The first time I noticed him was on April 23rd. The day floats vividly in my mind, the images of that day float in my mind like softly framed clouds. The entire day seemed drenched in pastel colors because the bright sunlight of spring was blocked by the old theatre architecture and only allowed in as beams of light falling through a window, cut by a beam, and then softly scattered itself into the antique rooms, hallways, and stage. While the lighting and dust specks floating in the light beams were as docile as can be, I was full of inner turmoil and rushing.
Our company prepared for a performance at the old theatre on Cooper Place - an odd little place, built for another time and entirely different space needs. What made the rush even bigger was that this was a one-off performance away from our home theatre. So everyone was figuring out where to go. There was so much commotion among the dancers, our choreographer, our coach, and support people. The anxiety was running high. One of the stage trees hadn't made it on the truck. The stage was a little narrower. So we had to shorten our steps a little bit. One of the girls had fallen off the stage during a last-minute rehearsal while the line already started forming outside.
On top of that, we didn't have a proper changing room. Every act required us to change. The director had closed one of the stairways to the balcony level with a barricade so that we could change there. The pink-haired lady, always chewing bubble gum, from the theatre management company had a yelling fit over it, but they worked out a deal where our stage whisperer John was perched outside to look for the building inspector. So we were even more stressed because John wasn't there in case anyone got a performance blank. You could say that half the company was in pale-faced panic.
From the second to the third act, we had to change from tree and bush costumes (after having played a living forest) to standard leotard ballet outfits. We had to take our entire clothes off for which I usually prefer the safety of a changing room. There, not even having flat ground, but standing on the stairs, we didn't even have benches or lockers. My gym bag was wide open so that I could easily find things and place clothing items down. I was split naked for a moment. That's when I saw him for the first time.
He stood on top of the stairs. He pretended to lift one of those 80 lbs stage lights into a projection control booth, the heavy black thing on his shoulder, but he was paused. He was looking straight at me, gazing at my chest, which was flat from thousands of hours of ballet with two big pink nipples like maraschino cherries. His posture was well camouflaged with the pretense of being engaged in the busy setup change, but behind his posture of lifting stage lights from the cart into the room, he was standing still and watching me intently as I disrobed, exposed myself, and covered up.
The clothes on his body were oversized and floating like men with enormous bellies tend to wear. His hair was gray, long, and jelled back in a wave. There was a blue tint to his eyes like perhaps thirty years ago, he could have been handsome for a short glimmering moment of his life. What his appearance most spoke of was the abandonment of just someone not very relevant and succumbed to a boring life of beer, soccer, and the occasional steak.
I had never had anyone watch me so intently and so unabashedly. I had never been so helpless to do anything about it because our changing times were tightly choreographed. 47 seconds! That had been the drill. We had to drill taking our costumes on and off. All the girls had gotten used to throwing their clothes off with abandon.
When I got on pointe to follow the dancer in front of me in a meandering line to play ducklings following down to the creek, my mind was strangely calm. My focus was entirely with the image of that old man, furrowed skin and meaty cheeks, standing up there on the stairs watching directly down at me. Who was he? What was he seeing? A scrawny petite ballet dancer? He was so calm about it. There was nothing furtive about his action of stealing my nakedness. There was no anxiety about getting caught, but only a calm bathing in the view of my body. Somehow, his calm entered into me. I must have been the calmest dancer on stage, letting my training come through to hit all the extensions perfectly.
During the next act change, I looked around to spot him peeping again. He wasn't there. While I changed into a dress of colorful scarves for the next scene - the hero's triumphant return, the concession boy - a smitten black-haired student - pushed right through in between us. Some girls growled at him. Some were too panicked to miss the time limit to change because the buttons on the dress had too tight button holes and required fumbling. But nobody cares about us dancers. We are afraid to complain because they keep telling us that for every spot there are another hundred equally qualified girls waiting. And they let us see the competition at regular auditions for backup dancers. You get yelled at. You get mistreated. You learn to be quiet. You learn to dress like everyone else and stand perfectly in line - to do anything but to get noticed.
The theatre management staff also used our staircase to move around. They walked right through the middle of us like they purposefully didn't care. There appeared to be an argument between our director and the theatre management, who had wanted the director to rent a side stage as a changing room, but our director had wanted to save money. And so we girls started feeling really unwanted standing with one foot on a higher and lower stair, not having much privacy or comfort. The tension flared even more after each wardrobe change increased the mess of clothes thrown down in a rush. A girl through her bra in a temper away. We felt like scrawny rats that run around the feet of pedestrians, afraid to get stepped on and desperate to find some leftover pizza crust.
During the hero's triumphant return, I was confetti and kept throwing myself forward chest first in high jumps like a swirl of it blowing with the wind. I remember the look of the audience - very still, very quiet, eyes wide open, momentarily entertained by my trying, but looking for the next big oh-moment. The low lighting behind the stage that dramatized the shadow that I threw toward the audience also illuminated their faces in a pale and made the audience faces unusually visible. My eye got caught on a girl with bright red lipstick and a black veil, who was holding black theatre binoculars under her chin. She stood out among the casual clothing of jeans and t-shirts. She captured the elevation that art performances should have.
And as I turned around to walk behind the next confetti dancer, I saw the custodian again. He stood behind a curtain, shielded from the audience, with a broom in his hand, and he had only eyes for me. He wasn't leering with horniness or smirks. Calmly, he watched me, watched me move, watched my chest, watched my butt, thought his thoughts and dreams about me. The calmness infected me. My pounding heart from the jumps mellowed out. Like a dream, I felt myself moving slower, perhaps hypnotized. I think he was hypnotized by me, and I started feeling the same hypnosis that he was feeling. I turned around again to become the wall for the alley that the hero strutted down with five other dancers.
