Dancer by Colum McCann

Author:Colum McCann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

Jumping through the lips I needed six stagehands to break my fall. The Post said it was the most astounding exit ever seen in ballet. (Bullshit, of course.) The photograph was taken by some moron who caught me, back bent, out of line. Still, it sent the audience into raptures and they roared. (Polanski, Tate, Hepburn, Hendrix were there.)

The reviews were good, except for Clint, who called it all a diseased contrivance. (Asshole.)

A story appeared in the gossip pages, with a photo of me and Hendrix. Rudi and Jimi pirouette. His fingernails were blackened (perhaps with old blood) from playing guitar so hard. At the club he disappeared in a cloud of marijuana smoke but showed up later on the dance floor. I was surrounded by a dozen gyrating women. A tall black boy joined us, leather shirt and motorcycle boots. We removed ourselves to the courtyard and the party began.

The birthday celebration took place only to be forgotten. Thirty-one years old. Margot bought a beautiful crystal goblet and Erik gave me a Gucci watch. All I wanted was to walk along the beach. The stars over St. Bart’s seemed almost as bright as those over Ufa when I went ice fishing, centuries ago.

Leopard skin boots! To the thighs! A là Twiggy! Backstage I was told they were deliciously wicked. At Le Bar I couldn’t move for the gauntlet of erections. I spied one boy, he seemed two different people in one, a Janus, so that from the right he was beautiful but from the left he had a hideous scar. In the morning the boy kept trying to show me the good side of his face, which bored me, so I kicked him out.

Mother said that the snow over Ufa had deadened all other sound. Tamara says she wants to understand me, my life, but she is so foolish, how can she understand me? Nobody does.

Erik complains that I talk more and more shit each day. As if he doesn’t. He says I should just do the one thing I know—that is, operate in my sacred space, onstage.

He detests my idea that dance makes the world a better place. It is sentimental, he says. I want to make a statement about beauty, but Erik (who spends his time watching the news from Vietnam and Cambodia) says that dance changes nothing for the monk who sets himself aflame and the photographer who watches through the lens.

Would you set yourself aflame for something you believe in? he said.

I asked if he would keep his finger on the shutter if I was burning. He would not answer at first but then he finally said: Of course not.

We fought until the alarm clock rang. I told him I had set myself aflame a long time ago, did he not realize this? He sighed and turned his back and said that he was sick and tired of it all, that he simply wanted a cottage by the sea in Denmark where he could sit and smoke and play the piano.

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