When I first moved to New York City, I remember there was a friend of a friend's who was constantly getting mugged on our block (lower east side, mid Eighties) and everyone said it was because he appeared the perfect mark: shuffling walk, head down, eyes dodging right and left. Although I thought it was probably more because the block was silly with crack houses and all the needy who came with it, I came to the realization that there was some outerwear necessary to live here that had nothing to do with clothing and everything to do with attitude, the messages you sent out with your every step and move. I was told not to look strangers in the eye and practice confidence, which is a funny thing to take on when you're overawed by just stepping out the door. I was so eager to know it all, yet so afraid to come off like a geek, so I made like Casper and trailed after people looking for clues on how to take on a more hip persona. How they moved, smoked, spoke.
I ended up stumbling into a lot of poseur puddles and missing the real things that were being written all around me. Once I stopped looking for perfection, I was able to open the book on who was really there. Three schoolgirls tumbling onto a subway seat laughing their backpacks off, a man closing a cellphone and bursting into tears, a woman saying her prayers, a teenaged boy doing a wicked MJ-Thriller imitation on the train platform. Their body expressing their life right out there, no armor. I've joined them. Bouncing in my own bubble of a world, many's the time recently where I step onto the train after class at S in an ecstatic daze, holding on to my elation of movement. Or I'm overcome with emotion when a song or certain thoughts come into my head and tears come.
Yet I still read people from afar. The other morning I was actually appalled when an older couple struck up a conversation with a mother and her daughter on the train. Tourists, I thought, and felt embarrassed for them. Then I checked myself. Really? why so disdainful of people actually communicating with each other? This as my earbuds firmly blocked me from hearing anything. And plenty's the time when people have tried to communicate important things with me ("Hey, you just dropped your [fill in the blank: wallet, metrocard, sanity]," "This train has been rerouted to hell, you may want to get off") and I've looked the other way, thinking I'm fine, leave me alone and then ended up with a mini-tragic ending.
And what's written on my body is not so much resistance as fear. Fear of entering the dance fully and understanding that I'm not only part of a larger movement, but in fact my own choreographer. This requires commitment and bravery, two things I know I have more of now than ever. Over time I've taken in and parsed out the parts of the narrative that support me and move me forward, though I still have no idea how the next chapter will go. And that's something I'm coming to peace with, almost excited about. Which certainly hasn't been so in the past. When I'd lived here for only a short while, a friend was putting a book of profile photos together for his portfolio and took my picture. I see what was writ there, then, in such large letters. I think I wanted to look tough, yet winsome, yet confident. But what I actually see in my eyes is a big question. An appeal for an answer. Do you know how my storyline's supposed to go?
Lately, I'm finding that the chapters are seeming to connect into one collection, and though I continue to ink away and the story often doesn't follow one coherent thread, I'm trusting the words to rise more to the surface. More than anywhere else, my body's nouns and adjectives are showing themselves on my skin as I dance in the dark, but I'm coming to realize that I don't have to cover them up when I change back into my street clothes.
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