I got into breakdancing when I was twelve. It was exhilarating. It was so new. The music was new, the clothes styles, and the way people moved… the dancers were like magicians. It was part of a culture change. And I was doing it!
No one else in my grade was doing it. In fact, most were high schoolers… the coolest of the high schoolers.
They met before school in the gym. The floor was shiny and smooth. It was quiet and dark but for the auxiliary lights which made it feel even more like a secret.
These high schoolers were legendary to me. I would never have dared annex their presence except that my best friend brought me into the fold. He was the one teaching how to do it.
I had no idea how he knew about these meetings, or even how to break dance. He was just good at things.
One night after school, practicing in his bedroom he said:
“Hey, there are tryouts for a breakdancing team. We should do it.”
“Really? Me too?”
“Yeah, why not?”
“I’m not good like you are.”
“What do you have to lose? It’s worth trying. They travel all over competing and performing. And if they’re good enough, they go to New York for a week to perform.”
The next week his mom drove us to the next town over. The audition was in a basement with a wide open linoleum floor. This was great riches compared to our flattened cardboard boxes.
One of the other auditioners did things I had never seen. I felt intimidated. Once my focus returned from being dazzled by his perfect blond spiked hair, I heard his mother’s extensive boast about him which ended with:
“…it’s just what he loves to do.”
He just sat in his chair watching the next auditioner get ready, barely noticing the complement hang on him like a needy girlfriend.
Her comment made me sick. To be spoken of so smotheringly by his mother in public. I pictured him wearing a diaper soaked sticky with maple syrup.
Now I can recognize my jealously. More specifically, my learned-survival response to the chronic criticism and absence of affirmation I received. I had come to associate wanting affirmation with weakness and a feeling of disgust.
I just stuffed that feeling down with all the others and renewed my oath to never need anything from anyone.
So I mustered a dose of my self-made courage and did my audition. It was descent and I was hopeful.
On the ride home I started to picture the possibility of making the team. I’d be dancing all the time, learning from the instructor and other kids. Maybe I could actually get good at something that would set me apart and (I assumed) fill the void in my self esteem.
My friend’s mom dropped me off at home.
“Where were you?”
“I was with Clayton.”
Many times I watched this friend make conversation with my step dad about cars, fishing, guns. I never knew how he knew these things but my step dad liked him and he seemed to be satisfied with my answer. That was a good sign towards me getting permission to join.
“Guess what dad, we went to an audition. You know the breakdancing we’ve been doing?”
“No.”
“Oh, well Clayton’s been teaching me this new kind of dancing. Hardly anybody knows how to do it. But we do and there’s a team that’s forming and we tried out for it! That’s where we just were and I think we did pretty good. And if we make the team we get to travel around to competitions and do shows and if we make the finals we get could maybe win prize money and a trip for the big competition in New York!”
As I talked, I started to feel proud of myself. I had done something worthy. I showed initiative, applied myself to something, and took a risk.
In my mind I saw myself in the competitions, with a serious look of concentration from executing something complex that I worked really hard on. I saw strength and satisfaction. I saw myself riding in the back of cars riding back from competitions, laughing with everyone on my team, and passing back bags of McDonalds.
I imagined all these things I could do with my body, like unlocked super hero abilities and the inner glow that would radiate from me. I saw the hotel in New York the night before the competition with my mom who came with me and just maybe even my step dad, as this made him see me in a new light.
I saw happiness.
But as my eyes focused back to reality I saw the look of discontent on his face as if I had just grown a dress out of my skin.
“You’re not going to New York.”
I stuffed the feeling down with all the others and reveled in my fortune that I didn’t need anything from anyone.