Read Online Strip by Andrew Binks - Free Book Online

like the elastic in over-washed tights. I kept my eyes peeled for his dark profile to appear somewhere in the crowd. It was only him who had made me feel desirable—lips, nose and all. How could I have felt so good? The more of my body he appreciated, the more of me there seemed to exist. As if my physical self was gradually coming into being for the first time. I’d only ever known myself from the inside out and he made me aware of the weight of me—my mass and the space I was taking up on the planet, and in his eyes. But love and Daniel were nowhere to be found.
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    There goes my nose. Now I am bleeding from both ends. If someone comes into the stairwell I’ll tell them I’m rehearsing a scene from Julius Caesar. Why Daniel? Why thoughts like this now? Am I not pummelled enough? My mind is searching independently for a resolution and it wants to start there, back in Montreal. I assure you I am not expecting that handsome prince at the end of this bloodletting. I would rather die.
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    In truth “he” was a kind of demented self-flattery for me, as in, How could someone so masculine and so commanding and so dashing, love someone so much less so (as I perceived myself to be)? That was it— Hey, everybody, look who loves me. I must be worthy.
    It was the kind of thought that kept me from doing a complete dying swan. I remember Kent once said maybe I really had been in love. He said that maybe I was being too hard on love and on myself. He said I should give love more of a chance. Give myself more of a chance at being human and knowing what it is love can do. But it’s still too soon to think about Kent; we’ve only just hit the concrete, and I’m still whimpering about Daniel. Kent, in his quiet, wise way, knew more about love than I ever will. He may have been right, but maybe I knew more about lust. For the truly hard-hearted, lust can paradoxically be safer; if beauty can be skin deep then lust can be a little deeper. But in those months, I found something that had only ever existed onstage—my ego.
    Since men didn’t seem to be swarming me like sylphs to a poet, my confidence dissipated proportionally. If I had pursued those strangers in the bar, they wouldn’t have liked what they found: a tired dancer with a tight ass. “What a waste,” they’d say. “You have such a nice ass.” Maybe it was evident. This was the new meaning of “rock bottom.”
    Pride kept me from admitting that all Daniel wanted was my supple ass, and who knows for how long? Our survival instinct keeps us from such thoughts. In my room I drank my savings while I stared at that limestone wall. Lost sleep. Daniel had told me once in the early stages that I was sentimental “in a good way,” spiritual too, and sensitive—meaning he believed he could pass judgement, meaning he was full of it, meaning I let him do so, meaning I was blinder than Alicia Alonso. Now I even recall on our last night in Hugues’ living room, draped over the sedan, he had told Hugues he didn’t really know where we were going. I pretended not to understand as I freely and stupidly blurted I was in love, in my Le Spectre de la Rose –tinted glasses.
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    After diluting my pride with a gut-bloating six-pack and a few glasses of red wine, I made the call to Kharkov. Who knows? Maybe he’d think I could lure Daniel back to Winnipeg, and then he’d take me back no question.
    Kharkov would not take my call, of course, but gave very specific instructions to his secretary Miss Friesen, a severe and uptight balletomane who got into ballet politics and mind games like a dirty shirt, and whose name provided no end of amusement for us more vengeful types. I was ready to grovel. “Can’t I please speak with him?”
    â€œKharkov wanted me to pass along his regrets. I don’t think it would make any difference. He has already signed on four very strong