I took a programming class in college and have had this inside joke url ever since
You know the scene that occurs about 3/4 of the way through every dance movie, where the step that the dancer has been trying so hard to master, over and over in various montages, suddenly and miraculously clicks in their mind or legs or arms or wherever it’s supposed to click and suddenly bam! they can do it and their face is consumed with joy? Yeah. I have always cried at that scene.
Also, I could really use one of those in real life before next Friday.
The last day of bookbinding class, it was just me and the Odd Guy.
“I saw other students signed in, upstairs,” I offered to our teacher, who was tapping the corner of a metal ruler on her workbench with a perplexed look on her face. “At like, 8:10. They got here really early. And then they left, I guess?”
“Maybe they’re having a nice breakfast someplace. Oh well. We’ll get started without them.” She sighed. “So, go ahead and get to work, and just let me know if you have any questions.”
Our teacher reminds me of the friends I had when I did lights and sound for the plays in high school. We’d sit in the dusty booth in the back of the auditorium, in sweatshirts and tattered Chuck Taylors, chortling and gossiping about the actors on stage. My friend Katy was usually in charge, and I was consistently impressed with her tech vocabulary. “We’re going to need to order some new blue gels,” she’d say, brow furrowing. “Maybe lower the scrim for scene 2. And could you grab three fresnels from the crypt?”
The Odd Guy reminds me of no one I have ever seen.
He’s tall and hawk-nosed, with a gait like Frankenstein, a ring of wispy black and silver hair encircling his pale skull. Rumor has it, he’s taken years of bookbinding workshops. Any time he speaks it comes out like a forced moan, his dying words. “Could you . . . show us . . . how to use the sewing frames?” Hweeeeeeee. He wore plaid button-up shirts with sleeves that were just slightly too short, hovering above the wrist bone. Every day for lunch he brought back a sandwich wrapped in white paper, a large Pepsi. He would eat at his workbench staring straight ahead, chewing slowly, carefully, always grimly silent. I sat across from him, all chaos and attempted jokes. I used to like silence, too. What happened to that, anyway?
“Where is my bone folder?” I would cry, as glue dried below my frantic hands. “I can’t find my bone folder!”
“Did you throw it away?” our teacher would suggest.
“Well I certainly hope not, for Christ’s sake, I was only just using it and I’ve been very careful not to –”
“Here it is, in the trash. It was wrapped in your waste paper.”
“Oh!”
The Sweet Librarian Girl Who Drank Coffee and Ate Almond Macaroons Every Lunch would titter, then smile and tell me it was looking really nice. The Nice Enough Dude With Tucked-In Shirts was all business, an occasional booming voice, Ha Ha, Am I Right? The Quiet Girl worked diligently, sleepily, snuggled into her hoodie. It was 8:30 in the morning on a Saturday, after all, and we worked in the basement, the dry warmth from the woodworking machines from the rooms next door floating in on waves. The Stylish Russian Woman was nearly always missing.
The Odd Guy would never look up, at any of us.
We all worked at different paces. But every time I looked at what he was doing — and the rest of us were looking around constantly, trying to gauge our progress, trying to figure out the next step — I could never make sense of what he was working on. It turned out, he was always a step ahead: we’d learn about what he was doing next Saturday.
“You know, I’m going to go look for them,” our teacher said. “I have an idea where they are. I’ll be right back.”
Where would that be? I wondered.
The Odd Guy and I shuffled about, wiped PVC straight glue off our hands with paper towels, boned down the super/crash/mull and pulled linen tapes through. Sapphire fabric, forest green, golden linen, magenta. I created a copy of Candide with handmade paper I’d found the week before, a silk ribbon to glue along the spine as a bookmark.
“I am clearly losing it,” our teacher would say fifteen minutes later. “I know I saw Allison walking around the North End this morning. But so far no luck. Can’t find anyone. ”
“She signed in,” I would reply. “At 8:10, fifteen minutes before me.”
“Where could she have gone? Where is everyone? This is nuts.” She ran a hand through her hair. “Well. As long as you two are the only students here, is there anything in particular you wanted to learn from this class? Some tutorial I could give today?”
“Could you . . . show us . . . how to use the sewing frames?” Hweeeeeeee.
“Sewing frames! Absolutely.” She ran off.
“I’m sorry,” I said to the Odd Guy in a sudden rush of emotion. Maybe we would become friends. Maybe I’d have someone to talk to for the next eight hours. Maybe I wouldn’t leave today with a creak in my spine and a twitch to my eye — Good Lord, if we could just listen to music or something, it could be anything, I just can’t take this much freaking silence — “I’m kind of a mess. I’ve taken over nearly this entire table. My God, I can’t find anything, you know?” I smiled tenuously.
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t even look up. What the heck was he doing over there, anyway, it looked crazy. We hunched over our text blocks, wiped glue off our hands, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle.
A month or so ago, The Babes in Boinkland were invited to audition for America’s Got Talent. The audition would be an hour long, and if we passed it, the second audition would be in front of the America’s Got Talent Official Panel of Judges (read: David Hasselhoff).
I had just joined the Babes the week before. I was just beginning to learn that the rest of the troupe consists of dancers: women who have been in classes since they were five years old, who know ballet, swing, salsa. “I need to know who’s in, because if we progress, this is a huge commitment,” Sugar wrote. Like literally, Vegas.
I slept on that. By which I mean, I woke up several times during the night feeling like I was going to throw up. But just shortly after I wrote her back, confessing that there was no way I could learn choreography like the rest of the group and that I didn’t want to drag anyone down with me, she wrote a second email: “America’s Got Contracts.”
Part of the contract was that the contract could not be publicized or performed, but nobody had signed anything yet. And so here it is: The Contract, read by Sugar Dish (nsfw, if that’s not obvious).
1.) You have always considered yourself a flats kind of girl, for a multitude of reasons both form and functional. You walk everywhere, for one. Uninjured feet are essential. You’re completely satisfied with your height, for another — and secretly feel pretty pleased with yourself when someone looks up to ask “are you wearing heels?”, and you can respond “no.” Ha, ha.
But flats don’t really go with burlesque, and your wee black dancing shoes don’t really fit with the image of Glinda you need to pull of this Saturday, so — whatever, economy! — you go shoe shopping.
2.) You tell the shoe salesman (5’2″) that you have literally never worn heels that measure more than a couple centimeters, and you have no idea how to stand up, let alone walk, let alone dance. You stagger to the store mirror like an invalid.
“Just vacuum in them!” he tells you. “Wear them while you’re dusting, cleaning your apartment, that kind of thing. You’ll learn, no problem.” He grins.
You think he’s maybe being a sexist jerk, but the next day you try it out, and he’s totally right. It’s something about the small steps, the weight shifting back and forth, the third leg support of the vacuum. It’s like housework was invented for new shoes!
The only problem really, is that you feel like maybe you’re compromising some essential values. You’re still cool, right? Vacuuming in heels and shit?
3. Also: oh my goodness. Look at your legs. Look at your butt. Heels are amazing! “Ooo!” your boyfriend says. Then, “are you my height when you wear those?”
The tricky thing about it was, I felt completely fine — until I left the bathroom. I had been scrubbing the shower for maybe half an hour, going into the grout with Soft Scrub and then bleach, letting it sit while I wiped down the sink and toilet, then scrubbing again. The cats had tried to jump into the tub, so I’d closed the door to lock them out. Everything was becoming sparkling and white. The air smelled like lemon zest and chlorine. I had bright rubber gloves on my hands, the sunlight streamed in, I was unstoppable. “Never use straight bleach,” the bottle read. “Always dilute.” Pssht, I thought, you don’t know my problems, and poured the bottle over the rim of the tub. That’s what I’m talkin’ about.
I don’t remember what I needed outside of the bathroom. Paper towels, Windex? I forgot as soon as I opened the door; it was like being hit by a truck.
There was something about the air.
It smelled like burning . . . something. Wood? It felt thick and prickly, it stabbed into my lungs and eyes and sinuses. “What is happening?” I wondered, stumbling around my apartment. My limbs felt disconnected, rubbery. I flung open a window and inhaled deeply — oh no, it was much worse outside! Something must be on fire, something toxic, I just needed to know where it was coming from so I could go the other way.
But outside, birds were chirping. A couple strolled casually beneath my window, holding hands.
Maybe it was my living room. I ran into the bedroom, same thing. Kitchen, burning, burning, hallway, study — I flung open the door to the bathroom and stepped inside.
Lemon zest and chlorine. Sweet relief. I took a deep breath. Is something . . . wrong with me? It’s . . . crazy out there. Maybe I’m about to get a bloody nose. Why can’t . . . why can’t I think? Is something wrong . . . with me?
Inside the tub, a white-foamed blue pool slowly eked down the drain.