DEVEREUX FORTUNA

The Judge

The little girls on the stage were snapping beneath their knees, one mouthing words while the others weren’t. I secretly enjoyed the unpreferred, but could see my fellow judges lowering numbers on their score sheets beside me. Our table was a few feet from the stage our faces in the dark. Some girls performed directly for the judges, staring straight at us, others delivered for the audience. The girl who was mouthing words didn’t look like she could see where she was looking. All the girls moved their arms up in a swoop, turned their backs, and looked over their shoulders at us, smiling tensely through and after the last thrust of the song. They continued smiling as they scooted quickly off stage on their toes in neat rows. Except for the one, she wasn’t smiling. Based on the numbers their group would get a bronze silver gold or platinum medal. There were no medals though, just words on cheap blue ribbons. I was the only male judge on the team.

I always wonder whether I’ll get a boner but it’s never happened. I’ve gone back to school and we’re reading essays about things teachers should do. We were discussing the topic of appropriateness, whether students can write about their sex lives, and this fucking asshole in my class said well there’s the problem of whether you get aroused when you read it. Everyone laughed but I thought fucking asshole. It’s clear someone’s teaching these little girls how to seduce me but I try to disassociate from that and judge them on spirit. Although it’s because my belief that sort of thing exists is subsiding that I’ve re-enrolled in school. The certification is for high school education. Judging dance is such long hours and strange cruelty although I’m coming to learn high school English won’t be that different.

What did this little girl feel, propped up so vulnerably on a young boy’s hands? The fringe by his armpit was knotted -- probably from past performances, changing quickly. I just watched the knotted strings tremble with his strain. Light picking up on the row of overlapping sequins lining the shoulder. I was among those who knew what it was like to be punished by your parents for the cost of costumes. As the girl was let down by the partnering boys whose faces dropped in concentration she ran a small hand over their backs and rolled her head in a circle. Even though I knew it wouldn’t necessarily enhance the effect I’d snorted some xanax and could tell it was wearing off even though it wasn’t noon. The older girls performed after the lunch break. We were still in grades 3 through 6.

The bottle had had 50 pills but now there were so few. My doctor had prescribed so many out of sympathy -- he was our family doctor and never could figure out what was wrong with me. I asked if I could have a year’s worth of xanax and he prescribed 50 to me then he died. He’s handled my body -- returned to it -- more than anyone alive has. I trust you more than I trust myself -- he actually said that to me while filling out the RX. That seemed right. I did know myself well and exactly what I needed. It wasn’t until a year after he passed I realized it was a loss.

Now at the foot of the stage I had the pleasure of watching a shifting text of negative space between bodies and body parts. Weight thrown around strangely. Like laying down on a trampoline as people jump over and around you stretching up and mixing together until a socked foot comes down on your throat. Days when I was younger had this effect of gushing out from a center flowing down on all sides around me. Laying on my back I could choke in it. Sometimes I did. Seeing the dancers from this point beneath them made me happy, feel safe. But the effect of seeing the strain of so many young solid arms and hands performing was getting to be horrifying, just a little. Like seeing a gash on your body but feeling nothing, nothing for days --

Do you ever ask yourself why you’re on your own? You see in my short life anyone I’ve gotten close to has at one time or another told me how they’d like to kill themselves, or when they tried. So in a strange liquid stream I see everything from hangers and telephone cords to a few trees growing together with blood and razors in a wave pattern along the sad bottom. It washes across my vision all the time. None of my friends are there.

I was younger than these other judges and wasn’t sure it was worth the effort of socializing. Competition seasons were in the summer held at hotels and on high school campuses. Sometimes I had to teach jazz and ballet classes to hundreds of over exhausted young girls at seven in the morning before they performed their numbers all day. I remember being one of them. And the subtle forms of violence that occurred between bodies vying for attention in a small space. Dancers pushed each other down and kicked each other in the face. I just twirled on the small stage made of tables pushed together at the front of the space and shouted out numbers to them trying not to think of what was really going on. I felt my body lost way back there. Shoved out of chance. Investigating the inexplicable scalloped bursts of leaves on the carpet, until my mother grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed me back into the dancing mass.

My name’s Joshua by the way. I won this national award, Mr. Diamond, for a dance of mine back when I was 23 and for the last few years have used my notoriety to do the local competition circuit. I make a few hundred dollars a weekend, a thousand if I teach, but it’s hell. Every little girl is me. Every little boy is too cruel or painful to account for. In my solo I wore a nude bodysuit with red and brown ribbon tied around my head and wrists and danced to Via Dolorosa. The last time I heard that song buying rhinestones at Michaels I literally dropped all my shit and started crying before I made it to the parking lot. My parents like to play it in the car when I come to visit. I feel like I could fucking kill someone. But that subsides. I let my head fall back and choke on life.

What seemed to be happening during this next dance number where girls had green pipe cleaners coming out of their heads and glitter rubbed across their chests, was all their bodies formed to make a giant mouth being levitated by all the spotlights. Diamond jewel sparkles sifting through the red lips, a smiling mouth. This wasn’t the xanax. The xanax was long gone. My armpits were wet and cold. Joshua, the mouth said -- the little bodies of light stretching and reaching beneath the mouth in time with cymbals and blotted beeping. I wanted to lean and sway and drop my head back sensually. Hey! the mouth demanded angrily. The teeth turned silver. I sat up. Now the little girls were on their knees flinging themselves on the floor. You see how easy it is to be alive? the mouth said. Yes, I said, pressing at the spongy veins on my neck. Help them, the mouth said. But that was bullshit. I imagined scraping the pixel dust into a line and the mouth tried to chide me as I moved it over. I handed my scorecard to Judy who sat to my left and whispered, do this one, I’ll be right back. I crouched and made my way to the side exit and went straight for the gender-neutral bathroom and right into the large stall at the end. I pulled my pants down and sat even though I didn’t have to shit. It was so nice not to hear music.

Don’t look at me like that, I heard a young voice say. You’ve been a little monster all weekend, another said. Probably the mother. A sink turned on and off. My thighs looked big. You’ll lose all your muscle when you stop training, a teacher of mine had said, then you’ll feel skinny and be happy but it all turns to fat. She was right. And then I got a boner, right there on the toilet. Fuck, I thought. I grew up with 2 brothers and 1 sister and for a time we all shared a bed. I used to masturbate as they slept, as some form of weird resistance to the prison of my life. I thought about doing it now. I could only get off when I felt angry and disgusted and oddly turned on by my repulsion.

And then I heard the mother hit the girl in the face. There was a silence, then crying. I felt so sick. I lay my chest on my knees. I needed to get back in the auditorium. Alright, I said aloud. I zipped up and walked out. The little girl was leaning against the paper towel dispenser. The mom was gone. Her eyes widened when she recognized me. There was a bloody paper towel with a tooth in it on the counter. I stared at my gold belt buckle in the mirror. Lose your tooth baby? I said, putting soap on my palms. She moved the towel from her mouth and smiled in the mirror. The front one was gone. A girl kicked me in the class, she said, covering her mouth again. I sensed some pride in her eyes, her voice. I turned and squatted and put my wet hands on her shoulders. Do you like dancing? I said. She looked confused. She nodded. I could see her through her fake eyelashes, I could feel the whole spirit on the other side of the skin, and both of us naked by the river we deserved. Then you do it somewhere else, I said. I shook her a little. Here’s the secret -- I said, and grabbed both her hands in mine, looking into her bloody mouth -- You don’t need a costume, none of this okay? You take your shoes off and find another place to dance with your friends where you’re happy. If we had a moment of connection, it was gone. The bathroom smelled like lipstick and rotten chicken broth. I didn’t know who this child was. I gave her her hands back and left the bathroom. A dozen girls were scattered on the floor rubbing their feet. They all looked up at me but I just kept walking.

Devereux Fortuna is a writer and artist. She is a candidate for a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Houston and received her MFA in Poetry from New York University. She is a poetry editor for Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, and she teaches creative workshops at UH and with Writers in the Schools. Her visual art can be found through Waxwing Magazine and Ahsahta Press. Her writing has been published by American Chordata and is forthcoming in Triangle House Review.