the popular but cool, athletic but "chill" guy side of things that also was equally interesting to me. I remember always sitting there thinking as a junior how much time I had left there, and how many things I must have in store for me to experience in order to get from soft spoken me to larger-than-life them. And it all seemed a bit improbable. A little far-fetched. And everybody tells you that that time flies by, but nobody ever tells you how or why. They don't mention those moments you inevitably have where you sit down on a Sunday night trying to remember the soccer, volleyball, lacrosse and baseball games you went to not to mention the cross-country banquet you crashed all while still studying for big tests and finishing school projects over the week and only just then having sat down long enough to think about it because you were just too busy living. Or all the blush red, cheeky smiles that come to pass as you go out and make high school worth it. So needless to say, that among many was a lesson I would come to learn. Time travels just as quickly as always, but to you feels like it flies because no amount of time with loved ones and new friends ever feels like it was quite enough, and no hug or kiss or event ever seem to be anything more than blissful but short-lived.
The next few, brief months passed quickly for the reasons above- I was living life and making it all worth it. But a few weeks out from Showcase our DI found that there was an awkward amount of time that needed to be blocked out and filled with something entertaining because the set took too long to prepare and too many dancers needed to costume change in a short time- and thus "The Guys Dance" was introduced. Or actually, two of them were. One was a sort of battle of the bands between the Spice Girls and N-Sync ( I was in N-Sync) and our dance-battle songs were Wannabe and Dirty Bop accordingly (which is a classic and if you haven't heard it you should). While they performed kick lines in drag, we shuck and jived hip-hop style to choreography we made and it was a blast. Mainly because the costumes were so obnoxious. To finish, we would bind together for one great kick line and bolt off back stage as the MC's came back out.
The other dance, THE legendary dance (for various reasons), was the other guys dance that involved only a trio. The three of them were great friends since forever it would seem and being that they had all been in Co-Ed for a few years in a row, they had this reputation of dishing out hilarious homo-erotic dances that basically somewhat mocked interpretive dance. Obviously this quickly became a crowd favorite. I remember walking in one day as the DI pleaded that they "do the dance again" and so they did. This year they changed it up, and I remember that after weeks of staying after-hours in the studio, they busted out this dance in one of our Showcase week rehearsals and it was hilarious. All of our Co-Ed dance partners who knew what was about to happen ran backstage as quickly as they could and pulled out dozens of other dancers still not changed for their next piece to come out into the auditorium and see- giggling before the music even kicked in. That year they decided to wear white, wispy robe looking things and danced to the song "Hero" by Enrique Iglesias. It consisted of everything from weird convulsions to the lyrics to nun-chucking around their smaller friend as a key prop in the dance, and it was glorious. There was a solid five minute stretch of nothing but boisterous laughter all about that grand room as even the DI took a moment to wipe the tears from her eyes and call in the next girls for their run through.
Anyway, all Showcase week, as soon as football would let out, I and two other football players/dancers would run from the stadium off-season and Spring Ball practices to the performing arts center and clock in hours of "work"- the definition of which changing every day for me. Some times it was moving two-hundred pound mats around, other days it was corralling girls for their dances and sending them out as the DI's right hand man. Not to mention doing multiple runs through our own various dances- because it was a known thing that while Showcase is great, what the non-dance related people come to see is the Co-Ed partner dance. Seeing the guys do cool lifts with girls one moment and embarrassing themselves the next was some good family fun. So it all had to be good.
I remember more often than not going home after even most of the girls had left, and always hearing yet again more snippets of life in passing. Young dancers talking about what it must be like to be in the senior's shoes for their final Showcase ever. And what it meant to them. All those years of hard work and sweat and tears. The cold football games spent huddled together and the half-time performances and the pep rallies all culminating into this one moment that would come on a warm Saturday night with hundreds all around watching them. The parents and friends that they've met along the way through it all, not to mention their own families and friends all there. Watching, and hearts beating for them... Not to mention love-life related endeavors etc that always seem to take over high school hearts and minds more often than it should. But it all made the week, being a sort of somewhat unintentional fly on the wall at all times, a very emotionally stirring, increasingly tense one. It was like I could see where these girls who I'd come to treat and befriend like sisters were like at their earlier stages in life and how they have progressed. How the years have changed them and all the stories and emotions that are tucked into the scars on their hands, the callouses on their feet and the creases in their dancer-trained smiles.
Finally it was Friday- opening day. Huge because one, nerves were high and it would show us where time didn't quite fit right in the production, but also because it was to be the show that others who didn't come would base their attendance off of. In the sense that these people would of course go off and talk about how awesome or bland afterward and effect who all came out for the Saturday night final showing. I mean, the show was give or take two-to-three hours long, so while cheap, you'd better like what you're watching if it's so lengthy. Nerves were spiking up very quickly. It's funny, on the way to the studio, I realized I had already sweat through my button-up shirt that I was to usher/welcome people in with, so I had to turn back around and grab a few spares. But soon after, before I could even work my way back to the dressing room to get ready for my own dances, as was tradition, the fire alarm went off. Turns out this happens every year because the smoke alarms always get triggered by the smoke machines that fill the vastness of the auditorium. So as old people moaned and seasoned dancer-parents chuckled as they'd been through it all before, I could feel the tension leaving me. I don't know why, but just having a moment to breathe was nice (having a tie on was really doing a number on me I think). But alas, the doors unlocked, and everybody rushed back as the show quickly was underway.
Friday show went over nicely. Nothing was quite as on-point as people would have liked, which also proved true for the different color-guard and band pieces that were in the production, but they also weren't bad, so overall the show was a success. The nerves were out, and "on to the next one" was the mentality. It's funny how that happens. The only thing that stood between many of those people's Big Days, their final performances, was a matinee show Saturday and a few hours of off time before the finale Saturday night show, and yet they wanted to chug "on to the next one".
The noon show was a breeze. Half of everybody (except for myself because I am a goody-two-shoes with these kinds of things) showed up late because after the Friday premiere, they went out and celebrated a successful show over Ihop etc. I on the other hand spent a good deal of time working with their dads cleaning up and moving things after the show to prepare to rinse and repeat for the matinee. These sparked friendships that in the future aided me in my endeavors to some degree (and probably more so than I know).
Saturday I woke up and I felt like I was having another bout of sleep apnea- but this time it wasn't anything quite so medical. Instead it was like my emotions were so heavy in anticipation of what the day would hold and the calamity of life that I would witness was so many things at once I found it hard to gather my costumes and ushering-clothes up and head out the door. Because to move would be to start the clock on the day ( obviously so would laying in bed all day, but one way was a lot more passive while the other I was actively rushing out into the blinding white of stage lights and the unknown of life on Big Days). It starts me off with one small decision that would domino and branch off into hundreds and thousands of others that come final curtain call will have counted for something and resulted in a relatively different end that I would have to accept good or bad. It was a lot to think about.
After the matinee, there was a very heavy quietness that swept through the masses that would perform some few hours later. All at once, they, Jane Doe, my own fellow Co-Ed dance mates, we all felt it. It wasn't quite anxiety, or nervousness, or even really excitement though it could be labeled that. It was this sort of fragile shakiness. The kind that came after admitting affections to someone, or on the bus to a huge game (ie state championship in football etc.) that you have all these millions of things going on within you at once and are at a total loss of words for what could possibly come. You do not know what to do, so you just sit there locked in your head submerged up to the ears in viscous silence that would not drain. I sat outside the auditorium on some benches that lined the base of a large pillar that faced the performing arts center entrance doors as dozens of performers came and went, all likewise lost in thought... I've always been a very feeling person. In the sense that I can flip a switch and really feel what others are feeling. Step right into their shoes and put on their burdens with them, and this set me up for a long day lost in the kaleidoscope emotions of my conscious.
As it turns out, once it is almost time to prepare for the show and costume up, the drill team have one final meeting called Senior Circle (or something like that). In this, many gather around in one great big circle so that they can all see each other, facilitated by the DI, and once all in she leaves them with each other. The seniors then take this time to for one, hash out any outstanding debts and or problems they have with each other so as to leave nothing unsaid and no bad feeling in their hearts but love and or appreciation for one another, and two, to cry tears of joy while they reminisce a little. I watched the girls as they all piled in silently, holding each other before even entering that old studio that they had come to spend so much time in and love and hate all at once. That studio that was there home where final goodbyes were said and the past made amends with. They also wrote letters to each other to say what maybe, overtaken by emotion or in public they could not. But as a rule, as with all of these types of things, what was said in there was never meant to leave it- and it never did... And I find that particularly endearing and emotional to think about even now. Cutting through the mass, a Co-Ed guy came up to me, and after a brief word about lunch plans, I left with him and joined the rest of the guys at this hole-in-the-wall burger place called J.C.'s Burgers a few minutes away for a Senior circle of our own. The nostalgia was so draining and deafening. Feeling all those things constantly for hours on end, seeing and hearing all these life stories presented before me was so tiresome but so very enriching. Though I was on the brink of crying into my chili-cheese burger and fries, which would have been a truly sad if not pathetic sight to see, I managed to hold it together. And with a few team break-outs and hoots, we went back to the dressing rooms past the smeary eyed drill team girls to put on our game faces, sing "Wagon Wheel" by Old Crow Medicine Show and get our hearts ready.
Once the show started it was very tense, but also so very fun and energized. People were absolutely giving it their all in their various dances and in all the backrooms where tv's showed what was going on on stage we were hooting and hollering wildly. Rooting for any and all who touched that black, scuffed and weathered stage. The dances I was in came up pretty quickly and were just loads of fun. The partner dance we did for Co-Ed, the real drawing factor for the Showcase, was a WWII themed swing dance choreographed to the song "Sing Sing Sing", a true classic. We all were dressed like Tom Cruise and Goose from Top Gun, boots and all, while the ladies wore goofy, old-timey nurse cowls and hats. It was a total blast to be up front, center stage with the captain, my friend, and just kill it after all those months of hard-work. High fives, chest bumps and the like went all around backstage once the dances were over.
But all of our hearts began to catch up with our bodies when after all the senior presentation and intercession, my partner and another, the co-captain, performed for the last time their duo dance. It was a very bittersweet piece choreographed to the song "Blood" by The Middle East, and I remember sitting there backstage in the wing, watching with all of my Co-Ed brothers and sisters and feeling tears slip out of the steel of my eyes. I could hear them to my left and right, shaking hands, patting each other, and feeling it just as much as those two girls out their dancing their hearts out who actually began cry as the dance progressed and came to a close. The guys turned and saw me watching them, and each gave little talks about life, telling me to be strong, and that made it that much harder. Exponentially so to try and keep it together. But I did.
From here the show went on, somehow too fast and also too slow at the same time until before we knew it, the finale had come. What this basically consisted of was the coolest assortment and transitions of kick-lines going out and (for us backstage) tons of costume changes which I aided with as the other guys sat off in the audience- all preceded by the most emotional, nostalgic compilation/montage of the girl's journey through the year up to that point. All the goofy fundraisers and football game bloopers with "You've Got a Way" by Fall Walk Run playing in the background to really tear your heart out. Here some girls began to lose it a little (and by that I mean a lot, I know I almost did), but it hadn't quite hit yet. Overall this sequence is somewhere around fifteen minutes long, while the kick lines went for another five or so, and once done, one wave of confetti is released as girls drop into splits in some places and strike poses in others while all the other groups represented in the show circle in and fill the gaps to do the final thank you and bow, closed out by the MC.
In this moment again, all of it came to me and hit me. All the days my dance partner would walk past my PALs class and say hi, and all my classmates would snicker and I'd try not to blush because "it wasn't like that", but my body would betray me. All the days I'd stayed after practices to chat with the girls about dumb shows like Pretty Little Liars or Supernatural. The nights I stayed up practicing my dances and thinking about the goofy jokes said during rehearsal. All the times those guys and girls made me come out of my shell, and made me feel at home. The days I cut from rugby early so I could take a nap before rehearsal, only to be woken up by very confused janitors. The invites to girl's night's that I could never for whatever reason accept, but always appreciated. All the funny guy talk with my compadres and even the DI and her husband who enjoyed my company.The nights I came home so drained and tired but so content. The stories I'd come to know and love and would see flower into this moment... It all hit me as I walked out from the wing, in-between the ranks of ready-to-burst time-bomb dancers set to go off once the curtain touched the black of the stage and found my place on stage surrounded by deafening applause. I felt a sudden coldness and a lightness in my body... From every direction and on every sense, it hit me.
There is a word for that moment of ultimate awareness. It is to "sonder"- the sudden realization that each and every car that blurs by or person that walks the halls or light on in a city window (or senior drill team officer sitting outside the studio) is a person with an equally emotional, complex and infinitely variable life as your own with emotions and dreams and love pursuits that are all simultaneously existing into infinity where you are, instead, a simple extra. A random at a coffee shop reading a book on their way to work that they see through the glass panes pulling out of the drive through, or the person across from them at a red light. And when that final curtain call came, hands all held out wide in presentation with wide smiles and tense bodies, I felt it all. In this moment, I felt my heart beat in sync with the mass around me. All of the color guard, and the different intercession acts, and the band, and the drill team all alike. Especially the ones I'd come to hold dear. And as the large banner for my school's drill team lowered slowly, red, white and blue shimmering overhead with likewise colored confetti raining down on us, catching the stage lights and twinkling like jewels to the ground, we all together held out a hand of appreciation to the crew, then to bottom floor audience, then the top floor, and then with lumps in our throats bowed one last time all together. Jewels were still trickling down and we were still waving as the final curtain rolled down from above. And as soon as the silk wafted at the stage beneath it, hearts sank. Tears all around fell unceasingly... There are few moments in this life that I have felt truly and profoundly at peace with things. Or so unified with people and alive, or loved in full measure to the love I had given out, and this was one of those moments. Group embraces and cheek kisses formed us all into one large mass of joyful, nostalgic, bittersweet bliss. It was, after all, the end for these girls. These girls that I had come to love, and would soon come to dearly miss. And we all knew these things.
I remember that as I looked all around, I was close, but couldn't quite find it in me to cry again. I gave a few big embraces to the girls I knew, and gave strong hugs to the guys that would no longer be my goofy older brothers that I likewise had grown attached to. And it choked me up. And as I released their hands and "we'll be gone, but you be just fine" gazes, I looked over their shoulders to see my partner. Jane Doe. Her. Standing there, just staring at me with these massive glossy, red-cracked blue eyes under the dark of curtain call and it pushed me over. We'd never been affectionate or anything with each other. Very platonic despite the unspoken friendship we'd formed, yet right then I realized just how much she had come to mean to me as a "sister" that I loved and wanted to "just do life" with. So when after a shared gaze seemingly immeasurable by time came to pass, we embraced tightly for some time and I cried. I remember laughing into her ear and hair while salty tears perched atop the crest of my upper lip and nose as I made a joke about how I wasn't planning on crying, and her laughing into my chest. Forming two crescent shaped wet spots on my chest. I also told her how much I would miss her which I know was a sort of terrible thing to do because it just made her and I cry more because nobody likes to think about such things, but in moments like those you just have to. You have to really and truly just feel things or the moments will not have felt so genuine. So you, or so Her, or so real. Holding her hand for a moment as we came down the side stairs backstage and out into the performing arts lobby area where the masses were waiting to hug and congratulate us all, we shared one last nod before splitting.
Some hours pass and many goodbyes etc. later, having already cried all the tears that I was physically able to, I stayed after for some four to five hours helping the dads once again clean up and break down the set. It was beyond tiring to do after having performed, but it gave me an excuse to not go home. To not have to sit in the silence of my home or emptiness of my room, and be left with nothing but my thoughts. Because nobody ever tells about how hard the days following Big Days are. How things just drop back down to prior monotony and relative emptiness and offer no buffer, and you just have to pick up where you left off. And sometimes that's just as hard to deal with as the Big Day is. Anyway, having done anything and everything I possibly could, I shake hands with all those fathers I'd spent some time joking around with, and after politely declining courtship offers for their daughters a few times, drove quietly home. The lights of the center and the emptiness of the parking lot pulling at me from the reflection in the rear-view mirror.
I remember that once home, everybody gone for various reasons, completely and totally alone, I couldn't find it in me to lay down. No, not after all that. So I sent my partner a long thought-out message about how I felt about it all and our relationship with each other, and how she fell into my philosophy of never forgetting people (read my earlier posts) and how much I would miss her, and though I felt relieved having put it all out there, I still couldn't sleep. Despite it being three or four o'clock in the morning, I called up my close friend who lived only a street or so over, and we spent a few hours speaking of love, and unity, and other cheesy things over coffee and pancakes at an empty Ihop until finally my heart had quieted and I found I had nothing left to share. We crashed at my place on the front room couches with the dim lamps still on, stomachs and hearts full and I awoke to a once again empty home.
But I felt far from alone.
The next few, brief months passed quickly for the reasons above- I was living life and making it all worth it. But a few weeks out from Showcase our DI found that there was an awkward amount of time that needed to be blocked out and filled with something entertaining because the set took too long to prepare and too many dancers needed to costume change in a short time- and thus "The Guys Dance" was introduced. Or actually, two of them were. One was a sort of battle of the bands between the Spice Girls and N-Sync ( I was in N-Sync) and our dance-battle songs were Wannabe and Dirty Bop accordingly (which is a classic and if you haven't heard it you should). While they performed kick lines in drag, we shuck and jived hip-hop style to choreography we made and it was a blast. Mainly because the costumes were so obnoxious. To finish, we would bind together for one great kick line and bolt off back stage as the MC's came back out.
The other dance, THE legendary dance (for various reasons), was the other guys dance that involved only a trio. The three of them were great friends since forever it would seem and being that they had all been in Co-Ed for a few years in a row, they had this reputation of dishing out hilarious homo-erotic dances that basically somewhat mocked interpretive dance. Obviously this quickly became a crowd favorite. I remember walking in one day as the DI pleaded that they "do the dance again" and so they did. This year they changed it up, and I remember that after weeks of staying after-hours in the studio, they busted out this dance in one of our Showcase week rehearsals and it was hilarious. All of our Co-Ed dance partners who knew what was about to happen ran backstage as quickly as they could and pulled out dozens of other dancers still not changed for their next piece to come out into the auditorium and see- giggling before the music even kicked in. That year they decided to wear white, wispy robe looking things and danced to the song "Hero" by Enrique Iglesias. It consisted of everything from weird convulsions to the lyrics to nun-chucking around their smaller friend as a key prop in the dance, and it was glorious. There was a solid five minute stretch of nothing but boisterous laughter all about that grand room as even the DI took a moment to wipe the tears from her eyes and call in the next girls for their run through.
Anyway, all Showcase week, as soon as football would let out, I and two other football players/dancers would run from the stadium off-season and Spring Ball practices to the performing arts center and clock in hours of "work"- the definition of which changing every day for me. Some times it was moving two-hundred pound mats around, other days it was corralling girls for their dances and sending them out as the DI's right hand man. Not to mention doing multiple runs through our own various dances- because it was a known thing that while Showcase is great, what the non-dance related people come to see is the Co-Ed partner dance. Seeing the guys do cool lifts with girls one moment and embarrassing themselves the next was some good family fun. So it all had to be good.
I remember more often than not going home after even most of the girls had left, and always hearing yet again more snippets of life in passing. Young dancers talking about what it must be like to be in the senior's shoes for their final Showcase ever. And what it meant to them. All those years of hard work and sweat and tears. The cold football games spent huddled together and the half-time performances and the pep rallies all culminating into this one moment that would come on a warm Saturday night with hundreds all around watching them. The parents and friends that they've met along the way through it all, not to mention their own families and friends all there. Watching, and hearts beating for them... Not to mention love-life related endeavors etc that always seem to take over high school hearts and minds more often than it should. But it all made the week, being a sort of somewhat unintentional fly on the wall at all times, a very emotionally stirring, increasingly tense one. It was like I could see where these girls who I'd come to treat and befriend like sisters were like at their earlier stages in life and how they have progressed. How the years have changed them and all the stories and emotions that are tucked into the scars on their hands, the callouses on their feet and the creases in their dancer-trained smiles.
Finally it was Friday- opening day. Huge because one, nerves were high and it would show us where time didn't quite fit right in the production, but also because it was to be the show that others who didn't come would base their attendance off of. In the sense that these people would of course go off and talk about how awesome or bland afterward and effect who all came out for the Saturday night final showing. I mean, the show was give or take two-to-three hours long, so while cheap, you'd better like what you're watching if it's so lengthy. Nerves were spiking up very quickly. It's funny, on the way to the studio, I realized I had already sweat through my button-up shirt that I was to usher/welcome people in with, so I had to turn back around and grab a few spares. But soon after, before I could even work my way back to the dressing room to get ready for my own dances, as was tradition, the fire alarm went off. Turns out this happens every year because the smoke alarms always get triggered by the smoke machines that fill the vastness of the auditorium. So as old people moaned and seasoned dancer-parents chuckled as they'd been through it all before, I could feel the tension leaving me. I don't know why, but just having a moment to breathe was nice (having a tie on was really doing a number on me I think). But alas, the doors unlocked, and everybody rushed back as the show quickly was underway.
Friday show went over nicely. Nothing was quite as on-point as people would have liked, which also proved true for the different color-guard and band pieces that were in the production, but they also weren't bad, so overall the show was a success. The nerves were out, and "on to the next one" was the mentality. It's funny how that happens. The only thing that stood between many of those people's Big Days, their final performances, was a matinee show Saturday and a few hours of off time before the finale Saturday night show, and yet they wanted to chug "on to the next one".
The noon show was a breeze. Half of everybody (except for myself because I am a goody-two-shoes with these kinds of things) showed up late because after the Friday premiere, they went out and celebrated a successful show over Ihop etc. I on the other hand spent a good deal of time working with their dads cleaning up and moving things after the show to prepare to rinse and repeat for the matinee. These sparked friendships that in the future aided me in my endeavors to some degree (and probably more so than I know).
Saturday I woke up and I felt like I was having another bout of sleep apnea- but this time it wasn't anything quite so medical. Instead it was like my emotions were so heavy in anticipation of what the day would hold and the calamity of life that I would witness was so many things at once I found it hard to gather my costumes and ushering-clothes up and head out the door. Because to move would be to start the clock on the day ( obviously so would laying in bed all day, but one way was a lot more passive while the other I was actively rushing out into the blinding white of stage lights and the unknown of life on Big Days). It starts me off with one small decision that would domino and branch off into hundreds and thousands of others that come final curtain call will have counted for something and resulted in a relatively different end that I would have to accept good or bad. It was a lot to think about.
After the matinee, there was a very heavy quietness that swept through the masses that would perform some few hours later. All at once, they, Jane Doe, my own fellow Co-Ed dance mates, we all felt it. It wasn't quite anxiety, or nervousness, or even really excitement though it could be labeled that. It was this sort of fragile shakiness. The kind that came after admitting affections to someone, or on the bus to a huge game (ie state championship in football etc.) that you have all these millions of things going on within you at once and are at a total loss of words for what could possibly come. You do not know what to do, so you just sit there locked in your head submerged up to the ears in viscous silence that would not drain. I sat outside the auditorium on some benches that lined the base of a large pillar that faced the performing arts center entrance doors as dozens of performers came and went, all likewise lost in thought... I've always been a very feeling person. In the sense that I can flip a switch and really feel what others are feeling. Step right into their shoes and put on their burdens with them, and this set me up for a long day lost in the kaleidoscope emotions of my conscious.
As it turns out, once it is almost time to prepare for the show and costume up, the drill team have one final meeting called Senior Circle (or something like that). In this, many gather around in one great big circle so that they can all see each other, facilitated by the DI, and once all in she leaves them with each other. The seniors then take this time to for one, hash out any outstanding debts and or problems they have with each other so as to leave nothing unsaid and no bad feeling in their hearts but love and or appreciation for one another, and two, to cry tears of joy while they reminisce a little. I watched the girls as they all piled in silently, holding each other before even entering that old studio that they had come to spend so much time in and love and hate all at once. That studio that was there home where final goodbyes were said and the past made amends with. They also wrote letters to each other to say what maybe, overtaken by emotion or in public they could not. But as a rule, as with all of these types of things, what was said in there was never meant to leave it- and it never did... And I find that particularly endearing and emotional to think about even now. Cutting through the mass, a Co-Ed guy came up to me, and after a brief word about lunch plans, I left with him and joined the rest of the guys at this hole-in-the-wall burger place called J.C.'s Burgers a few minutes away for a Senior circle of our own. The nostalgia was so draining and deafening. Feeling all those things constantly for hours on end, seeing and hearing all these life stories presented before me was so tiresome but so very enriching. Though I was on the brink of crying into my chili-cheese burger and fries, which would have been a truly sad if not pathetic sight to see, I managed to hold it together. And with a few team break-outs and hoots, we went back to the dressing rooms past the smeary eyed drill team girls to put on our game faces, sing "Wagon Wheel" by Old Crow Medicine Show and get our hearts ready.
Once the show started it was very tense, but also so very fun and energized. People were absolutely giving it their all in their various dances and in all the backrooms where tv's showed what was going on on stage we were hooting and hollering wildly. Rooting for any and all who touched that black, scuffed and weathered stage. The dances I was in came up pretty quickly and were just loads of fun. The partner dance we did for Co-Ed, the real drawing factor for the Showcase, was a WWII themed swing dance choreographed to the song "Sing Sing Sing", a true classic. We all were dressed like Tom Cruise and Goose from Top Gun, boots and all, while the ladies wore goofy, old-timey nurse cowls and hats. It was a total blast to be up front, center stage with the captain, my friend, and just kill it after all those months of hard-work. High fives, chest bumps and the like went all around backstage once the dances were over.
But all of our hearts began to catch up with our bodies when after all the senior presentation and intercession, my partner and another, the co-captain, performed for the last time their duo dance. It was a very bittersweet piece choreographed to the song "Blood" by The Middle East, and I remember sitting there backstage in the wing, watching with all of my Co-Ed brothers and sisters and feeling tears slip out of the steel of my eyes. I could hear them to my left and right, shaking hands, patting each other, and feeling it just as much as those two girls out their dancing their hearts out who actually began cry as the dance progressed and came to a close. The guys turned and saw me watching them, and each gave little talks about life, telling me to be strong, and that made it that much harder. Exponentially so to try and keep it together. But I did.
From here the show went on, somehow too fast and also too slow at the same time until before we knew it, the finale had come. What this basically consisted of was the coolest assortment and transitions of kick-lines going out and (for us backstage) tons of costume changes which I aided with as the other guys sat off in the audience- all preceded by the most emotional, nostalgic compilation/montage of the girl's journey through the year up to that point. All the goofy fundraisers and football game bloopers with "You've Got a Way" by Fall Walk Run playing in the background to really tear your heart out. Here some girls began to lose it a little (and by that I mean a lot, I know I almost did), but it hadn't quite hit yet. Overall this sequence is somewhere around fifteen minutes long, while the kick lines went for another five or so, and once done, one wave of confetti is released as girls drop into splits in some places and strike poses in others while all the other groups represented in the show circle in and fill the gaps to do the final thank you and bow, closed out by the MC.
In this moment again, all of it came to me and hit me. All the days my dance partner would walk past my PALs class and say hi, and all my classmates would snicker and I'd try not to blush because "it wasn't like that", but my body would betray me. All the days I'd stayed after practices to chat with the girls about dumb shows like Pretty Little Liars or Supernatural. The nights I stayed up practicing my dances and thinking about the goofy jokes said during rehearsal. All the times those guys and girls made me come out of my shell, and made me feel at home. The days I cut from rugby early so I could take a nap before rehearsal, only to be woken up by very confused janitors. The invites to girl's night's that I could never for whatever reason accept, but always appreciated. All the funny guy talk with my compadres and even the DI and her husband who enjoyed my company.The nights I came home so drained and tired but so content. The stories I'd come to know and love and would see flower into this moment... It all hit me as I walked out from the wing, in-between the ranks of ready-to-burst time-bomb dancers set to go off once the curtain touched the black of the stage and found my place on stage surrounded by deafening applause. I felt a sudden coldness and a lightness in my body... From every direction and on every sense, it hit me.
There is a word for that moment of ultimate awareness. It is to "sonder"- the sudden realization that each and every car that blurs by or person that walks the halls or light on in a city window (or senior drill team officer sitting outside the studio) is a person with an equally emotional, complex and infinitely variable life as your own with emotions and dreams and love pursuits that are all simultaneously existing into infinity where you are, instead, a simple extra. A random at a coffee shop reading a book on their way to work that they see through the glass panes pulling out of the drive through, or the person across from them at a red light. And when that final curtain call came, hands all held out wide in presentation with wide smiles and tense bodies, I felt it all. In this moment, I felt my heart beat in sync with the mass around me. All of the color guard, and the different intercession acts, and the band, and the drill team all alike. Especially the ones I'd come to hold dear. And as the large banner for my school's drill team lowered slowly, red, white and blue shimmering overhead with likewise colored confetti raining down on us, catching the stage lights and twinkling like jewels to the ground, we all together held out a hand of appreciation to the crew, then to bottom floor audience, then the top floor, and then with lumps in our throats bowed one last time all together. Jewels were still trickling down and we were still waving as the final curtain rolled down from above. And as soon as the silk wafted at the stage beneath it, hearts sank. Tears all around fell unceasingly... There are few moments in this life that I have felt truly and profoundly at peace with things. Or so unified with people and alive, or loved in full measure to the love I had given out, and this was one of those moments. Group embraces and cheek kisses formed us all into one large mass of joyful, nostalgic, bittersweet bliss. It was, after all, the end for these girls. These girls that I had come to love, and would soon come to dearly miss. And we all knew these things.
I remember that as I looked all around, I was close, but couldn't quite find it in me to cry again. I gave a few big embraces to the girls I knew, and gave strong hugs to the guys that would no longer be my goofy older brothers that I likewise had grown attached to. And it choked me up. And as I released their hands and "we'll be gone, but you be just fine" gazes, I looked over their shoulders to see my partner. Jane Doe. Her. Standing there, just staring at me with these massive glossy, red-cracked blue eyes under the dark of curtain call and it pushed me over. We'd never been affectionate or anything with each other. Very platonic despite the unspoken friendship we'd formed, yet right then I realized just how much she had come to mean to me as a "sister" that I loved and wanted to "just do life" with. So when after a shared gaze seemingly immeasurable by time came to pass, we embraced tightly for some time and I cried. I remember laughing into her ear and hair while salty tears perched atop the crest of my upper lip and nose as I made a joke about how I wasn't planning on crying, and her laughing into my chest. Forming two crescent shaped wet spots on my chest. I also told her how much I would miss her which I know was a sort of terrible thing to do because it just made her and I cry more because nobody likes to think about such things, but in moments like those you just have to. You have to really and truly just feel things or the moments will not have felt so genuine. So you, or so Her, or so real. Holding her hand for a moment as we came down the side stairs backstage and out into the performing arts lobby area where the masses were waiting to hug and congratulate us all, we shared one last nod before splitting.
Some hours pass and many goodbyes etc. later, having already cried all the tears that I was physically able to, I stayed after for some four to five hours helping the dads once again clean up and break down the set. It was beyond tiring to do after having performed, but it gave me an excuse to not go home. To not have to sit in the silence of my home or emptiness of my room, and be left with nothing but my thoughts. Because nobody ever tells about how hard the days following Big Days are. How things just drop back down to prior monotony and relative emptiness and offer no buffer, and you just have to pick up where you left off. And sometimes that's just as hard to deal with as the Big Day is. Anyway, having done anything and everything I possibly could, I shake hands with all those fathers I'd spent some time joking around with, and after politely declining courtship offers for their daughters a few times, drove quietly home. The lights of the center and the emptiness of the parking lot pulling at me from the reflection in the rear-view mirror.
I remember that once home, everybody gone for various reasons, completely and totally alone, I couldn't find it in me to lay down. No, not after all that. So I sent my partner a long thought-out message about how I felt about it all and our relationship with each other, and how she fell into my philosophy of never forgetting people (read my earlier posts) and how much I would miss her, and though I felt relieved having put it all out there, I still couldn't sleep. Despite it being three or four o'clock in the morning, I called up my close friend who lived only a street or so over, and we spent a few hours speaking of love, and unity, and other cheesy things over coffee and pancakes at an empty Ihop until finally my heart had quieted and I found I had nothing left to share. We crashed at my place on the front room couches with the dim lamps still on, stomachs and hearts full and I awoke to a once again empty home.
But I felt far from alone.
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