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shit.”
    I’m a little miffed at his presumption. This guy doesn’t know me. Still, he’s got a point. So I tell him what’s been going on, how I need to figure out who I am, how I’m afraid to feel. And he listens, which I enjoy, even though it freaks me out a little that he doesn’t blink.
    “You have to do this course, Edward,” he says.
    “I’d like to, but—”
    “Don’t say ‘but….’”
    “…I don’t have the money.”
    “Bullshit! You don’t have
any
money?”
    “I mean, I don’t have enough money.”
    “You don’t even know how much it costs.”
    “How much does it cost?”
    “Three hundred dollars.”
    “I don’t have that kind of money.”
    “You know what your problem is, Edward? You’re limited by your scarcity consciousness.”
    At this moment a woman in the corner bursts into tears, thrusting her arms around her Growth Facilitator.
    “Yes! Yes! Yes!” she cries.
    “See?” Bruce/Bryce says. “If she can do it, why can’t you?”
    “I don’t even know who she is.”
    “No, you don’t know who
you
are. Aren’t you tired of being unhappy?”
    “I’m not unhappy.”
    “Liar! You just told me you’re a miserable, unfeeling loser. Why do you lie so much?”
    “I don’t—”
    “Why are you a big fucking liar?”
    From the ballroom next door I hear a chorus of people sing “Happy Birthday.”
    “I just want to—”
    “Don’t say ‘just.’”
    “I’m trying to—”
    “Don’t say ‘try.’”
    “I need to go to the bathroom.”
    “NO!” he shouts.
    “But—”
    “Don’t say—”
    He’s interrupted by a voice that sounds like a duck getting a root canal. “STOP!”
    I turn around as Sandra stalks across the room. “I swear to Gawd,” she says, pointing a chipped fingernail in my facilitator’s face, “if you say ‘don’t say but’ to this poor kid one more time, I will reach down your throat and rip out your lungs.”
    Bruce/Bryce finally blinks.
     
    Sandra and I sit on stools at someplace called Frozert, eating fat-free, sugar-free, taste-free frozen yogurts. Chemicals in a cup. She laughs, a sound like an upper respiratory infection. “They really said you were too ‘jazz hands’ for Juilliard?”
    “Yeah. I guess deep down I’m very superficial.” Over the sound system, Cyndi Lauper sees my true colors shining through.
    “Nah, you’re just like me,” Sandra says, gesturing with a plastic spoon. “You’re too nice.” (This from the woman who threatened to remove a vital organ.) “You’re a people pleazah, that’s what you are, a people pleazah. Am I right or am I right?”
    I scrape the remaining frozen caulk out of my cup. “I guess so. I can’t really relax until everyone else is happy.”
    “See, I knew it!” she says. “Edwid, today is your lucky day!”

Eight
    The following weekend I venture out to Sandra’s studio on “Lawn Guyland” to begin my training as a party motivator.
    According to Sandra, having a guy in a shiny shirt and tight pants encourage a roomful of thirteen-year-olds to dance is the latest thing at bar and bat mitzvahs so lavish she calls them “bash mitzvahs.”
La Vie de la Fête
Productions currently employs four male motivators: two older guys around twenty-five who also emcee and two younger ones who just dance. Sandra used to have one other, but he did a sweet sixteen where he did the sweet-sixteen-year-old, and now he’s doing sixteen months on Rikers Island.
    Luckily, you don’t have to be a dancer-dancer. “Your job is to boogie with regulah people,” Sandra says. “Ya’ need to be a little sloppy.” In which case I’m eminently qualified.
    Still, I learn how to do the Robot and the Moonwalk from Rex, her star motivator, a fledgling entertainment journalist who combines an effortless cool with the kind of canine conviviality that makes you want to be his best friend. Sandra says Rex strikes the perfect “bash mitzvah balance”: He’s hip enough that the boys want to be him,