This Time I Dance! by Tama Kieves

Author:Tama Kieves
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-02-04T04:30:00+00:00

You No Longer Have a Label, But You Do Have a Ticket

Nameless: the origin of heaven and earth.

TAO TE CHING

I’m beginning to feel like I’ve returned a sweater that didn’t quite

fit right to the great big customer service department in the sky.

I’ve got my money back, all in crisp new bills, and I’m off to

this fair where all the primo merchants are already arranging

their wares. I can smell the cotton candy in the air.

I have another chance now.

A JOURNAL ENTRY

When I first dropped out of my lawyer life, I sometimes walked downtown on weekdays like some wayward ghost haunting a former territory. I’d stare at the office high-rises with fountains gushing in plazas, and geometric murals in cool lobbies. Then I’d gaze in the windows of trendy boutiques dangling smart black leather bags, silk shirts, tweed blazers, the fashion of validity. I found myself envious of the women, like the woman I used to be, who could sit at outdoor cafés sipping iced tea in the easy security of a crowd just like them. They ate Cobb salads, wore linen suits, and consulted their bulky Daytimers just bulging with appointments. After lunch, they rushed back to meetings, matters, and materiality, smart black leather bags by their side.

Meanwhile, I walked, invisible, past sidewalk vendors and lawyers, accountants and secretaries in line for automated bank machines. After lunch hour, the streets would begin to thin out, the remains of life still tingling in the air. I’d find myself missing what I hated, only because that bustle and busyness felt substantial and I did not. I didn’t want to practice law. And I didn’t want to return to the sleek oppression of an office on the thirtieth floor. Yet I longed for the coherence of a world. I wanted places to go and hats to wear and the easy well-being of knowing just where I belonged. Dangling on the sidelines, I longed for a part in the play.

Just months before, I’d had a business card, letterhead, people who recognized me in the mirrored elevator, and a set of circumstances that met with immediate acceptability instead of eyebrows raised, throats cleared, and, usually, poor advice offered. In contrast, my new transition status attracted interrogations, opinions, advice, jealousy, distaste, and lots of face-scrunching, strained looks. I so wished I’d had a word or term that could have passed for an identity. “I’m a creative entrepreneur, an explorer, a dabbler.” I would have given anything for a pigeonhole to hide in instead of parading my great, big, wide-open soul—or this silent, default characterization: “I’m a screwup.” “I’m a lost soul.”

For example, I remember standing around at a former colleague’s baby shower, of course in her newly remodeled, gawk-worthy home with her happy, rich husband and all their well-appointed friends. As always, the inevitable nightmare question came up, either as, “So what are you doing now?” or “What do you do for a living?” My face would turn plum and my fingers would strum my sweater as I’d aim for some slick reply and end up sounding like a flower child gone to seed.

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