Sometimes our lives feel as if we are simply adrift in an endless expanse with no sense of direction. Other times events may happen to lead us onto a certain clearer path. However somewhere in the middle we may find ourselves guided in such a way that we leave behind an impresssion that may influence others to follow as you take them through the fog....

Footprints In The Fog

by

Beverly Colleen

Chapter 1 - The Fantasy Of Dreams

You know, sometimes I think that Fate, God or whomever has a wicked sense of humor. I mean, look at the Platypus. No, I mean REALLY! Look at the Platypus! Maybe they know what is going on, but I really don't have a clue. If someone had told me I would be here, standing on this stage at this very moment waiting for the curtain to rise, I would have laughed myself silly at the preposterous idea. Yet, here I am.

It is with an almost surreal feeling that I looked around at the other dancers in our troupe. You can see the expressions of anxiety and excitement, along with the persperation that comes from opening night jitters. There is almost a cloud of electricity that hovers around us. Over the last few months we've become closer, resembling something like a family, forced together while working hard, painstaking hours, day after day, rehearsal after rehearsal. A day didn't go by that didn't have it's own little crisis and turmoil. A sprained ankle here, a pulled muscle there. However, no matter what, we are all here with the same goal and the same philosophy, The Show Must Go On.

We are here simply striving to achieve perfection in our dance and in our art.

Now I am part of the family, but it wasn't always so. Hey! I had my own problems you know, at least at first. My eyes start to water a little thinking of the pain and suffering I endured to get where I stand now. Eventually, once some of the others saw that I had some talent of my own the walls came down and I became part of the inner circle. Hopefully that is all behind me. The show must go on and so shall I.

I am shaken out of my reverie as I hear the MC's voice booms out over the PA in the theatre announcing the start of the show.

I tense up and settle into our first position as the curtain rises slowly and the spotlights flood the stage, blinding me in their glare amidst the thunderous applause from the large audience that fills the theatre. You would think that I should be nervous, but I have grown accustomed to the start of show jitters, for you see I have been doing these shows for quite some time now...

How is it these stories always begin? Oh, yeah.

I guess I have always been something of a free spirit or artist or whatever
you may want to call me. I love to dance, I always have. Even when I was little, I tried to dance before I actually walked. Mom and Dad thought is was the most adorable thing. I used to watch the figure skaters on TV, in their flashy costumes, gliding along the ice. I was mesmerized by the spinning and twirling all over the ice and the way they somehow never bumped into each other.

At least that was until I saw my first ballet dancer. I was fascinated by how graceful and elegant she was. I told my mother right then and there that I wanted to be a ballerina when I grew up. She just smiled with that knowing smile all mothers have and told me that girls were the only ones who could be a ballerina. Well on hearing that I promptly started to tear up, but before I could get a good cry going she reassured me that there were male ballet dancers and there was no reason why I couldn't grow strong and powerfully graceful like them. I remember that my mother seemed to have this twinkle in her eye when she told me that. I was to discover a few years later that she used to be a ballerina, herself. I guess that elplained why she always seemed happy whenever she saw me entranced by some exhibition or show. However, I seem to remember Dad always having a frown on his face. If I had been a little older and wiser at the time, I would have seen the signs more clearly.

Growing up from a wee toddler to a strapping young teenager I have tended to take after my mother more so than my father. He is something of a giant of a man. At 6'4" and over 200 pounds, he never has any problem with his macho image. I mean, look at him! Big, strong, and not too bad as far as looks, with short brown hair, brown eyes, chiseled features, well you get the idea. I mean if he fell on me they would spend hours scraping me off the floor like on of those cartoons. My mother, like myself, has hair as fiery as a sunset and eyes as green as a meadow. To me she was always the epitome of femininity. At 5" 4" she was on the smaller side weighing in at less than 120 pounds even at her age. I've always remembered how she dressed nicely, always elegant, with an almost inperceptable aura of sensuality.

Being closer in stature to my mother as opposed to my father, I have always been kinda slight without a lot of muscle mass. Which may be one of the reasons I would avoid the rough and tumble stuff some of the other boys engaged in, that and after seeing one of our neighbor's son taken to the emergency room with a few bruises and broken bones from a fall out of the big oak in his yard, well, I found other pastimes. When I wasn't online playing roleplaying games, I loved the dance. While I loved almost all dance forms, I still felt impassioned by ballet. Being a kindred spirit, I had talked mother into letting me take ballet when I was younger, even though my father wanted me to go out for the little league sports teams. Well my mother has always been able to get her way with father so he relented in allowing me to take the ballet lessons, though when mother wasn't about he would occasionally make snide remarks and offer to buy me tutus if I needed them for class. He never failed to show his disappointment, and I guess he thought if he kept harassing me, I would give up, but I never did. Funny though, he actually didn't stop me from taking the ballet lessons. He would even take me to classes sometimes when the weather was bad.

***************************************

What I would never tell him, fearing he would have more ammunition to ridicule my passion for ballet, is that most male ballet dancers are required to lift ballerinas into various positions in most common ballet productions. Being the only guy in our class at that time I was set to try doing just that and no matter how much I tried, I could never lift even the tiniest of the girls in the class. This left Mrs. Tommel, my ballet instructor, with a slight problem which she solved simply by having all of the class doing the same steps and positions. While I continued to learn much under her tutelage, this left me trained more as a ballerina than a male dancer, but at the time I thought ballet is ballet and I was having the time of my life.

I loved to dance and put forth my whole heart into it and it showed. I was at peace when I danced. It was a part of who I am. I loved it. What I didn't realize at the time , and probably wouldn't have cared, is that, because of my slight build and my ever growing resemblance to Mom, I was accepted as just another one of the girls in the class, by the other girl's mothers and even eventually Mrs. Tommel. I don't know why. Actually I never really noticed, but there you have it. Once I got on stage, nothing else even existed for me.

I would like to set the record straight though. I am not female, have never been female and I never had any inclinations to be a girl. I am happy with who I am. However, looking back now, I could see the confusion. It never bothered me then, as long as I could dance, at least until high school came into the picture...

**************************************

I always thought that I would grow and start getting muscles so I could be more like other guys i had seen in ballet productions. It never happened. I started to get a little depressed about ever making it as a male ballet dancer, especially as I stayed with the classes, we had finally gotten another boy taking classes. Well maybe I was trying to show off since I had been taking classes for years at that point and he was a newcomer, plus me thinking I was more of a man now that I was entering High School, I tried once again to do the more traditional male positions, but even with the skinniest of ballerinas, I was woefully under muscled to be able to handle all of the required steps of a male ballet dancer while he came into class and seem to have no problem picking it up. It seemed that istead of growing visible muscles and gaining much growth, upwards anyway, I had ne'r a hair on my chin and a head of hair that redefined the color true auburn. At times it became too depressing to face my inadequecies so I started skipping ballet classes. I wanted to give up on it all together.

Things at home didn't seem much better. Father still wouldn't have much of anything to do with me most of the time, except for meals or maybe to run and fetch something he wanted. He spent more quality time with Brian, our next door neighbor's son, than he did me! Brian appeared to be what I wasn't, at least when it came to athletic prowess. He was at least a head taller than I was, with developing muscles and facial hair. My father seemed to just adored him. I would see him teaching Brian how to throw passes with a football or how to actually catch a baseball in your mitt and not with your head. [Don't ask, I might show you the stitches sometime.] He would take Brian off to ball games and I would go off to be on my computer, escaping into other worlds. To him I didn't seem to exist unless we were passing in the hall and I was in his way. Yeah, okay, I was jealous, so what, he was supposed to be there for me. I needed him.

My mother tried to be supportive and she worried about my depression. But I didn't really want to talk to her. I was afraid that even she would turn on me if I told her about quitting ballet. She had always loved to see me dance.

I knew she had wanted to become a professional ballerina, until her involvement with dad and the subsequent pregnancy that ended her career rather quickly. She had won an amateur award or two, but never displayed them. I guess they were too painful a memory for her. I was to be her second chance. She could live her dream through me, only I couldn't see myself as a professional male ballet dancer. I was afraid of her rejection were she to realize I couldn't live her dream anymore.

Well, I had reason to be afraid. I could see the hurt and disappointment in her eyes when she found I had quit going to classes. Was she blind? Couldn't she see my pain when the another boy, a newcomer, was able to lift and carry the ballerinas and I could not. I just gave up when I realized my dreams would never be fulfilled and I knew I hurt her by doing so at the time. But what could I do?

I didn't just disappear. I'm stronger than that. I redirected my energies into theatre. I mean, it's all about acting, right? Here, I didn't have to be a strong macho guy, I could just play one on stage, right? Boy, was I wrong! If I thought it was bad in ballet, it was worse in drama. I was practically laughed off stage when I tried for various parts in different productions. Eventually, I was encouraged to participate backstage with the sound and lighting. Because of my smaller size, I was able to climb and reach into places that none of the other guys could get to. I earned the nickname, "Squirrel" because of the way I climb up the ladders and across the catwalks. Actually, it WAS easy for me, having a limber body and quick reflexes due to the ballet. In addition, with my personal skills with computers that I had previously neglected due to Ballet, I became as good at the technical side of things as I was on stage dancing.

It's possible that change is good, as I was to soon find out...

~Footprints In The Fog~  © 2008 by Beverly Colleen (www.bevsbalcony.org)
Illustrations  © by Original Artists
All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all articles, text, images, logos, compilation design) may printed for personal use only. No portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or otherwise made available without express written consent of the copyright holder. This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.