Winning the Blonde Goddess

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

"Winning the Blonde Goddess" is a joint literary effort. I joined forces with an author named Schlank to create this story. If you like this story, she should get part of the credit. As always, if you have any suggestions to improve the story, please click on my name, and e-mail me your suggestions.

. . . . . .

My name is Scott Alexander, I'm twenty-two years old and I'm a ballet dancer with the Chandler Theater, Fairhaven Center for the Performing Arts.

My parents were both soloists with the American Ballet Theatre, and as their only son, they insisted that ballet was in my blood. Per my parent's insistence, I took fourteen years of ballet classes and auditioned for the American Ballet Theatre, the Boston Ballet, the San Francisco Ballet, the Frech Darbietung Ballet and a whole host of others. I was rejected by some of the best ballet companies in America.

The Chandler Theater is nowhere near as big or famous as the American Ballet Theatre, but once they'd offered me a contract, it took a lot of pressure off me. My parents finally had a son who was a professional in the world of ballet, and they could finally stop pressuring me to audition and impress upon the judges that I was good enough to perform on stage.

Now, the Chandler Theatre was in Fairhaven, California, thousands of miles away from my home in White Plains. So, if I was going to perform with the Chandler Ballet Theatre, I'd need to find a new place to live.

I was put in touch with a choreographer named Sebastian who was able to help with that. One of the Chandler Theatre's wealthiest and most generous patrons owned an apartment building in Fairhaven. Dancers with the Chandler Ballet paid about fifty-percent less in rent than regular tenants. I was thrilled when Sebastian told me about the reduced rent, and I asked Sebastian to see if he could make certain they held a room for me.

And then my hopes were brutally dashed when Sebastian called me back and told me that the Renwick Towers apartment building had no vacant units that I could rent.

However, Sebastian was resourceful, and within an hour I got

another

call from him. The Renwick still didn't have any vacant units, however, one of the other dancers was currently living in a two-bedroom apartment, and would be willing to let me move in with him, if I was willing to pay half the living expenses.

It seemed like a no-brainer to me. Living with another dancer at the Renwick would be

far

cheaper than any other place I might find in Fairhaven. I told Sebastian I was willing, and told him to go ahead and make arrangements with the other dancer so that I could move in with him.

One more phone call and one more e-mail from Sebastian, and all the details were sorted out. When my plane landed at Bob Hope Airport, I took a cab to Fairhaven, and had the cabby drop me off right in front of the Renwick Towers.

My new roommate lived up on the 6

th

floor, apartment number 605. His name was Christopher, and since I didn't have a key to his apartment yet, I had instructions to call him when I arrived, so he could be there to make sure I was able to get inside.

I somehow managed to get three large suitcases and one carryon piece of luggage into the lobby of the apartment building and found a young, slender man in the lobby watching me with expectant blue eyes. He was blonde, attractive and looked eerily like the actor that played Havok in that movie,

X-Men: First Class.

What was the

name

of that actor? Oh, great. Now, that was going to annoy the crap out of me until I was able to remember. I was pretty certain his name wasn't Christopher.

The guy who looked like a blonde superhero from the movies, walked over to me, gave me a slight smile and said, "You must be Scott."

I set my luggage down and shook his hand, and replied, "Good guess. How could you tell?"

"After years of ballet training, rehearsals and performances, I've developed the ability to identify other ballet dancers on sight," Christopher said with a voice of authority, "You're slender, but not weak or frail-looking. You've got a dancer's legs, flat abs, a slender waist, but your shoulders and arms are blessed with the sort of lean, solid muscle that will allow you to catch ballerinas when they leap into your arms, and not drop them."

He paused dramatically and then continued, "Also you've got almost a hundred pounds of luggage, and the airline tags are still attached to them, so it's a pretty safe bet that you just came here straight from the airport."

"Good eye," I replied. Christopher had a sense of humor. I was starting to like him already.

Christopher offered to help ferry my luggage up to his apartment on the sixth floor, and I let him tote two of my bags, while I carried the other two.

"So, this is the place," Christopher announced dramatically, once we were upstairs in his apartment, "All the comforts of home! We have hot and cold running water, indoor plumbing, electric lights and that latest modern miracle of technology,

air conditioning!!"

"Well, I am duly impressed," I said, looking around the place. It looked perfectly serviceable, but it was nothing to write home about.

"Hey, don't scoff," Christopher said, "In Southern California, it can get as hot as Beelzebub's balls. When Summer rolls around, people are willing to sell their souls for a functional cooling system in their home."

Christopher showed me around my new home. We had a small kitchen, a small dining room, a fairly large living room, a bathroom and two bedrooms.

And when Christopher showed me to my bedroom, I noticed that there was already a bed in it.

"Oh, yeah," Christopher explained, "That originally belonged to Dylan."

"Who is Dylan?" I asked, and then I added, "What

happened

to Dylan? He didn't die, did he?"

Scott shook his head in negation and replied, "Dylan was a dancer, like you and me. He was in our corps de ballet, but it turned out that he couldn't take it. There's a great allure to being a professional dancer, but it's an extremely physically demanding endeavor. It's kind of like training for the Olympics, every day of your life. And after three months of pushing his physical limits, Dylan decided he just wasn't up to the challenge. One night he just quit. I understand he's down in West Hollywood now, tending bar."

"Wow," I said.

"Yeah," Christopher agreed, "Amanda was pissed. So were all the choreographers. When you join a ballet company, it's like you're a part of a family. The ballet mistress is like your mother. The choreographers are like big brothers and sisters. When someone like Dylan just up and leaves like that, it feels like one of your siblings ran away from home."

"I would never do that," I said, my voice very serious and sincere. My parents had pressured me for

years

to get good enough to be offered a contract with a ballet company. After finally being accepted somewhere, my parents would throw a monumental temper tantrum if I were to quit.

"Let me know if you still feel that way three weeks from now," Christopher said, "You've got some long, hard weeks ahead of you, to get ready."

I was about to ask Christopher to elaborate on that statement, but then there was a knock on the apartment door.

"I'll get that," Christopher said, and he headed back to the front door. I decided to put off unpacking until later, and followed Christopher to see who had come to visit.

It turned out to be a very attractive Asian female, she was slender, energetic and smiling with youthful enthusiasm. I'm horrible at guessing people's ages, but I guessed her to be anywhere between eighteen and twenty-eight years old.

"Is he here?" the Asian female asked, "I heard the elevator doors open on this floor, and then the sounds of two people coming down the hall. It was you and him, wasn't it?"

"Scott,"

Christopher called out to me,

"I have a nosey neighbor who wants to meet you!"

I walked forward and got a better look at her. She had a boyish haircut that somehow managed to look cute on her. Her jeans were so tight, they almost looked painted on, and her legs looked fantastic. I almost immediately identified her as another dancer.

"Hee Bak," Christopher said, "Meet Scott Alexander. Scott, meet Hee. You'll both be working together."

I had a powerful urge to make fun of her name. I mean, who names their kid,

Hee?

It sounds like a male pronoun, or the beginnings of a laugh. Either way, it was an unfortunate thing to name your kid.

I tried to shake hands with Hee, but she pulled me into a hug instead.

"Amanda Sharp told us you'd be arriving today," Hee said, while her torso was still molded to mine, "I wanted to make sure that somebody made certain you felt welcomed and accepted."

"Hey,"

Christopher protested indignantly, "You think

I

couldn't do that?"

"Women are usually better at these things," Hee replied, "I remember what it was like my first day in Fairhaven. I didn't know anybody, I didn't have any friends, and I didn't know if I was going to measure up against the other dancers. It was very intimidating. It would have helped if the other dancers gave me a hug, and some words of encouragement."

"Every dancer here is another dancer we have to compete against," Christopher countered, "It takes a special kind of person to offer words of encouragement to a competitor. If he dances better than the rest of us, we'll be left behind, and he'll get a promotion that the rest of us wanted."

"Okay, that's true," Hee conceded, "But the world of ballet is fairly insular. We spend so much time in training, rehearsals and performances, we never get a chance to meet anybody outside of our ballet company. That means if we don't make friends with other dancers, we'll

never

make friends."

"Fine," Christopher said, grudgingly, "I'll be Scott's friend, even though there's a very strong possibility that he might get promoted to soloist, and I'll be stuck in the corps de ballet for the rest of my life."

In response to this, Hee gave Christopher an embrace that was sort of a half-hug and amicably said, "All my best friends are in the corps de ballet."

There was another knock at the door, and Christopher disentangled himself from Hee to respond to the door-knocking. Pulling the door back revealed a slender man with a boyish face, a charming smile and excellent muscle tone just barely obscured by a tight black t-shirt and tight black jeans.

Further inspection revealed that he was holding a respectably-sized bottle in his right hand.

"I got a text message that I could find the new dancer in your apartment," the man with the disarming smile announced amiably, "I brought by a bottle to help celebrate."

Christopher's mood seemed to improve immediately, and he opened the door wider, and said, "I'll get some glasses."

On his way to the kitchen, Christopher stopped, made eye-contact with me, and said, "Scott, this is Nari."

"Hi Nari," I said, and held out my hand.

Nari switched the bottle to his left hand, so we could shake. If anything, Nari's smile deepened while my hand gripped his. He seemed even more enthused than Hee to meet me.

Christopher returned with four old fashioned rocks glasses, and Nari proceeded to pour drinks for all four of us.

Then, there was another knocking at the door.

"Is this apartment

always

such a popular gathering place?" I asked Christopher.

Christopher shrugged and said, "It's like Hee said, ballet dancers live in a very insular world. We have very few opportunities to make friends, and now that you're here, the other dancers want to meet you."

The fifth member of our impromptu group was a female dancer named Darya. You may remember that I said Hee was very attractive, but Darya's seductive beauty was on a whole other level. She was only one inch shorter than me, and I'm six-foot tall, finding a woman nearly as tall as I am, is unusual. She was lithe, graceful and poised. Her eyes were an alluring royal blue, her long blonde hair cascaded over her shoulders, framing her expertly made up face. Her inviting, pouty lips were painted a luscious dark pink, and her face was oval-shaped with a rounded chin.

Everyone in the room was young, attractive, lithe, with flawless skin, high cheekbones and dressed stylishly in tight-fitting black t-shirts and tight-fitting jeans. I felt almost like I was in a Calvin Klein ad.

"To Scott,"

Nari proclaimed enthusiastically, when we all had a glass in our hands.

It was a very friendly group, and I was glad to be a part of it. In White Plains, I had never known dancers like this. In New York most of the dancers I knew were arrogant, narcissistic and unapproachable. Here in Fairhaven, they seemed much more welcoming and open. Was this a California thing, or was it something more localized and anomalous?

. . . . .

After the first week of rehearsals, I could definitely agree with Christopher about how physically demanding life was in the Chandler Theatre. The choreographers were like sadists, pushing the dancers to their limits, demanding perfection and relentlessly working us until they got it.

We were rehearsing a ballet called the Bavarian Hex-Master. It was an original ballet written exclusively for the Chandler Theatre. I would only be on stage for one dance in the first act, and another dance in the third act. And yet; despite the short amount of time I would be onstage; I still had to spend hours in rehearsals, perfecting my performance and making certain that I would be flawless and stylistically beautiful on opening night.

In act one, I was to perform a pas de deux with a female dancer named Cassandra. Cassandra was a great dancer to perform with. She was about six or seven inches shorter than me, and couldn't have weighed more than a hundred pounds. There were a lot of lifts in our pas de deux, and her light weight meant constantly lifting her wouldn't be such a strenuous endeavor.

She was also a genius when it came to choreography. When the choreographers explained to us what they wanted, she seemed to envision it in her mind's eye instantly and flawlessly. In fact, she was often the one who explained to me what the choreographers really wanted, when I didn't quite get it.

Our pas de deux was deliberately romantic, and ended with a passionate kiss. Cassandra seemed to know instinctively just what sort of kiss the choreographer wanted, creating exactly the proper balance of erotic passion and aesthetic style when our lips met. She got the style and substance of it exactly right the very first time we rehearsed it.

I was surprised that Cassandra was still in the corps de ballet. With her flawless mastery of every choreographed step, I figured she deserved to be a soloist by now.

By the time I left the rehearsal studio at the end of each day, my body would be drenched with sweat, and I would have throbbing aches all across my body. Endless lifts, pirouettes and grand jetés take a huge toll on the human body, even for a body as young and athletic as mine.

After rehearsals I would head down to showers. A hot shower, some aspirin and several minutes of stretching exercises helped to soothe away some of the aches and pains. The other dancers all followed pretty much the same routine that I did to soothe the aches and pains in their overtaxed muscles and tendons.

In the showers I noticed that the other dancers all seemed to be utterly devoid of body hair. These were males in their twenties, yet none of them had chest hair or pubic hair. Their arms, legs and armpits were all lacking in body hair as well. Was this some sort of localized thing? Did men in California typically shave off all of their body hair? Or was it some sort of requirement for performers in the Chandler Theatre? No one had said anything to me about it. And until somebody brought it up with me, I wasn't shaving myself like that.

. . . . .

Eventually the evil choreographers decided that I was sufficiently adept at performing the steps I needed for Act One, and they started to put me through my paces for Act Three.

I was prepared to take direction and do whatever the choreographers told me to do, but I was rather stunned when Sebastian told me that in Act Three I'd be dancing a pas de deux with Nari. And my pas de deux with Nari would be just as romantic as the one I danced with Cassandra. I was even expected to lock lips with Nari and give him a passionate kiss at the conclusion of our dance.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa,"

I protested, "You can't expect me to kiss

a guy!

Especially not on stage, in front of an audience of hundreds of people!"

"Actually, the hall where you'll be dancing seats over two-thousand people," Sebastian said, correcting my math."

"Two-thousand?"

I exclaimed, "You expect me to kiss a guy in front of

two-thousand people?

Why are you doing this to me? Do you think I'm some sort of a sexual deviant?"

Suddenly the rehearsal studio went quiet and I had the attention of everyone in the room. Dancers froze in mid-stretch, conversations stopped mid-word and all eyes in the room zeroed in on me. Several of my fellow dancer had a look of stunned horror on their face. It seemed that I had committed a horrible breach of etiquette with my outburst.

Our ballet mistress had been standing over by the piano with our accompanist, deep in conversation with him, however, my loud objections had caught her attention, and she strode ominously across the rehearsal hall, towards me. About a dozen dancers blocked the path between her and myself, but when she began marching towards me, they parted for her like the Red Sea parting for Moses.

"Is there a problem, Mister Alexander?"

Amanda Sharp demanded as she bore down on me, and I noticed that many of dancers that had been standing near me, backed away. It was almost as if our ballet mistress were a bomb, and they didn't want to be standing nearby when she detonated.

My mouth went dry, and I felt a certain irrational fear as she closed the distance between us, but I attempted to stand up for myself anyway.

"I'm not gay," I insisted, and then she glared at me, as if I had just called her a slut. Her brows furrowed, and her mouth turned into a thin, straight line. Her muscles tensed, and the tension in the room was so heavy, it felt like a crushing weight had just been placed on my shoulders.

"And that might be a problem if Sebastian were ordering you and Nari to get married," Amanda snapped, "But all he is asking of you, is to dance a pas de deux with him."

"He's asking me to kiss him," I objected, although my voice had lost a great deal of its forcefulness, "I've had fourteen years of ballet training, and no choreographer has ever asked me to kiss a guy before. Since when is that a part of ballet?"

"Since you signed a contract with the Chandler Theatre," Amanda shot back, "Our most generous patrons are mostly gay and lesbian, and Fairhaven has a very large and influential gay community. Our ticketholders expect a certain degree of homoeroticism in our performances. Now, are you going to perform the role that you've been assigned, or should I tear up your contract?"

Her question felt like a punch to the gut. If I got thrown out of the Chandler Theatre, my parents would throw a great bloody wobbler, but if I did what the ballet mistress and the choreographers wanted, I'd end up looking like a butt-pirate in front of thousands of people. And what if my parents came to see me perform? What would they say if they saw me acting like a flaming fairy onstage?