human connection series
episode five– Q
Moving. Movement. Chairs and tables away from their decorative social positions and shoved into the corners of a room, flush to the walls. Bedroom furniture one way, and then another. Flip flopping where the head lies, desk at the window, desk next to the bed, desk as altar, unused except for quiet worship. I couldn’t sit still. Or read. But I could move. I fidgeted in school, squirmed in my classroom seat, fifth grade, sixth grade until dismissed, near a window was preferred, I liked the crisp damp morning breeze in the fall, the sun’s glare off the hardened snow in deep bitter winter, the birds in spring resting on the sill, still.
I was moving away from my father, away from my mother, toward an organic source of welcome, some type of peace.
With my father’s Bang and Olufsen cranking Stevie Wonder, Prince, Cat Stevens and the furniture already set aside, I’d fly, dance, body paint myself into the wide open space — lie on the floor, lie low on my ribs, belly arched and limbs tightening, bending, extending, starved from restricting, hip bones perching, teetering, the emptiness of physical self, created buoyancy, knitted spirit into my shapes. I was off balance, I was hip roll, I was nose to the stained oak floor, I was body low against its hard partnership, I was body buzzed, body buzzing, twitchy. And reckless.
Ballet, in those days, was dominatrix, lion tamer whipping my wild away; rules to live by, rules to inhale and cling to, ballet helped me survive. But my body wild made me late. Late for the next count, late for staging, a breath late to arrive, a blink late to be in sync, in the mirror late, in that world of perfection, on time like a train, I fought to achieve the ballet’s brilliant, elusive order.
I returned the furniture in my parents’ home to its proper place. Hot breaths landed on their surfaces, slides and leaps brushed up against their edges, hip sways, spine curls painted patterns onto the walls, washed over the ceiling, entered, into everywhere.
I rewound the tape cassettes preparing them for next time. I went to bed, dreamt of rhythm, chaos and flight.
When I was seventeen, I moved to Chicago and fell in with, danced alongside larger than life women, dancing women grown from all parts of the country, body knowledge from the coasts, grace screaming from southern flesh, western mountains, grunge, polish, fearlessness, I trained, admired and longed for them. They were moving spirits, confident, wicked and sensual, they were what I aspired to, what was written.
Q. Jet black curls, like a mass of raisin-sized fiddleheads bending, strands coiled into each other; she kept it short, like Shirley Temple, raven twirls and sass. Q didn’t dance the steps she was taught, she bellowed them, she ripped nuance out of the shapes she formed with her body, dotted them into her DNA, she fortified them with the pounding of her heartbeats, poured liquid bronze blood through her leaps and balanced, like a superhero; she hovered, commanded stillness with her breath. She was massively, iconically sultry.
Q taught dance classes as well as performed in the company I was hired into. She was one of just a few that did. Her choreography was complicated, layered, quirky, precise. She was demanding, stopping the music in order to point out what she wanted from us, she grabbed bodies and bent them into the designs she was after, laughing, loving, while scolding and creating. We were jazz dancers. We were ballet first jazz dancers.
Q introduced to me the concept of creative visualization, straight up. She was the first person I heard put those two words together, while teaching dance. She cracked the code. She affirmed my inner world, allowing my inner muse credibility. My Bernadette, (as she is named) my sister, my quiet invisible dancing ghost. Inhales and exhales were linked to my private storytellings, cuffed to a greater Source. Q empowered that.
Q had a big ass. Not wide, but bulbous, fierce. She had strong thighs like a sprinter, and powerful feet, like stone. She stayed exactly where she put.
We lived in fish bowls, all of us; eyes on us, all times, our bodies, our flow, our heads tipping to one shoulder, focusing on the other, the expression on our faces, our breathy sweats, our cigarettes no less, at least for one or two of us, stage ready, eye lashes, blushes and hairspray, pins and ties, elastics, sweaters, Walkmans, knits, ripped up, cut up, tied up, doped up, knotted up, over the collar, pulled tight. See us. Watch us. Touch us. Q wore bandanas that kept the wildness of her blacktop afro at bay, not rolled like a headband, but riding hooded way. She did not give a fuck. At least, from where I was standing, she didn’t.
She intimidated the sissy assed fuck out of me. But I didn’t envy her. I only wanted to embody her. There wasn’t (or isn’t) a chance she knew what she meant to me, how her example informed me, how her sturdiness seeped into my open fearful spaces.
