Patience

Sunday, October 17th. 1 PM.

The roster was posted up, and because the list was in alphabetical order by first name, my eyes immediately fell between the two names where my name should’ve been. Should’ve. Would’ve. I stared at my laptop screen, blinked a few times, rubbed my eyes, looked away and looked back, but the list of names jumped straight from BRE- to CAR-.

I didn’t make it.

Saturday, October 9th.

“So how thick is your dick, Brian?”

“I’m sorry Jaysun, what? I’m not going to answer that.”

“Why not? We’re all men here. No need to be shy.”

“Jayson, I’m not telling you.”

“You already told me you weren’t circumcised! Might as well tell me about the thickness.”

“I’m not going to tell you any more.”

“Shay-day. Well, if you can’t tell me, can you show me?”

I scoffed. “No.”

“Gosh, what’s the problem?”

I met Jayson after my audition group performed for Team Millennia auditions. In the last few seconds of my audition, I had ripped my shirt off and danced shirtless, and I was still shirtless when he went up to me to congratulate me. I could tell right off the bat by his voice that he liked dick up his butt, and I knew it was no coincidence that he wanted to introduce himself after my audition while I was still in the buff.

I didn’t think I’d ever see him again, but then I saw him at the audition workshops in the past week. He was there to audition for the same team I wanted, and he asked me to be part of his audition group with another girl. I knew that they both had previous dance team experience, and I knew they were good; I’d seen them dance. I felt like I was the weakest out of them, so when I asked Jayson why he wanted me on his audition team, he reassured me that I was great dancer and that I killed it at Team Millennia auditions. And I believed him.

Now here I was. Saturday, the day before auditions, not practicing, stuck in my car sitting next to Jayson.

“You’ve ever been in love, Brian?”

I grunted. Not another personal question. “Nope.”

“What’s the longest relationship you’ve been in?”

“No more than a month.”

“Really? I’m surprised. I’m surprised that a guy like you is single right now. Don’t you think you should do something about that?”

I rolled my eyes. “Nope.”

I couldn’t wait until auditions ended so that I could tell him that everything that I ever told him about my personal life, from penile circumcision to love and parental issues, had been all a lie.

I could probably thank Jayson for what was probably one of my most miserable audition weeks. Every day I had to put up with his very forward advances, and not wanting to ruin what little group morale and chemistry we had, I didn’t want to tell him to leave me the fuck alone yet. At first, I thought it couldn’t get much worse than him asking to make out with me at the beginning of the week, but as Sunday drew nearer, he just got worse. By Wednesday, I could already feel my testicles progress in their heavenly ascension back into my bowels whenever I was around him.

His flirting wasn’t what made my audition week so miserable, however. It was the fact that while he spent time cleaning and going over the pieces with our other audition group mate, the girl, he spent most of the time with me trying to get into my pants. I wasn’t there to contribute to my audition group. I wasn’t there because I was a great dancer. I was there to be hit on. It confirmed some of the worst things that I had doubted about myself, mainly, I didn’t have much going for my dancing except my damn good looks.

I considered taking a long break from dance if I didn’t make it onto a dance team, feeling that my progress in dancing had ceased, or even reverted, and that I really needed a change. I figured that that change either meant getting onto a team, or not dancing at all, because, as much as I loved dancing, dropping money I didn’t have to take classes every week wasn’t something I could keep up for another year.

This was only if I didn’t make it onto the team, but given everything that happened this past week, it now looked more like when. After lying some more about my love life, Jaysun and I concluded our discussion and I headed home. While driving, I reflected on how I didn’t get to clean the audition pieces as thoroughly as I wanted to, how I had no faith in my audition group, and how I felt that anything anyone had ever told me about my being a good dancer was a lie. To save myself the disappointment, I accepted right then and there that I wasn’t going to get an interview and that I wasn’t going to make it onto the team, and by doing so, I accepted that I’d be done with dancing for a while after this. I just hoped that I wouldn’t embarrass myself to much at the audition the next day.

Sunday, October 17th. 2 PM.

A phone call lit up my room and interrupted my intense staring contest with the ceiling. The call was from a number I didn’t recognize.

“Hello? Is this Brian?”

I pressed the phone closer to my ear. “Yeah, it is.”

It was the artistic director from the team. A part of me hoped that he called to offer me a spot in the roster last minute, but I knew that was no where near realistic.

At first, our conversation was everything I expected it to be: an explanation of why I wasn’t on the roster. He told me that I killed it at the interview, that he could really see me meshing well with the team, better than some of the others that did make it in, but the technique of my dancing needed some work itself. That made me wonder, if the dancing I had already done during the day of auditions was already going to screw me over, why did I get an interview in the first place? Everything happens for a reason?

But then a few minutes into it, something he said just clicked with me. (I’m going to break the fourth wall a little bit and point out that, out of some professionalism and other reasons, I can’t blog on everything he said to me on the phone. Just know, he said some really inspiring stuff.)

The director told me that if I showed significant improvement at midyear auditions, I had a pretty good shot at getting in. Combined with a bunch of other things he said, he sounded very convincing.

And I believed him. I questioned everything he said at first, but in the end, I believed him. I wanted to. I had to. It felt right to. Because, everything that happened this past week, from the 4 AM phonecall about the interview to the way I came to start believing again, nothing could change that. I couldn’t allow it. I had realized it was better to believe, get hurt occasionally, sulk for a few days, and then continue to believe, rather then just never believe at all.

I had to keep dancing. I felt sure that I had an extremely good shot at making it onto the team if I showed significant improvement, but what it all came down to was that if clause. Being able to show “significant improvement,” meant improving not just significantly, but drastically, especially considering that the midyear audition was a one-day process, as opposed to the beginning-of-the-year week-long audition process. I’d have to do better on an audition piece that I’d only have one hour to practice than an audition piece that I had five days to practice. And that, I felt unsure that I could show that kind of improvement the directors would look for, but I had to believe I was capable of it in order to drive myself to keep dancing, more intensely than ever.

And then I finally realized the answer to my question, why the directors would ever grant me an interview if my audition itself was already going to screw me over. The reason however, was a little unworldly, as it didn’t actually answer why did the directors, but rather, it simply answered why. Naturally I felt unsure about it, and I even considered that everything I just thought about was the best defense mechanism that my subconscious had ever produced. But fuck, this was going to be the one thing that I could not rationalize away.

Everything that happened this past week happened in order to help me. And it did. I found something that I thought I had lost: the will to keep dancing.