Ballerina
April 28th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Grace was never included in my genetic makeup. As a pre-teen, I was plagued with baby fat that was exacerbated by my love for ice cream, straight from the carton.
Growing up in Irvine, California, one of the safest cities in the U.S. , you’re able to make mistakes that are not life threatening and, if done within the confines of the plastic bubble, you can make it out virtually unscathed. I’m not sure if this was the reason why as a child, the only thing that rivaled my awkwardness, was my relentless drive to try anything at least once.
When I was around eight years old, my mom came across an article in the local newspaper about Mikel Barishnakov. Apparently, this Russian phenom was coming to Irvine to audition children and teenagers with little to no ballet experience, for his production of Swan Lake. I did a quick assessment and concluded that I was a child, and I had little to no experience, so by all accounts, I was a perfect fit! My mom, I am sure did a separate assessment. Taking in my plump frame, she must have considered my chances of making the performance, let alone off the ground, were slim to none.
We worked as a team to pick out the perfect outfit. With only three days to prepare for the Saturday audition we needed to be swift with our costume choice. Shorts were quickly scratched off as a viable option, since with any sudden movement they would bunch between my inner thighs and promptly ride up my butt. A skirt wouldn’t work either, as I didn’t have anything proper to wear underneath it. My vision of fluid leaps across the dance room floor didn’t include flashing the judges my Strawberry Shortcake undies. And, considering when I wore a t-shirt and the wind would make it suck to my body, I would pull it at the bottom tenting it back out, so clearly, a leotard or anything spandex wasn’t making the cut.
Saturday morning had arrived. My mom and I drove in excited silence to the performing arts center. In my mind I had already moved to New York, rented a small but spacious loft in the city and figured out how my mom could work two jobs to support my tuition costs at Juliard.
I quickly found myself drowning in a sea of tulle and pink but wasn’t the least bit concerned because clearly, I was buoyant enough to float to the top. I stood there, like a moose in the headlights, the contrast to the flower-like skinny ballerinas that pirouetted around me. Before leaving house that morning, I couldn’t have been more sure in my outfit choice. I thought my navy blue sweats with matching sweater shirt, LA gears and turquoise scrunchie socks couldn’t be rivaled by a better decision. But now, when I saw how beautiful and elegant all the other girls were, I was even happier in my decision to camouflage my belly rolls beneath the sweat suit I bought at the swap meet.
We were directed by a tall, stick like serious woman with a tight bun. She walked like she was floating on air. I was mesmerized at how effortless moving seemed for her. She ushered us away from our parents, and into a large dance room with wooden floors and a huge floor to ceiling mirror. I could clearly see that I was the “one of these things, that wasn’t like the others.” My thick red hair riddled with a bad perm, short bangs, which were sadly also permed and huge pink bifocals sliding down my sweaty nose. I was surrounded by gorgeous same-looking girls with indiscernible features. After a few minutes had passed, five older versions of ballerinas entered and a matronly woman wearing a long flowy skirt seated herself at the piano in front of the room.
One of the ballerinas spoke, ” We will teach you a routine now, you will have 10 minutes to practice and then we will move to performing them as a group. If your number is called you may stay for another routine and so on and so on.” I couldn’t place her accent, but from the best I could tell it sounded fancy. She walked us through a routine with movements that she marked by their ballet name. I had trouble following so I studied her every movement, trying to committ them to memory as the other ballerinas flitted around me.
After her instruction the ballerinas broke off into small practice circles. I was intrigued as there seemed to be little effort or discussion as to who was going to work together. It was as if they had a silent understanding as to who they would allow into each clique. The one thing they had in common however, was that none of them wanted to include me. Convinced there was no place for me within the social hierarchy of any circle, I tucked myself into a corner of the room and tried to make it look convincing that I was too wrapped up in concentration to be phased by the outcast.
The severe looking ballerina clapped her hands and hurried us back into our line formation. I knew this was my one chance to be noticed and I didn’t want to be lost in the sea of tutus, so I made my way to the front of the room and stood in the very center of the front row. The only thing that stood between me and sure fame now, was one silly ballerina routine. I willed my legs to cooperate and I prayed to God that he let this be the one defining moment in my life. The twinkling piano music filled the air and the fancy accented ballerina shouted, “Ready….begin.”
I lept off my left foot into the air and caught my weight on my right foot. I bent gracefully at my waist and curved my arm over my head as I tilted my neck to the side in my best attempt at looking swan-like. I lept into the air again this time on my right foot towards the opposite side of the room only to be met by another ballerina mid flight. We smacked into one another and she bounced off of me and collided into the ballerina standing next to her. Clearly, the routine had called for two flits left, one flit right–not one flit right, one flit left as I had rehearsed. My mistake had caused a domino effect and one by one each ballerina smacked into the next and fell to the floor. After all 15 ballerinas standing to my right fell gracefully to the wooden dance room floor, the piano playing had stopped.
In the reflection of the huge mirror it was painfully obvious who the offender was–the red headed, navy blue hippo with beads of sweat dripping down her face. I furrowed my eyebrows shrugged my shoulders and, before I was officially asked to do so, I walked out of the room as my dreams of New York, Juliard and a hot dancer boyfriend fell away.
I found my mom standing outside alone, surrounded by the plastic mom’s talking to each other in their loud hyena voices. Even though she was the most familiar with my lack of grace she still managed to ask with a straight face, “Well, did you make it?”
Not Hip Enough to Be a Hipster
April 27th, 2009 § 4 Comments
I wanted so badly to be tragic.
Moving from Orange County to Los Angeles was a tremendous change for me. The first time I heard the word hipster I wasn’t sure what to make of the term, but I was pretty sure it involved black converse.
I was familair with the terms goth, straight edge, and alternative but hipster-that was a new one. When I was nervous my tendency to smile and laugh meant I was ill fit for Goth. I also didn’t want to carry a lunchbox and, although I tried really hard to like Morrisey, I couldn’t listen to him for too long before all I wanted was for his incessant whining to stop. As a teen, I liked Red Hot Chili Peppers, would watch the punks skate the Irvine Bowl, and I could even pull off black leggings and a plaid flannel tied around my waist. The best I could hope for was alternative.
My move to LA, and my friends desire to show me all the trendy hip places hidden within, led me on a spiritual journey of late nights and lots of challah french toast. We frequented Swingers diner, a place where I am sure having tattoos is a prerequisite to admission. We went to Brass Monkey every Friday night for drunken karaoke. We spent a summer day at Sunset Junction listening to the indie bands in the hot LA heat. She took me to movies at the Grove, we went to the Hollywood Bowl, we saw small artistic productions at seedy theatres…and I tagged along like a good student making mental notes of my travels and the new vocabulary associated with it.
And then, to test my ability to really assimilate into LA lifestyle, I started dating musicians. It started off as a fluke really. The first musician I dated was far from the starving artistic type. He owned his own house in Long Beach, was gainfully employed and well adjusted. His music however, suffered the brunt of his stability, as it was terrible.
Then there was my short-lived romance with an old friend of a friend who started his own band. He was scruffy with poor hygeine, he was impulsive, erratic, tormented, and lived in a Silver Lake apartment cluttered with worn novels and music lyrics scribbled on walls. And his music was…beautiful. His passion helped me overlook his self-obsession, his need for stability made me excuse his erratic schedule and late night band practices. His hipster appeal helped me to rationalize his predisposition for being hammered by noon.
I knew I wasn’t his type, at most, I served as nothing more than a rest stop. I was the place where he could fuel up on food and drink, get a good night’s sleep and be gone by dawn so he could miss morning traffic. My apartment was fully furnished, with soft lighting and probably felt more like his parent’s house than it did, “the chick he was hooking up with’s.”
Hipsters want a tragic girl. Someone with smeared black eyeliner, waifish appeal and torn leggings. Not someone who was quick to utter, ” I really want to go out with you tonight after band practice, but I have a senior management meeting in the morning.” He was so cute and I wanted so badly to be tragic enough, frail enough and lost enough to hold his attraction. I longed to be a waif but my bone structure wouldn’t cooperate. How could I ever keep my indie band guy interested if he couldn’t fit into my jeans?
From all the VH1 I watch and from all the stories I hear, true relationships with rock stars end in fireworks, and passionate arguments that end only when the cops are called. Ours however, just slowly faded away.
As months passed my phone began to ring less and less at 4 in the morning. He stopped calling me when he was drunk in an alley. We stopped getting together for Chinese food on his living room floor when he was back home in between tours. My short-lived LA musician romance didn’t even have an interesting ending.
Sadly, I was too together to stay in the hipster scene long enough to be naturalized. Though I had emotional torment of my own, it wasn’t channeled into guitar playing, song writing and cigarettes but was more accurately marked by pints of Ben and Jerry’s and Netflix.
Travel Bugs
April 24th, 2009 § 1 Comment
At 28 I was well on my way to being a jet-setter or the next Monica Lewinsky.
I landed a job as an executive at a Los Angeles based company, which meant that I often flew to Chicago and New York. For the first few months I was in awe they even hired me. Even though professionally, I had received accolades for my hard work, dedication and professionalism, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. On paper and through reputation I was a great hire. An independent, strategic thinker, according to my resume. But for some reason, as I sat at my desk in the high rise building that overlooked the Hollywood sign (on a good day and with limited smog), I felt like I was waiting for my mom to return to her office and take me back to elementary school. But I faked it as best I could and it seemed to work brilliantly.
For a girl who rarely left the confines of Orange County, and for someone who traveled outside of the state for the first time at age 18, traveling was a huge shift in my reality. I could pack a mean bag since I grew up being shuffled every other weekend to my dad’s house. Those weekend custody trips allowed me to hone my luggage packing efficiency but a trip to New York packed much more of an excitement punch than a trip to my dad’s house in Lake Forest did.
Catch a red eye tonight, no problem!
Be ready to leave on last minute’s notice, you got it!
The first time I traveled to New York and hailed a cab into Manhattan, I felt alive. More than that, I felt grown up. I did the math and concluded that, if someone payed for my plane ticket AND my hotel room AND my food for 6 days, I had to be important! Walking to my first meeting in New York I checked myself out in the reflection of the building windows. My black pumps, my power skirt, my tailored jacket, I looked so chic, so important, and so much like the hundreds of other people that made up the swarm that surrounded me.
I was up and coming.
I walked on the trading room floor at the New York Stock Exchange. I dined with the Ombudsmen for lunch at an exclusive lunch club that, up until recently, didn’t even allow women into. I had late night dinners with CEO’s, I danced with the Mayor, I sat with ex-civil rights icons and listened to them tell me first hand accounts of the civil rights movement. I was soaking up moments that I would one day tell my grand kids about.
And then, there are the stories I won’t be telling them about.
Eating dinners at hotel bars meant my path crossed many times with men looking for one night (and sometimes more) away from their wives. Men that looked like your everyday nice guy, watched intensely as I ate dinner alone. Slowly getting closer and closer to me, as if I were some wounded bird that was prime for pouncing. Without fail, before I could get the check I would find myself making polite small talk with him, while in my head I was screaming at him, “GO HOME TO YOUR WIFE AND CHILDREN YOU PIG!”
In Chicago, I met a man who was staying at his “downtown loft” and spoke of an early morning the next day at his law firm. After talking for the twenty minutes it took to flag the bartender down so I could pay my bill, I politely said goodbye and excused myself. Ten minutes after I got to my room there was a knock on my door.
The hotel concierge had a note for me which read:
“The town car is waiting for you downstairs, my driver will take you to my loft, I would like your help in picking out a tie in the morning.”
This was one time in a handful of times I was approached while traveling. Airports, hotels, dinner functions, black tie events, all places which seem to scream, ” What happens on a business trip, stays on a business trip.” I was single for most of the time I traveled for work but never once did I take any of them up on their offers. There was something so sad and empty about their proposals. While I have never been the kind of girl to imagine my wedding, or pick out china patterns by my 16th birthday, I wasn’t jaded enough to consider hooking up with random strangers in the realm of possibility. Maybe I am boring, maybe naive but after traveling for three years I had come to one conclusion…I prefer sleeping in my own bed.
