Celestial Body. A Slightly Squiffy Post.
It’s not easy to be a male ballet-dancer in the Hebrides. It’s not easy being green either, as unlucky holidaymakers coming off the Ullapool ferry will liverishly attest, but it’s not worse than being a male ballet dancer.
Not long ago there were two. Michael Barry-Ishnick of Callanish, and a slight lad from Luskentyre with dark and beautiful eyes who at age 9 had run away from the beatings to Moscow, never to be seen again.
Fortunately for Michael he was built like Bruto and, at just 14, already had a full muftie beard springing from his face like shiny, black scribbles with a Sharpie. Noone messed with him, even when he did his barre exercises against the 5-bar-gate to his croft or practised jet?-turns along the road, the only flat surface around where he had room to really leap. No one would think of teasing such a boy-giant who, at 220lbs, could dance en-pointe without blocks as if he were the springiest of sprongy dik-diks. With toes as strong as that, potential mockers could only wonder how strong his other bits were. Nobody wanted to find out.
Michael’s parents, fearing the cruel taunts of his friends, and more importantly, of theirs, had tried to steer their son into football and rugby, and even, in desperation, into golf. But he had declared them all “sissy sports”, which required not a tenth of the discipline and strength of a ballet dancer, and he would not be turned from his beloved hobby.
Michael’s mother, Clara Barry, an Irish woman from Ballyshoo who had got herself into trouble with a Swan Loch boy one Christmas Eve when the moon was as high as they were, couldn’t think where he got it from. Oh, she’d craved Pavlova when she was carrying him but that by itself couldn’t do it, surely. Anyway, she had craved toad-in-the-hole with Catriona but at six, Catriona had shown no signs of a herpetological bent and had decapitated her rubber Kermit with a pair of safety scissors.
Michael at six years old already had a technically flawless soubresaut, which, he would patiently explain to people, was a “sudden leap”. By 7 he had started experimenting with satsumas and a pair of his mothers pilfered tights.
Michael’s father, Callanish’s only policeman, Colin Ishnick, was a no-nonsense sort of a fellow. He was good man but his son’s love of ballet was alien and bewildering to him. Although secretly in awe of his son’s dancing ability, a part of him couldn’t forget that all the other guys’ teenage sons spent their free time on more traditional things like footie or drinking liquor til they had to go to hospital. He just wanted the same problems his friends had with their kids. He didn’t want to be different.
That last summer, Clara and Colin would often sit in the evenings by the fire, cracking nuts and watching, puzzled, from the window as their son practiced for his imminent entrance exam to the Royal Academy of Dance in Edinburgh: performing here an exquisite arabesque by the washing-line, or there a heartfelt pli? by the wheelie bin.
One August night they were watching in silence as Michael posy-turning like a dervish across the lawn, each of them lost in their own thoughts. Dusk was falling in the garden and, suddenly, in the gloaming, they saw their son as if for the first time. As he did the splits by the peonies his torso looked strong and statuesque but in a second he was up and bounding across the garden with such improbable agility and grace that Clara found herself puttin aside her nutcracker, and Colin his sweets. Unaware of themselves Michael’s parents got up and moved as one to the window.
How could he do that? How could he make it seem like an orchestra was playing, rather than just the old clock ticking on the mantlepiece? Is he not bound by gravity like the rest of us? He really looked as if he might break clear of it and take flight at any minute. It was as if he were dancing on the cusp of weightlessness.
For half an hour or more, they stood by the window and watched him as the shadows lengthened and the day died. He looks like a poem out there, thought his father, a curious sensation bubbling in his throat. Never before had the policeman seen such unbounded beauty and he knew that this was as close as a mortal could get to finding out what pure spirit looks like; what hope might look like.
Finally, the light got too dim outside to see Michael beyon the reflection of their sitting-room on the windowpane. As they turned to the fire, both their faces were wet with tears, aching with the beauty their son had dazzled them with. Never had they been more proud, never had they loved their son more than this moment. They wanted all their friends to see him, and know how extraordinary he was! O, why hadn’t they encouraged their child? Why had they turned away, embarrassed when he begged to show them his latest perfected step? How could they have let him down like that? Well things would be different now. The first thing they would do when he came in do would be to tell their son for the very first time how proud they were of him and his ballet!
They never saw the meteor hit. They heard only a sound like a shotgun in the garden. The crater was six-feet round and about as deep, and so it was decided that he would be buried right there where he died, dancing. And that’s the end. They were all horribly devastated, obviously, but there’s nothing really else to say, except that Catriona, through a series of career mishaps and one embarrassing social disease, became a herpetologist after all, by mistake.
Lame way to finish a story? A meteor hit him to death, the end? Well take it up with Life. Life’s always shearing narrative arcs off, leaving high, jaggedy, pointless points to rip your trousers if you are a tall person or your shirt if you’re short. If Life can do it, so can I.
The End.
WTFittyF? I’m going to hate this story in the morning, and it won’t respect me either.
You’re right, I have. 3 large glasses of something red whose name I can’t remember but it had a comical long-legged cat on the label. Pleasantly sleepy now, eyes closing. Night night, world wide web. Sleep tight.
I had a mole removed today by the way. I smelled what cooked me would smell like. I’d need some garlic, of course, but i reckon I’d be OK for a mid-week dinner with some new potatoes and a crisp salad.
July 30th, 2008 at 1:26 am
I smelled what cooked me would smell like.
traumatised.
July 30th, 2008 at 2:00 am
“embarrassing social disease”
I’ll bet it was that creeping virus, herpes.
“I?d be OK for a mid-week dinner”
Chianti, tell me it was chianti you were drinking?
July 30th, 2008 at 4:12 am
Life really is like that. Just when things are going great you get hit by a meteor. Happens to me all the time.
July 30th, 2008 at 4:16 am
Cooked how, boiled roasted grilled fried, steamed. And was it flying swimming or running, maybe a sort of surf and turf.
Anyhoos, one of the reasons I watch Emmerdale now and then is that they wipe out huge sections of the cast at the most mawkish of moments. Weddings births or what have you and you will have a horse buck-kicking the heads off actors left and right.
A meteor, now that was just lovely.
July 30th, 2008 at 5:39 am
Life?s always shearing narrative arcs off, leaving high, jaggedy, pointless points to rip your trousers if you are a tall person or your shirt if you?re short.
Lot of wisdom in that sentence, dear. I thank you for it.
As for cooked you, I’d always assumed you’d be rolled in oats and stuffed in some herbivore’s stomach before being piped in on a platter.
But garlic and butter is OK, too.
Cheers.
July 30th, 2008 at 5:46 am
A first Sam, a rinca dik dik in PCB pages(oh check rinca, please). Ceriously as daughter says, I shared a block of flats with a ballet guy and he was some guy, yeah a really big guy. Cwear?., ask any of the procession of ballet gals who dik diked from his place. And when he practised his own dik dik, the place shook all un-Copelia like. I?m quiet taken with the double dik.
July 30th, 2008 at 6:12 am
“OK for a mid-week dinner with some new potatoes and a crisp salad. ”
I’d add a few glasses of red wine. You’d be fabulous!
July 30th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
hm. I’m hungry.
and I want to see Swan Lake.
you write too damn well for my comfort.
July 30th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Rosie, I think I’d be better tenderized.
Conan, yes. With fava beans. sslslslslslslslslsls.
Primal, no wonder we need stories. How to make sense of this Life business? Trouble is, it’s all a matter of scale. We never know if we’re at the beginning, middle or end of a huge story, or a short one. We never know in which stories we play major or minor parts. And there’s never any bloody direction.
Vincent, maybe the heavens do control our destinies from time to time, but not in the way astrologers think. They certainly had the last word with Michael.
Rand, let me try and understand this – you have, prior to this conversation, thought about how I might be cooked? I bet you cooked Pat with a nice beurre blanc or something, and Daffs en flambe. But me? Oh, I have to get extruded from a lesser mammal’s stomach! Huff! I’ll remember this, Sherman!!! You see if I don’t!! *Bites fist*
Sniffs, they’re all freakin’ gorgeous these male ballet dances. The best ones, Nuryev and Baryshnikov have this haunted, ascetic Eastern European thing going on – deep set eyes. Like Jeremy Irons, but more leaping.
Sugar, if at all possible, I’d prefer to be marinated first. It might stop people from saying, God, that Sam’s a tough old hen, eh? Stringy.
Rachel, a bottle of wine wrote that last night, not me. I’m disowning it. There ought to be a breathalyser on computers which automatically shuts them off when they detect above one glass of wine consumed. I’m trying to remember if I commented anywhere last night. I hope to God, I didn’t.
July 30th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Michael was a metaphor for your mole – both never knew what hit them.
July 30th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
I trust you’re OK with the quake. I worry about you California people, damn it.
Cheers.
July 30th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
As for your response to my prior comment: We all have our fantasy life, dear.
Cheers.
July 30th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
i like that he was hit by a meteor. i’d like to think it was a metaphor. maybe for something like…pressure. societal pressure. yes, that’s it. i’ll turn in my essay examining this in the morning.
July 31st, 2008 at 5:03 am
Eep, I had one sliced out last year too, not very nice, poor darling. And I LIKED the ending, it was flitting, I mean fitting.
July 31st, 2008 at 5:54 am
My best stories come when I’m either half asleep or pie-eyed, but it’s usually best not to share them until my sober self has looked them over. I think they do lose something in the polishing, though that’s probably a good thing.
I craved ice-cream when I was pregnant, I wonder if Bob will turn up with a van one day, having my own personal Mr Whippy, mmm…
July 31st, 2008 at 12:42 pm
That Kalashnikov guy was great. Didn’t he joing the Mamas and the Papas and end up murdering Charlie Manson?
July 31st, 2008 at 8:08 pm
When green is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why, but why wonder why
Wonder, I am green and it’ll do fine, it’s beautiful
And I think it’s what I want to be
I like the story, so don’t go second guessing yourself. Well, the meteor was a bit of a shock, but it was probably just as much so to his parents.
I do wonder who he studied under or if he was completely self-taught and, well, was he really that good or were his parents too ignorant to see how amateurish the fellow was?
July 31st, 2008 at 11:44 pm
Nanas, as a matter of fact my mole was called Michael!
Rand, we felt it. It lasted about 10 seconds and was very peculiar. The lights were swaying and the cat was well freaked.
Kara, no, the essay question this week is on the next post all about avant-garde theeyatre.
Fmc, do you mean the WTFittyF? part? That was sorta fitting.
Eryl, I think I should have kept this one to myself. I knew I’d rue it in the morning.
Bock, yes, it was the very fellow!
SafeT, no this post would have benefitted from not being written at all. The tragedy is that Michael was really a rather good dancer. In time he could have been great, if not for his rotten luck with the meteor.
August 1st, 2008 at 5:33 am
Hmm. meteor. Rough luck, that.
I do my best writing when I can’t remember it. This is lovely stuff.
August 1st, 2008 at 7:38 am
Well done on having the mole removed. As my birth mark is only seen by invitation I never bothered to have it removed but I should’ve.
Do you watch East enders? Phil is forbidding his son to dance which is a tragedy. I’ve always maintained that you have to have real machismo to wear pink tights with pride and don’t find anything pansy – ish about real male ballet dancers – regardless of their proclivities.
Thanks for TROPE. New to me.