Colum McCann - Dancer

In his office there was a consignment of cakes from The Erotic Bakery. He handed me a doughnut and then tried to take a Polaroid. I had to rip it from his hands. He would probably sell it for thousands. He ran all around the office trying to evade me, screaming wildly in his bright green trousers.

He ended up in a back room where there were two sets of giant black-and-white dice on the ground. There were words written on each of the six sides. The first said: You Me They We Us Joker. The second said: Fuck Suck Kiss Finger Handjob Joker. The object is to roll the dice and come up with matching words. We Finger. You Suck. They Kiss. With the Joker one does whatever one wants. Warhol calls it human poker. He said the permutations are endless but that at least eight people are needed to play or it can be boring.

I said he should choreograph the game. He screamed: That’s it, that’s it! and scribbled something in his notebook. The asshole will probably put it in a movie (without a credit).

When I slapped her the sound rang through the gallery and out onto Fifth Avenue. She was, after all, pestering me for an autograph and I was trying to look at the painting. The owner came over but I refused to budge. My hand stung for a whole five minutes. In truth I wanted so much to apologize but couldn’t.

Gillian said I should get the totem pole out of my ass, that it was time for me to grow up. I fired her and she said: Yet again? She began painting her toenails bright red.

Thankfully the slapped girl was an aspiring ballerina and doesn’t want to press charges for the sake of her career, but Gillian is adamant that we do damage control in case it gets into the papers.

The suggested design:

Jumping through the lips I needed six stagehands to break my fall. The Post said it was the most astounding exit ever seen in ballet. (Bullshit, of course.) The photograph was taken by some moron who caught me, back bent, out of line. Still, it sent the audience into raptures and they roared. (Polanski, Tate, Hepburn, Hendrix were there.)

The reviews were good, except for Clint, who called it all a diseased contrivance. (Asshole.)

A story appeared in the gossip pages, with a photo of me and Hendrix. Rudi and Jimi pirouette. His fingernails were blackened (perhaps with old blood) from playing guitar so hard. At the club he disappeared in a cloud of marijuana smoke but showed up later on the dance floor. I was surrounded by a dozen gyrating women. A tall black boy joined us, leather shirt and motorcycle boots. We removed ourselves to the courtyard and the party began.

The birthday celebration took place only to be forgotten. Thirty-one years old. Margot bought a beautiful crystal goblet and Erik gave me a Gucci watch. All I wanted was to walk along the beach. The stars over St. Bart’s seemed almost as bright as those over Ufa when I went ice fishing, centuries ago.

Leopard skin boots! To the thighs! A là Twiggy! Backstage I was told they were deliciously wicked. At Le Bar I couldn’t move for the gauntlet of erections. I spied one boy, he seemed two different people in one, a Janus, so that from the right he was beautiful but from the left he had a hideous scar. In the morning the boy kept trying to show me the good side of his face, which bored me, so I kicked him out.

Mother said that the snow over Ufa had deadened all other sound. Tamara says she wants to understand me, my life, but she is so foolish, how can she understand me? Nobody does.

Erik complains that I talk more and more shit each day. As if he doesn’t. He says I should just do the one thing I know — that is, operate in my sacred space, onstage.

He detests my idea that dance makes the world a better place. It is sentimental, he says. I want to make a statement about beauty, but Erik (who spends his time watching the news from Vietnam and Cambodia) says that dance changes nothing for the monk who sets himself aflame and the photographer who watches through the lens.

Would you set yourself aflame for something you believe in? he said.

I asked if he would keep his finger on the shutter if I was burning. He would not answer at first but then he finally said: Of course not.

We fought until the alarm clock rang. I told him I had set myself aflame a long time ago, did he not realize this? He sighed and turned his back and said that he was sick and tired of it all, that he simply wanted a cottage by the sea in Denmark where he could sit and smoke and play the piano. I slammed the door and told him to go fuck himself.

He yelled after me: Yes, that might be preferable.

I said he certainly wouldn’t get an encore.

The ice packs were not frozen and the Epsom salts had disappeared. I wanted to throw the small fridge out the window. The only deterrent was a crowd of cheering fans below.

Margot keeps threatening retirement. She is well aware of Bettina’s power, for example, Joyce’s also, even Alessandra’s, perhaps even Eleanor’s. Yet every partner brings me inevitably back to Margot, her magnetism. On the phone she said she is torn. On the one hand, she says Tito needs her. On the other, she needs the money. (And she is afraid she will wither.)

Erik is correct although I screamed at him and hurled the flowerpot, just missing his head. I probably have, yes, been dancing terribly. Fuck!

The new masseur might well release me, however. He has suggested there are trigger points in the body where he can remove the tension. He manipulates it to other parts of the body where it dissipates. (Certainly on the beach I finally felt relaxed after six countries in just fourteen days.) Emilio has the strongest hands I have ever known.

I have grown to hate the standing ovations in restaurants, how infantile.

Victor is crazed and vulgar and lovely, a walking disaster (silk gown and ostrich feathers) and yet nobody makes me laugh more. The theme of the party he organized was Nureyev. He said the hairstylists all over New York were packed solid, that even Diana Ross had to bribe to get her hair done. (Later she told me that I was divine as myself.)

Quentin Crisp whispered drunkenly in my ear: I am much too much every man’s man to be the only man of any man. (I’m sure he stole the line from somewhere.)

I told her that if she continued her career she would, at the very least, get to kiss the toad. She could be heard weeping outside the rehearsal and someone ran to get her a cigarette. Gillian said a cigarette will stop anyone crying. A thought: packages should be unceremoniously shoved into any available hole presented by hysterical women, dancers, lovers, accountants, stagehands, customs officers, etc.

The performance was full of error. Terrible. The movement is pure shit. He couldn’t choreograph a Latin orgy. For the entrance I should blaze onstage as if it is the absolute beginning of the world. Open the body’s windows and build the mystery from there.

Broadway, front row. The show was shit but Erik said we couldn’t leave, people would gossip. I pretended to have a toothache and left, but returned for the party later. The lead actor asked if my teeth were okay so I bit his arm and said yes, they seemed to have recovered.

He went around all night with a bandage on his arm and his sleeve rolled up.

Gillian asked me how can I dance after fucking, and I could only reply that I could not dance without fucking. (One only wishes the intermissions were longer!)

Patrick uses the needle between his toes so nobody can see the marks. Before he goes onstage he cuts his finger and sprinkles salt into the cut (excruciating agony) to wake himself from his stupor.