Dancer
Some days when I’m on all fours and the corporate ladder-climbers on retreat are flogging me with their big foam swords, I watch the LEDs halo around the nearest bald head through the honeycomb eyeholes of my wolf costume reeking of weed and piss and I try to make a desert sunset in my mind. Out there I’m a horse with no rider, galloping off to where no one’s been. Out there the frontier is endless, while here in this fur cage the space for me is always shrinking.
I’ve gained thirty-three pounds in six months. Soon I’ll be nothing but blubber and shame. Some days I like to think there’s a part of me that can transcend my fate, like a fortress in a maze, impossible to reach. Maybe it’s the part that sees sunsets in sweaty heads, mystic springs at the bottom of the tank into which I’m daily dunked. Maybe it’s the part that once tap danced for no one. Maybe it’s hope. But it always disappears as soon as the lights go dim in the Ramada Inn conference room and “Fight Song” starts to play and a hundred sword-wielding men in starched white shirts shout in unison, “Slay the beast! Become the beast!”
Some days fewer than three words pass my lips. Last Monday, the dropout who’s being primed to replace me asked how old I was. When I told him, he only said he was sorry. I went on poking the edges of bruises as if nothing were the matter. In 167 waking hours I have yet to stop thinking about this for more than five minutes.
I hate what this job has made me. When I applied, I thought it would give me time to sort things out. They said they wanted somebody who could move and I guess my body fit the bill, or at least the suit. I was later than most in finding regular work. It never occurred to me you need experience to gain experience, and so here I am: five years out of high school and still hanging on by my teeth to the lowest rung. It only makes matters worse that I hardly ever bothered with class in those days. School to me then was time better spent in my room practicing for what really mattered—all those thousands of wings and cramp rolls in sneakers with glued-on taps on that little strip of plywood deep into the ghostly hours of the morning. I liked dancing to vaudeville songs the best, old Rudy Vallee and those kitschy revival acts from the 70s. Keeping time, that was all I had to do. And I failed.
The problem is I never learned to find something else, something more real to give myself over to. By the time I’d scraped enough C-minuses together to graduate it was too late. I could never withstand the pressure of auditions, the smug looks on the manicured faces of the competition. Some of them even wore top hats and tails, and not the dinky kind which drags behind me today. I could never picture myself beside them on Broadway. Even in swoony teenage marquee dreams, it was never quite me up there on stage—just a lone, faceless shadow gliding between spotlights.
Meanwhile I could never follow what those community college professors were trying to tell me about equity and depreciation. My head was always in my shoes. Forget parties, forget dates. I didn’t have friends, I wasn’t noticed. I was a hermit, a hostage of yearning with a Fred Astaire poster on his wall.
Of course nothing ever came of it. With each rejection I lost the will to practice, and with no practice the rejections only piled up that much faster. Then there was the crash and the break and the right leg outgrew the left, and at last my dreams died in the same bedroom with the same plywood board where I don’t tap anymore and if I did it’d come out all lopsided anyway and I still try not to think about it and for years and years every day has passed just the same and I’m just the same and everything and everyone is just so precisely the same it’s sickening, just sickening.
Sometimes I think my life is a joke waiting for a punchline. The more I tell it, the less funny it becomes.
Now, on this bench in this locker room with a stiff towel around my still-soaked neck and the two foot-paws of my wolf suit unmoving on the cold floor smattered with pubes and dead ladybugs, I see how much I’ve missed. I know so little of what others know. Maybe this job is my penance for all that time lost to a fantasy unfulfilled. Maybe it serves me right, playing the fool for their satisfaction. I was a fool for thinking I could ever outrun the real world. I wasn’t made to run.
Watching the boxes of expired donuts in the corner sag dejectedly, I remember a joke Polly made one summer morning long ago while our grandmas met for breakfast before dropping us off at actuary camp. Waiting in line, she pointed to the mat underneath our flip-flops: “America runs on Dunkin?” Then when she grew tired of waiting for me to respond, she looked me straight in the eye and with a haunting sincerity prodded my chest and said, “Poor Duncan.” The next bus won’t come for another forty-five minutes and there’s nowhere warm to wait for free but here. I can still hear the voices of newly minted alpha-tier sellers networking out in the hall, dreaming of the yachts they’ll buy and the wives they’ll cheat on now they’ve been so transformed by their afternoon with WolfJackers. I’m thinking again about how old I’ve become.
It doesn’t seem worth taking off the costume yet. Sometimes I wish when I remove it there’ll be someone new underneath, someone more ambitious. But I know what I’ll find—the same thin hair, the same pockmark clusters, the same purple bags hanging from the same frownlined eyes—so why should I bother?
Sometimes I wish the world were empty and it was my job to build it up all over again.
I hear a clatter from behind me, the sound of stacked buckets and mops tumbling onto linoleum.
“Hey buddy, pull my finger.”
I don’t need to turn around to know who’s in the room with me. It could be any of them, all of them—one alpha is indistinguishable from another.
“What, wolfboy, you don’t talk to me? You think you’re better than me?”
The footsteps draw nearer and I can tell he hasn’t picked up after the mess he’s made. My knee pits are sweaty and my jaw aches from the nervous clenching and unclenching. I wish I’d left when I had the chance.
“Nah I’m just messing with you, bro. Look at me, Wolfman Jack, I won’t bite. You’re the wolfman, bro, you do the biting here. I won’t bite, but uh … you won’t bite—right? Yeah? Ha ha. Wolf man, wolf amigo. El wolf-o. Who’s Wolfman Jack again? Sometimes I just say these things and I don’t know why.”
I want to be on the bus. It occurs to me I’ve never wanted to be on the bus before, but now I do. It’s like discovering a new tooth in my mouth that came in pre-rotted.
“AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Can you hear me in there?”
A pair of hammy mitts appear on my shoulders. I jump up from his grip straight onto my two jelly legs. The towel drops from me and lands with a squelch. He has a foam sword sheathed in his belt with its T.J. Maxx tag showing. Without meaning to, I say, “Sorry.”
“It speaks! It’s aliiiive! C’mon shake my hand, buddy.” He extends his hand but I’m too focused on the oil slick lenses of his Oakleys to really notice or respond. “Shake it. C’mon. Shake it. Shake my hand. Do it. Shake my hand, bro. There’s no buzzer. C’mon. Shake with me, Jack. Shake. Shake me. No catch. I’m not tryna trick you. Shake my hand. Just shake my fucking hand already, okay kid? I’m not doing a bit. No too-slows. Just shake it. Don’t be like this. Don’t do this to me. I’m being nice, okay? I’m fucking serene right now, Jack, okay? Just shake my goddamn hand, dude. Are you negging me? Is it cuz I’m wearing black on black? My buddy’s always busting my balls about this color theory shit, ‘No one’s gonna buy a Mazda from a guy with no flare,’ blah blah blah. Just c’mon, bro. Help me help you. Bro, c’mon. Shake my hand, bro. You’re hurting my feelings. Shake my hand already.”
So I lay my paw in his hand, just hoping he’ll stop. My breaths echo wetly around the mask while he glowers back, openmouthed.
“Do it for real or don’t do it all, bro. Firm that shit up, don’t be a sissy with me. None of that noodle-arm B.S. You are a wolf man, my man.”
So I squeeze his hand until the knuckles crackle and fold into one another.
“Ow! Alright, enough.” I let go and his hand flops down into his pocket where he thinks he’ll hide the pain. “Jesus. Some people have no manners. I mean … God fuck. Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring Him into this.” He crosses himself and kisses his fingers up to the ceiling. “But anyway so listen bro, me and my buddies have a proposition for you. Business deal kind of a thing, you get me?”
“No. Sorry, no. I have to bus. Get to bus. I have to get to the bus. Pardon. Uh, me. Sorry.”
“That death trap? No no no, you can do better than that. Matter fact, call an Uber. One of those nice self-driving ones.” He pulls out a thin leather money clip with the head of a lion embossed in its center. “All you gotta do, well … I mean why even waste my time explaining, it’s so simple. This is easy money for you, dog. Wolf, I mean. Okay now get down on your knees.”
“What?”
“C’mon, just get on your hands and knees, like back there on the stage. Alright, fine, here.” He pulls out two hundred dollar bills. “What’s your price?”
I can’t make myself respond. I can’t make myself begin to think about how to respond.
“I know it can’t be more than two hundred, bro, I mean look at this fucking place. Look at that fucking suit. Okay, okay, fine—three hundred. I’ll give you three hundred dollars this minute. Just knee down already, my guy.”
We blink at each other for thirty seconds.
“Quit squeezing me, dude! Who’s the MBA here? Certainly not Mister Wile-E.-Coyote-looking-ass over here. Alright, Jesus—I mean … shit.” He goes through the crossing routine again. “Five hundred. That’s it. Five hundred dollars. That’s my ceiling. I told my guys two would do it, but I’m gonna level with you here: I’m too nice. I’m just a working man like you under all this. Right here, in the heart where it counts. Too nice, everyone tells me, too nice—I know I know.”
He shakes the white-splotched bills in my face and then slams them down on the bench. “Five hundred—you in or you out? Don’t tell me you’re out. Why the hell would you be out? No goddamn reason for you to be out. Five seconds, then you’ve gotta choose. Okay? Five … Four … And I didn’t say goddamn. Three … You misheard me. Two … Don’t fuck me here, man. One …”
I need him to stop. I don’t want to see what comes after one. There’s no other way.
I lower myself down on my hands and knees to the dark between locker and bench; even the light of my desert sun abandons me here. This is how you empty a person: little by little, refusing all objection, teasing the soul out piece by piece, leaving it with nowhere to run. I never wanted money—I only wanted to be alone, out of this wolf suit, out of this Ramada Inn, out of this nothing country of asphalt and concrete. I wanted to dance and be a dancer. But you can’t dance on all fours, not really.
Then I feel the weight of him sink into my spine as he grabs the flaps where mask and suit meet like reins to steer me.
“Why’s your back so wet? Y’know what, don’t answer that. Okay now we’re just gonna walk into the hallway totally casual-like, like nothing’s any different, okay? Nice and slow.”
Maybe my manager will come and put an end to this, if he can only stop smiling at his Apple Watch long enough to notice. Or maybe I’ll find a nail to step on or a puddle to slip in, if it’s not out of the way. Maybe my heart will stop beating before I reach the door.
“Oh and do a little howl when we get there. Just a little one, don’t do it too big. Or actually? Never mind. Excessive. Too … flary.”
Here I come, and nothing and no one will stop me. I’m an ant on a boulder on a hill that ends where it begins, toppling down forever. Sometimes I wonder if falling feels like returning.
What do you do with your hands and feet when you fall? Do you dance?
“Hey can I ask you something? Do you ever picture celebrities sleeping? Not that I do or anything, but … Hang on, my phone. Just keep going over there—that door. Where’s the tail on this thing? Yeah, that door over there. Duh.”
Any second now. I’ll cross that threshold, and…
“This girl, man, she won’t stop Snapchatting me, even after … I mean she says she’s twenty-two but she looks twenty-eight and she acts thirty-five, so I … Like what are we doing here, right? Do you know how much I make in a year? My dad would be so damn proud if he were alive. I mean look at this girl. Here, look at her. C’mon. Look at her. I mean c’mon. Witness this, brother. Looky. Jesus, just loo—”
So that’s the sound of skull on metal. It’s duller than I would’ve expected, like a fish dropped on the sidewalk. There’s no mark on the doorframe. But I look behind and there’s blood, crimson-black in the gloom and chunkily running through the grout between linoleum tiles down the slope so subtle I’ve never noticed it before towards the central drain. His body is motionless, hands splayed at his sides like Al Jolson with a small white grin on his small white face, eyes wholly vacant. I never knew a nose could go so flat, like it just disappeared.
I take the mask off to see it all clearer, to make it all realer. I feel awake now. My burden is lifted. I have real work to do.
First I slide the body gingerly by the legs back to the lockers. The bumps in the floor make his torso rattle a bit. Moving a person isn’t so hard when you’re urgent about it. I leave him propped up with his head in my locker.
Then I check the laundry chute on the wall for something absorbent—I know the towel will be too wet to do any good. I take a few moth-chewed shirts and blouses and sop up what I can of the snail trail of blood. Some traces remain but I don’t intend to stick around long enough to answer for them. I stuff the wet rags in the locker under his neck.
Then I take the new guy’s smaller, fresher wolf costume and slip the two halves over the alpha’s arms and legs. To finish the scene, I stick his right hand down the suit’s front and under the strap of his boxer-briefs and put an expired donut in his mouth. He’s starting to wheeze, so I place my mask over his head and hurry out the back way.
This is the last I’ll ever see of the Ramada Inn, over and beyond the river of milky runoff from the dumpsters in the alley ablaze with the light of the evening sun I cannot see. I think to myself that I’ll never smell that smell again. It feels like a graduation. Maybe now I’m moving on.
#
Here I stand in the Subway across from the church. I don’t know how I got here and I don’t wonder why. It’s been snowing, I can tell from the pool of slush around my foot-paws. The bus will arrive soon but I won’t hurry. Buses come and go. The children will point and squirm but I won’t mind them. Even children grow old. The sandwich artist will speak without meeting my eyes. It’s a living, like any other. We’re more alike than anyone could know. Next time I’ll be the one serving them.
Someone’s sure to come after me, I know. But they’ve always been after me. Soon they’ll see, and soon they’ll understand. I’m not a man of violence. I’m a dancer.
What do I want? For once, I know exactly what I want.
It starts out soft and slow, just timeless little taps of felt against rubber, hardly perceptible to anyone at all, but I know I’m dancing. There goes the right foot, tapping out a beat to the words “Veggie Lovers.” Then in comes the left with “Five Dollar Footlong.” Four against five—I never knew it could be so easy. It’s lopsided, but it’s me.
My brain is paralyzed by permutations of breads and meats and cheeses and vegetables, but my feet are itching to fly. I let them.
You know, I could live and die in this Subway. I could be the center of the sandwich. This is my stage and you’re the crowd. Here, I’m dancing again. Here, I’m brave and I’m young and I’m dancing again. No one can touch me. Not a soul.
I don’t even need to eat anymore. I don’t hunger for much—I’m not that kind of wolf. Just give me a bit of space to move in and two feet to do it with. I hear my song and I’m dancing now and I have everything. I have a face and it’s smiling. I’m happy now. I’ll never be unhappy, so long as I’m on my feet. I can’t stop and I don’t want to.
No mind, all body. I’m a horse with no rider, a wolf with no pack. I’m a dancer out of time. I’m not afraid of sirens. They sound like bees farting.
No, they’ll never reach me. I am the pure individual. Alone. I am.
But I’m not me, the I who tells you I am and am not me. I’m you. And I don’t even know you, you who made me this individual, you who made me hurt and hurt. I employ myself. I’m a championship tapper. I have a sizable and varied collection of vintage marionettes. I straddle the vanguard of the second vaudeville renaissance. I’m the people person’s people person. My legs are long and bursting with rhythm. I’m the dancer. Dance is all I do, all I ever do. I am the wolfman tap tap tapping away, away, away. Time after time. Step ball change step ball change and shuffle off to Buffalo. I’m stepping out, top hat, white tie, and tails. Watch me as I go. Watch the tail, watch it wagging. Oh can you hear me howl? That’s how you’ll know I’m free.
Mini-interview with Joel Henry Little
HFR: Can you share a moment that has shaped you as a writer (or continues to)?
JHL: This story may not be entirely true, but it’s how I remember it, anyway. In fourth grade, I was assigned a short novel to read about a young English boy coming to live with a Native American tribe sometime during the French and Indian War. Straight away, I hated the main character with such unmitigated fury that I gave up and refused to read past the first chapter. When I shared this with my best friend (who was one grade older and had been assigned the book the year before) on our daily walk home, he sympathized, but assured me that it was worth reading ahead if only to get to the part where the main character dies. This was something I couldn’t bear to miss, and so I read the whole thing in one sitting that same night. But wouldn’t you know it, I got to the end and there was no death scene at all. No maiming, no disemboweling, no nothing. I turned the book over and over again, searching for missing numbers, stuck pages, something, anything … all to no avail. The next morning, on the playground, I confronted my friend about this mysterious absence and he admitted the whole thing had been a prank, albeit one played in my best interest, gradewise. As I sat in English class that afternoon, fuming, I started writing the lost chapter that never was in my faux-camouflage-laden notebook: just as our hero settled into his new life with his new family out on the new frontier, tragedy struck—a herd of crazed buffalo swept the village, stampeding the whiny little twerp into smithereens—oh the humanity! And so there it was: the first story I ever wrote. I’ve been exacting petty vengeance through fiction ever since.
HFR: What are you reading?
JHL: Currently lopin’ on through Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. I love those crazy cowboys!
HFR: Can you tell us what prompted “Dancer”?
JHL: I usually write from characters and images, and ”Dancer” began with one of each: a man who’s paid to dress up as a wolf at corporate events, and someone spontaneously bursting into dance while waiting in line for fast food. Most of the story followed from trying to connect those two dots. A lot of the tap dancing stuff was informed by memories of people I knew in the dance world growing up, some frustrated and embittered by it, others not. The dialogue of the “alpha” character was inspired by a guy I met at work one day who was super into The Wolf of Wall Street for all the wrong reasons.
HFR: What’s next? What are you working on?
JHL: The next big project is not literary but musical: I’m about halfway through recording a new album of original songs—my first in four years. When that’s finished, I’m embarking on a surrealist coming-of-age novel and hoping this’ll be the one to stick.
HFR: Take the floor. Be political. Be fanatical. Be anything. What do you want to share?
JHL: I’m looking to start an amateur baseball team. I’ve got three outfielders committed and raring to go. Any takers? Also looking for a band of nefarious rivals to shore up team morale. Ne’er-do-wells welcome. Direct all inquiries to joelhenrylittle@gmail.com.
Joel Henry Little is a bookseller and writer/musician from New York City. He received a B.A. in English from Hunter College, and his work has previously appeared in Maudlin House and A Thin Slice of Anxiety. Website: joelhenrylittle.com.
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Heavy Feather Review 