Хлоя Бенджамин - The Immortalists

Lady is black, with high cheekbones and warm eyes rimmed by long lashes. The rest of the men wear nothing except flimsy purple thongs, but Benny lets Lady wear a tight pleather minidress – purple, of course – and chunky platform heels.

She shakes her can of purple paint. ‘Turn around, honey. I’ll do you.’

Adrian hoots, and Simon turns obediently, grinning. He’s already drunk. He bends toward the ground, ass up, and shakes it in Lady’s direction, who screams with delight. Lance turns on the radio – Chic’s ‘ Le Freak ’ – as Adrian takes a tube of purple makeup from his toiletries case. He does Simon’s face, smoothing dyed foundation around his nostrils and hairline, then the lobes of his ears. They finish moments before nine o’clock, when it is time to line up and parade into the club.

Even at this early hour, Purp is well populated, and for a moment, Simon’s vision goes dark. Not in his wildest San Francisco fantasies did he imagine doing something like this. If it weren’t for Klara’s bottle of Smirnoff, he would have already turned around, dashing out of the club and into his apartment like a runaway extra in a sci-fi gay porn. Instead, as the men split and take their places, Simon positions himself behind pillar number six. Because Lady is the tallest, she hoists each man up onto his pedestal. Richie is athletic and energized: he hops up and down with one fist in the air and occasionally whips an invisible rope over his head. Lance is goofy, sweet; already, an appreciative mass stands below his pedestal, cheering as he does the bus stop and the funky chicken. Colin sways listlessly, high on Quaaludes. Occasionally, he extends his arms and moves his palms through the air like a mime. Adrian humps the air and runs his hands over his crotch. Simon wills himself not to grow hard as he watches.

Lady appears behind him. ‘Ready for a lift?’ she whispers.

‘Ready,’ says Simon, and suddenly, he rises. Lady deposits him on top of the pedestal, her hands sure on his waist. When she lets go, he pauses. The men in the audience stare at him curiously.

‘Give it up for the new boy!’ Richie calls from across the room.

There are a few scattered claps, a whoop. The music swells: ABBA’s ‘Dancing Queen.’ Simon gulps. He shifts his hips left, then right, but the movement isn’t fluid like it is on Adrian; he feels jerky and awkward, like a good girl at a school dance. He tries again, jumping like Richie, which feels more natural, but perhaps too much like Richie. He points at the audience with one hand and rolls the other shoulder behind his back.

‘Come on, baby!’ shouts a black man in a white tank top and jean shorts. ‘I know you can come better than that!’

Simon’s mouth turns dry. ‘Relax,’ says Lady from behind him; she hasn’t yet left for her own pillar. ‘Drop your shoulders.’ He hadn’t realized they’d risen to his ears. When he lets them go, his neck releases, too, and his legs feel more limber. Gently, he sways his hips. He tosses his head. When he listens to the music instead of copying the other men, his body sinks into a rhythm, as it does when he’s running. His heartbeat is vigorous but steady. Electricity circuits from his scalp to his toes, urging him on.

When he reports for his shift the next day, he finds Benny wiping down the bar.

‘How’d I do?’

Benny raises his eyebrows, though he doesn’t look up. ‘You did.’

‘What do you mean?’

Simon still feels high, remembering how it felt to dance with those beautiful, sculpted men, how it felt to be adored. For a moment, in the dressing room, he had friends. He wasn’t thinking about home, about his mother, or what his father would think of the crowd.

Benny takes a sponge from behind the bar and begins to scrub at a crust of simple syrup. ‘You ever danced before?’

‘Yeah, I’ve danced. Of course I’ve danced.’

‘Where at?’

‘Clubs.’

‘Clubs. Where no one was watching you, right? Where you were just another face in the crowd? Well, they’re watching you now. And my guys? They can dance. They’re good. I need you’ – he points the sponge at Simon – ‘to keep up.’

Simon’s pride stings. Sure, he might have been a little stiff, but by the end of the night, he was jiving like the rest of them – wasn’t he?

‘What about Colin?’ he asks, boldly imitating Colin’s limpid sway, his mime act. ‘Is he keeping up?’

‘Colin,’ says Benny, ‘has a shtick. The art fags are into him. You need a shtick, too. Whatever you were doing last night? Shuffling around the pedestal like you had bugs in your pants? That wasn’t it.’

‘Hey, man. It’s not like I’m in bad shape. I’m a runner.’

‘So what? Anyone can run. Baryshnikov, Nureyev – you look at those guys, they don’t run. They fly. And that’s ’cause they’re artists. You’re a good-looking guy, no doubt about that, but the guys who come here have standards, and you’ll need more than your looks to keep up.’

‘Like what?’

Benny exhales. ‘Like presence. Charisma .’

Simon watches as Benny opens the cash register and counts the previous night’s earnings. ‘So you’re firing me?’

‘No, I’m not firing you. But I’d like you to take a class. Learn to move. There’s a dance school at the corner of Church and Market – ballet. They get a lot of guys in there, so you wouldn’t be hanging around with a bunch of chicks.’

‘Ballet?’ Simon laughs. ‘Come on, man. That’s not my scene.’

‘And you think this is?’ Benny takes out two thick stacks of bills and wraps them in rubber bands. ‘You’re out of your comfort zone, kid – that’s a fact. What’s one more step?’

From the outside, the Ballet Academy of San Francisco is nothing but a narrow, white door. Simon climbs a tall staircase, turns right at the landing, and finds himself in a small reception area: creaking wooden floors, a chandelier furry with dust. He didn’t think ballet dancers would be so loud, but women chatter in groups as they stretch against the wall and men in black tights shout at one another, kneading their quads. The receptionist signs him up for the twelve thirty mixed level – ‘Trial class is free’ – and hands him a pair of black canvas slippers from the lost and found bin. Simon sits to pull them on. Seconds later, the French doors behind him bang open. Teenage girls in navy leotards stream out, hair pulled back so tightly their eyebrows lift. Behind them, the studio is as large as a school cafeteria. Simon presses against the wall to let the girls pass. It takes all of his resolve not to bolt down the stairs.

The other dancers gather their bags and water bottles and begin to amble into the studio. It’s an old, dignified room, with high ceilings, worn floors, and a raised platform for the piano. Students carry heavy-looking metal barres from the perimeter to the center as an older man enters the studio. Later, Simon will learn that this is the Academy’s director, Gali, an Israeli émigré who danced with the San Francisco Ballet before a back injury ended his career. He looks to be in his late forties, with a powerful stride and the dense body of a gymnast. His head is shaved, and so are his legs: he wears a maroon unitard that ends in shorts, revealing smooth thighs striated with muscle.

When he places a hand on the barre, the room becomes silent.

‘First position,’ Gali says, turning his feet out with the heels touching. ‘We prepare both arms and we have: plié one, straighten two. Lift the arm three, lower into grand plié four, five – arms en bas – rise seven. Tendu to second position on eight.’

He might as well have been speaking Dutch. Before they’ve finished with plies, Simon’s knees are burning and his toes cramp. The exercises become more baffling as class continues: there are dégagés and ronds de jambe , the toes making wide circles on the floor and then above it; pirouettes and frappés ; développés – the leg unfurling from the body, then enveloped back in – and grand battements to prepare the hips and hamstrings for large jumps. After the warm-up, forty-five minutes so excruciating that Simon can’t imagine continuing for the same amount of time, the dancers clear the barres and process to what Gali calls the center, where they move across the floor in fleets. Mostly, Gali walks through the room shouting rhythmic nonsense – ‘Ba-dee-da-DUM! Da-pee-pah-PUM!’ – but during pirouettes, he appears at Simon’s side.