Chex Mix

I’ve had tons of people ask me, ‘why do I dance?’. Sometimes it comes in the form of, ‘why don’t you play football?’ or ‘dancing’s for gay people. Are you gay?’. But it really all means the same thing. Why do I dance?

Well, I have a question for you too.

Why do you breathe?

Air means life, right? Well, that’s what dancing is for me. It’s my life line, my life blood, my life, period. There’s something about losing yourself to music—even just hopping around the grocery store to the crap songs they’re got going, or jumping over sidewalk cracks to the sound of the street jam. It feels good, it feels great, it feels… It’s like, I’m not me if I can’t dance, can’t move. It’s suffocation. No air, no breathing. Without a lift in your feet, a beat in her heart, rhythmic momentum in every step—there’s nothing for me. Nothing at all.

So, I want to make my living doing just what it is that I do and love best- dance. I’ll dance until my feet bleed, till my heat drops, till rhythm is no more. And that’s the way I like it.

“You keeping up, Paulie?” Sheila grins at me with a playful nudge in the arm once one of the guys from the troop—Jeremy I think—says we’ve got a quick 3 minute break.

Pause.

So, who is Sheila, you say? Well, she’s like, 22 and totally hot and is giving this dance troop a go too. No one here is my age because… well, I’m technically not supposed to be here because I’m not an adult yet, but everyone seems to think that I’m older. And that opens me up to a whole new world of girls—women. Glorious, curvaceous, sexy women. All for Paulie. And for some reason, older chicks dig me—might be the accent—but I’m not complaining.

Resume.

“Yeah, how you holding up?” I say, taking a swig from my water bottle and wiping my wrist across my forehead and I’ll admit—I flexed my bicep a little. Just a little.

“I’m holdin’,” Sheila says with a grin and then extends her hand. “You mind?”

I look at her hand and then my water bottle and then toss it over. “Naw.”

She catches it, takes a swig—

“Alright,” says Jeremy, suddenly at the front of the room. “We’re gonna repeat those last steps, learn the rest, and then you’re gonna do it by yourselves.”

Short 3 minutes.



“Grandma! I’m home!” I shout, dropping my bag just inside the door and kicking my shoes off, letting them lay where they land.

“Paul! This damn table won’t move worth jack shit!” Grandma shouts from the back room.

I love my Grandma.

I suppose she’s getting ready for a séance right now and her ‘floating’ table won’t float. She works as a fortune teller/ghosty conjurer and operates out of the back room of the house that used to be a closed-in patio. Even though she has a mechanical floating table, it doesn’t mean she doesn’t have ties to the ‘spirit world’, she just uses it because séances aren’t all that flashy unless the ghost is seriously POed or really wants contact with the living. Generally, they don’t, so the floating table helps.

“Did you turn it on?” I shout, making my way towards the room.

“Of course I turned it—oh. Why didn’t I think of that?”

I roll my eyes and duck through the curtain of red and black wooden beads leading to the room. “AH!”

Grandma’s standing right in front of me with her gray hair all frizzed out and her pince-nez glasses, and she’s decked out in her flamboyant gypsy clothes. “Stop your shouting; I’m right here.” She sniffs and pokes at her ear with her finger, her golden bangles jangling. “I think I blew out an eardrum…” She shuffles off into the closet off the room, mumbling and prodding at her ear.

I sigh and collapse into one of the red leather chairs around the floating table and take a look around. The walls are made of dark red velvet, covering all the windows and blocking out everything but the red, black, and white candles flickering throughout the room. There’s a bureau on one of the walls that holds Grandma’s tarot cards and extra candles and theatrical supplies and some boxes of cookies—never know when you might need a cookie. On a table we painted black last summer, there’s the tea kettle and cups and incense and title-less leather-bound books. Then there’s a huge bookcase with glass doors that holds all of Grandma’s spiritual books and herbs and creepy voodoo dolls and pins and wax figurines and creepy little clay men that gave me nightmares when I was a kid.

And then in a leather armchair near the bureau, there’s a Raggedy Ann doll. The creepiest thing to ever grace this planet—minus Candy Jim and Elmo. She always stares at me. It gives me the heebie jeebies. ‘Hello, Paul,’ Ann says.

“We meet again,” I say and stand, making my way to the chair.

‘Yes, Paul. Come to me. Look into my freakishly large button eyes…”

I don’t say a word and stop when I reach her.

‘Good, good… Look in my eye—“

“Not this time!” I shout and pick her up, take aim, toss her into one of the many painted terracotta pots all over the floor.

“Paul! What the hell are you making all that noise for? “ Grandma pokes her head out of the closet.

I shrug and rock back on my heels. “I didn’t say anything.”

“Uh huh…” She raises her eyebrows and then spies the tarot cards on the bureau. “There you are, you sneaky little bastards…”