was going to convince the world that the Black Swan was more perfect than the perfect golden haired princess who never should have gotten that role.

I started wearing all black to my high school. Eyeliner, mascara, black eyeshadow. Black leggings, black tank tops, black flats. People asked me what was wrong, and I just replied, I”m going through something. During free periods, I would dance in the empty studio, wildly, uninhibitedly, but with control. I would dance when no one was watching, I danced even when people were watching.

High school was a lot. I held repressed sexual urges and feelings for this guy in my biology class who I knew since middle school. He was the hottest guy in class, in school, in my lifetime, and he would shoot lasers at me with his eyes, in class, out of class, in the hallways, on the subway, in the pizzeria we bumped into after school.

I watched as he made out in front of me with that Asian girl who most definitely wore Victoria’s Secret push up bras. I listened (or tried not to) as he made sexual jokes in class. He got in trouble with teachers, he got into fights, he also wouldn’t stop walking around shirtless in the locker hallways after swim practice.

He wasn’t me. I wasn’t him. I didn’t do the things he did. I wasn’t the type to have sex with girls, to yell curses at people, to make sexual jokes aloud, to get in trouble with teachers.

But maybe, a part of me was like him.

I started salivating randomly, on the subway, in class, next to girls, next to boys. I also wasn’t eating, so that could have contributed. I was nervous about people thinking I was a closet pervert. I journaled about my sexual feelings, trying to control them. I had rages at home, throwing clothes, books, on the ground. Creating chaos because inside I was chaotic.

Someone I confided in told me I should see a therapist. Another person I confided in said I should seduce him.

I chose the latter.

I decided to wear a dress.

Kind of the perfect warrior outfit for occasions like these. I put my hair in braids and let them down so they were wavy. I put on lip gloss and eyeliner and “tried” to curl my eyelashes and do my mascara. I failed, but on last minute notice, I pulled on black lace tights and those black flats that paired perfectly with the preppy princess look I was going for.

I went up to him that day in biology class, sucking on a strawberry candy that I reserved for moments I needed high blood sugar for. Sitting on top of his desk, I leaned over and kissed him. I slipped my candy into his mouth. And walked away.

The next day, he went up to my desk and yelled at me for ten minutes straight.

I counted.

On my watch.

Which just infuriated him even more.

And so I burst out crying in hysterics afterwards when he finished and marched back to his desk, his back rigid and straight, his eyes flaming and icy at the same time.

And we never spoke again.

Just kidding.

We got married.

But back to the Black Swan.

There isn’t much else to tell. I prevailed in showing the world my rendition of the Black Swan. I was the lead in more ways than one, and I graduated from ballet that year with recognition.

I started taking modern dance classes.

Life got better.

Way, way better.

Unlike ballet, modern was unrestrictive. It was kinetic poetry, freedom of the body and soul, an art that refused to be contained within lines and shapes.

Ballet caged me, modern freed me.

Ironically, junior year of high school, I got recruited to dance for the American Ballet Theatre. I was going to go on tour that summer before college application season opens.

It was again an opportunity of a lifetime.

Then of course, something happened.

I got pregnant.

Not only did I get pregnant, and give birth after wearing sweat shirts all the time (as I didn’t wear them all the time anyway) to hide my baby bump, but shortly after my pregnancy, I got into an accident.

That fateful night, I went to a party at some rich kid’s house which had a pool, and got drunk. I wore a black halter top and a gold sequined skirt that my mom said I looked like a hooker in but let me leave the house in anyway. I took my clothes off, which weren’t much to begin with, in front of everyone so I could swim in the coveted pool. I had drunken sex with my boyfriend.

And shortly after, I got raped by a bunch of horny teenage boys and fell off the roof.

I only had one drink. My blood alcohol concentration wasn’t that high. It wasn’t my fault.

Those were my excuses to the officers, to the doctors who treated me.

My legs were broken. I couldn’t walk. I was stuck in a wheelchair for the remainder of the year.

It was a time of reflection. Of what I really wanted out of life. I didn’t want to be a dancer. I don’t even know why I did all those dance classes. Who was I dancing for, I asked myself.

In front of the school, I gave a speech on that fateful night. I told them that I was humbled by the events, that my accomplishments meant moot when compared to my life, and my dream was bigger than the vanity that I held onto for all those years. All those years, I was dancing for the devil.

God saved me that day. On stage, I fell off my wheelchair, and it was either, lie on the ground, unable to get up and be humiliated by everyone, or try to walk. I stood up briefly and collapsed afterwards.

My legs healed.

I broke up with my boyfriend. I left my kid to him.

I went on living. Pursuing my dreams.

I no longer dance anymore.

But here I am again, writing this story that I might have made up in my head. And wondering, if I had never danced, never had that epiphany as I stood on the sidelines that I was going to dance and be in the spotlight like my friend one day, and be Odette.

Would things have been different?

And would things have been different, if I had been Odette, instead of a black swan tempted by the devil?

Or did God plan all of this to the perfect minute detail?

I was dancing for a long time, in a way, being stringed along like a marionette, puppetted around for the world to gape and grope at.

But now I’m freed.

In a way that dance never freed me.