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  A Beginner’s Guide to Ballroom Dancing

  Briar

  Six Years Ago

  We sat in the library, working on our respective projects. He always came to me at Harvard, because we had nicer facilities, a nice library, better resources. And while we went to different schools, took different csses with different cohorts and different professors, the overp in material was fairly significant. So we’d compare notes and help each other out. But tonight wasn’t a very productive night, because Kyle wouldn’t stop compining.

  He was still pying football, but the demands of both a graduate program and university level athletics were significant, and he was worried he couldn’t keep up with the younger pyers anymore. He was all of twenty-four years old, but he was concerned he wasn’t agile or flexible or fast enough, that his footwork wasn’t fancy enough these days. And as I was attempting to finish my project, his concerns, while fair, were a distraction.

  Finally, I’d had enough of his bellyaching and told him straight up: “I have the solution to your problem!”

  “Do you, now?”

  “I do indeed!” I said. “C’mon, we’re going to the roof!”

  “But it’s cold out, and we have work to do-”

  “We’re going to the roof!” I said, grabbing his hand and huffing and puffing as I attempted to pull him from his seat, him chuckling at me as I struggled in vain to jerk him off. “Come! On! Come-”

  “You gotta stop telling me to come, O’Neil,” he ughed, “People are gonna take it out of context.”

  I stopped short of actually spping him, but dammit, I thought about it.

  Finally, the big lunkhead relented and got up for me, trailing behind as I led him upstairs through the roof access door. The full moon cut through the wispy clouds on the cold November night, while the crooked and uneven streets hummed with traffic and pedestrians.

  “What are we doing up here, O’Neil?” Kyle said, and the bemused look on his face made me smile even back then.

  “Put your hands on my hips,” I said, turning around to face him with an expression he’d ter described as fervent.

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “Did I stutter?” I said. “Put your hands on my hips!”

  “Why?”

  “Imma show you how to dance!”

  “Because, why, exactly?”

  “You were just compining about how you’re getting stiff. This will help with that. You’ll start using muscles you didn’t know you had and become a lot faster and a lot more agile. Trust me! Now put your hands on my hips.”

  “If you insist,” he said with a slight roll of his eyes.

  He put them where I’d instructed, and I wrapped my arms around his neck. I lowered myself back, and he went down on me. “Good,” I said, looking up at his perfect face bathed in gentle moonlight. “Now slide your right foot forward in an arcing motion.”

  He did so, and I moved backwards as he pushed forwards.

  “Now pivot,” I said, “Arc your left over here, shuffle with me, good, good, keep going-”

  We remained interlocked as we graced our way across the rooftop, warming each other up as we kept on moving in time with one another, twisting and turning and pivoting and getting swept up in our shared motions. He caught on quickly, a few early stumbles notwithstanding, and by the end of it he was twirling me around and lifting me, and I was prancing about with his hands all over my slender frame. We flowed into each other like two tributaries into a rger river, everything about us becoming one, one body, one mind, one spirit. We surged together with speed and power and grace, each twist and turn and spin and lift a fresh set of rapids in the waterway of our dance. We snaked about the rooftop, flowing together, keeping each other warm and mobile. All we felt was each other, moving in the same direction down the winding path of the proverbial riverbed, the borders between ourselves blurred. We were so close together, sweating and breathing and shaking, shedding our jackets to free ourselves and let loose the heat of our bodies. There was no me and no him, only us. Only our dance. He spun me, he caught me, he held me. He knew me. And I knew him.

  Finally, the dance ended, him lowering me once more, me lifting up my right foot forward, the both of us heaving and panting with our faces pressing together. The sky had fully clouded over, and a single snowfke tumbled down and melted on my cheek. Then another fell from the heavens, and another, and another, and soon, the first snowfall of the coming winter was upon us.

  He raised me back to my feet, and I smmed into his hard chest, my face making full contact with his pec and shielded only by his windbreaker.

  “You okay?” he said, wrapping his arms around me and giving me a hug.

  “Uh, yeah, yeah I’m fine,” I said, returning the hug. “Just can’t believe it’s snowing this early in the year.”

  “Yeah, but it’s kinda cool. First snowfall always gets me pumped up,” Kyle said, still holding me close. I felt his heartbeat through his chest, and that snapped me out of it, hammering awareness into me with a blunt impact of shame. I pulled away, and reluctantly, slowly, he let me go. But we still stayed up there, looking up at the sky, feeling the snowfkes melting on our skin, watching ever-thicker clouds wash over the moon. “Where’d you learn to dance like that?”

  “Oh, uh, one of my sisters taught me,” I answered honestly.

  “She taught you to do the girl’s part?”

  “She wanted to learn both parts. So I wound up helping her practice with both,” I shrugged. “I figured a macho man like you would prefer to learn the guy’s part.”

  “Fair enough, you assume correctly,” he said. “So, can we make this a regur thing? The dance lessons, I mean? I think you’re right, it’ll really help me stay nimble.”

  “Yeah, sure, we can do this once or twice a week,” I said.

  “Cool,” he said. “Hey, also, it’s snowing.”

  “I noticed.”

  “You know what sounds dope as fuck right now?”

  “What?”

  “Hot chocote.”

  “Hot chocote? I dunno, feels a little girly.”

  “You were just doing the girl’s part in a ballroom dance.”

  “... I see your point. Uh, sure, we can get some cocoa.”

  “Cool!” he excimed. It was his turn to grab my hand, and he practically swallowed mine up as he pulled me back towards the access roof. “C’mon, I know a pce across the river!”

  “Across the river?!”

  “It’ll be an adventure! Let’s gooooo!”

  And, in spite of my own inhibitions, I followed him.

  It always was an adventure with him. And he always had to drag me with him. I couldn’t even fathom why he bothered with me when all I did was slow him down.

  Well, no more of that.

  NOW

  I stood in the hotel lobby, reveling in the feeling of my ball gown around my petite frame. Snow tumbled down from the heavens outside in a whimsical onsught, while a menagerie of couples, straight and gay and all things in between, trickled past me towards the ballroom. It was a couples’ affair, dance partners losing all inhibitions atop a wooden floor while a live jazz band unsheathed the power of music from deep within them. Some of the dancers wandered by me wearing sequin dresses and tuxedos, over the white marble floors and beneath the gorgeous chandelier, past the enormous, burning hearth around which I and others had gathered; others wore leather bodysuits, usually but not always stopping at the neck (a few covered people’s entirety); others still wore jeans and tank-tops, the promise of dance evidently enough to keep the warm even as winter sunk its teeth into our fair city; at least one couple, two ptinum blondes walking hand in hand, wore bikinis- one with a stars and stripes pattern, another hot pink (had they gotten off a shift at the strip club together and then come right here for date night? Good for them); one particurly memorable couple were both men, both wearing white button-up shirts with the top three buttons on each one undone to reveal their bountiful gardens of chest hair. Both men had their hands jammed into the pockets of each other’s tan pants, scarcely a quarter-inch between them as they had naked lust in their eyes.

  Then they both fixed their gaze onto me, stopping in their pce amongst the procession into the ballroom, and walked over. I gulped, unable to close my mouth.

  One of the men spoke first. He was tall, probably around six feet ft, with olive skin and curly bck hair and brown eyes and a heavily-bearded face. His muscles bulged through the failing restraints of his white velvet shirt, while his movie-star smile painted a picture of a man who could charm his way out of a speeding ticket. “Hi there,” he said. “I’m Keith. My boyfriend, Carl, and I saw you just now, and we were wondering if you had a dance partner for the evening.”

  Steam filled up the cavity of my inner skull, and I struggled to think straight as images danced before my mind’s eye of the three of us, me jammed between the two of them, grinding against me, massive rods pressing against my-

  “I’m, uh… Not what you boys are looking for,” I said, staring at the ground, trying to force out any treacherous thoughts.

  “On the contrary,” the other one, Carl, with his pale skin and green eyes and short brown hair and sharp, angur, clean-shaven face, said while giving me an even more lustful look than his partner. “I’d say you’re exactly what we’re looking for, boyo.”

  A sharp prong of fear, jagged and cold like steel forged in the heart of the winter itself, plunged into my chest. Suddenly all the steam was gone, all the evilly pleasurable images repced by shame and mockery. “That’s not… I think you have the wrong idea-”

  “C’mon, dude, you’re not fooling anyone,” Keith said with a condescending smile. “I get it, you’re one of those twinks who gets off on the idea of passing, but like… C’mon. With your adam’s apple and your face, you don’t actually look like a-”

  “Please leave,” I said, holding tight to the edge of the red leather chair I sat upon.

  “Fuck’s sake, guy,” Carl said, rolling his eyes. “Look, we’re making you a very good offer here, and you’re not even willing to consider it? The fuck kinda sense does that make?”

  “I said leave,” I answered, turning to face the fire instead.

  “God, this is why everyone hates femboys,” Carl spat.

  I grinded my teeth together. “I am NOT a-”

  Keith ughed. “What, you don’t seriously think you’re a woman, do you?”

  I could practically hear my mother hissing at me from a distance. She’d said that, once upon a time. And she was right, I wasn’t a woman, I’d never really be a woman. I was just fooling myself into thinking I could fool anyone-

  “The dy said no,” Kyle’s voice rang out from my side. I turned my head to find him standing behind Keith and Carl, hands on their shoulders, death in his eyes.

  “Hey man, we’re working on this boy here, how about you buzz off,” Carl said.

  “Only boys I see here are you two. How’d you get in, anyway? Fake IDs?” Kyle said.

  “Fuck off, man-”

  “You first,” Kyle said, twisting the two around to force them to meet his burning blue gaze. “The dy is in fact a dy-”

  “Bro, you’ve got a rude awakening in for you. That’s clearly a-”

  “And what’s more, she’s with me,” Kyle said, literally shoving the two boyfriends apart. One of them slid over the smooth floor, while the other nded on his ass. I tried not to giggle… And failed, because I totally giggled.

  Kyle got down on one knee, which put a whole other set of images in my head. I tried to throw them into the proverbial fire, but they kept coming. Him reaching into his pocket, and pulling out a diamond ring, slipping it onto my finger-

  Instead, though, he took my hand and kissed it, then began working his way up my arm. Each spark of contact from his lips ignited a fresh fire in my soul as he made his way from knuckles to wrist to shoulder. “God, you’re corny,” I whispered.

  “God, I’m horny?” he said, pausing his upward assault and staring me in the face.

  “Corny! I said corny!” I said, my heart doing backflips as I tried to recover some sembnce of composure. Oh, he was good. He was very, very good. And corny. And possibly also that third thing.

  “Are you sure?” he said with a positively shit-eating grin.

  I ughed in spite of myself, then stood up.

  To which he responded by sweeping me quite literally off my feet. I loosed a squeak as the ground beneath my feet was stolen away and I was torn asunder and held aloft. His strong arms were like towers that I was nestled between, his heart beating through his muscur chest as he held me against it. It was somehow more so than I’d ever imagined, than I’d been imaging not one day prior. I was tiny in his arms, a dainty and delicate princess for him to safeguard.

  Er… Rose was. Rose was the princess. Not me. Because I’m not… Not actually-

  “Ready to dance, beautiful?” he said. Did I mention he was wearing a suit? Because he was wearing the fuck out of a three-piece suit. I’d only seen him in it once before, but apparently I hadn’t gotten a good look at it back then because good God was he rocking that outfit. Tight bck pants, a soft bck jacket, a crisp white shirt that hugged his bulging pectorals. “Yeah,” I breathed. “I think I am.”

  “Good,” he smiled at me.

  And then he whisked me away to the ball, the train of my floral gown dancing around my legs as they hung loose in his grip. It… Made me happy. And whoever I was, no matter what was real… I wanted to keep my promise to my father, and to the Father.

  We entered the ballroom, a raucous celebration of movement and sound, rhythm and ecstasy emanating from every attendant, every musician and every dancer. A crooner sang a jazzy song while a bassist, a saxophonist, a trumpeter, and a drummer composed a vibrant and colorful and downright beautiful tapestry of music.

  Kyle set me down gently onto the floor. Part of me was sad to no longer be in his arms. Another part of me couldn’t help but smirk: this was good. Kyle learned to dance from me. If it went the way it normally did, he’d reveal himself to me as soon as I asked where he’d learned to dance like this. I’d ask ‘hey, where’d you learn to dance like that’ and he’d be so high on adrenaline and endorphins and unrelenting lust he’d say ‘from you, you silly goose.’ Or, ya know, something to that effect. Probably something a bit more macho. Kyle was basically the pinnacle of masculinity. God, he made it look so effortless. More than stupid old Brian could ever be. Every time he… Every time I tried to be something like that, I failed before I even started. Paralyzed by my own inadequacy and this cold, wet, slimy feeling in my heart and my lungs and my stomach. Like a rag soaked in sewer water and kitchen grease was waterboarding me from the inside out.

  I shook my head. Those were Brian-thoughts I was thinking. Useless Brian thoughts. Right now I was Rose. And Rose loved to Dance.

  Granted, so did Brian, but… Whatever.

  The bassist plucked away on his instrument, freeing a steady and sexy rhythm, a one two three four, one two three four, one two three four-

  Kyle extended his hand to me and said, “Care to dance, beautiful?”

  “If you think you can keep up,” I said with a wink, taking his hand.

  “I’ll manage,” Kyle smiled as he pulled me close to him, spun me around and then dipped me low and went down on me once again. “I had a great teacher.”

  Mwahahahahahaha! Falling right into my trap! He held his hand on the small of my back, and I looked up into his unblinking blue gaze. “Really? Who?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” he smoldered.

  He lifted me back and we began going back and forth, step step shuffle, step step shuffle, step step shuffle, as the sexophone- SAXOPHONE, I MEANT SAXOPHONE- began moaning and squealing. I was slower than usual; I wasn’t accustomed to dancing in high heels. My feet would be furious with me come morning, but at the moment I didn’t care. The music was flowing through me, the bass strumming in time with my heartbeat, my movements fluid and smooth like the sax and the trumpet as they wailed with delight and pleasure. I danced around Kyle, my fingers trailing over his chest and his arms while I foxtrotted and Charleston’d. Kyle, meanwhile, went big, stepping in time with the drummer as he pounded away. Quick and brutal movements, all power and strength and unrelenting masculine might followed after me, giving chase while I cut a swath through the crowd of dancers.

  They cleared a path for us, Kyle not letting up for a minute, determined to catch me, to pin me down, to get me in his grasp once more. I pivoted just as he reached me, giving him a faux-sp that he leaned into while ughing. I grabbed a fistful of his shirt and leapt into his arms; he threw me into the air, but I wasn’t scared, because I knew he would catch me. He was strong enough to bear the weight of all that I was, and all that I wasn’t. He caught me, and squeezed my hips and brought my face close to his.

  He leaned in for the kiss, but I held a finger in front of his lips and smiled impishly. I poked his nose, and lowered me, spun me again, cpping while I pirouetted.

  He kept on ughing, drinking in the sight of me with naked lust in his eyes. That Look, oh God, that Look. When he looked at me like that, nothing else mattered. Nothing else existed.

  Except, unfortunately, the rest of the world did indeed still exist.

  I collided with a smaller but still substantial wall of muscle, and when I turned to see who it was, I groaned. Carl. Sneering at me. He and Keith boxed me in and began grinding around me, trying to make me the meat in their sandwich.

  Kyle ran after me, gring murderously at the interloping chasers.

  “We’re cutting in,” Keith sneered.

  “She doesn’t look too happy about that,” Kyle said ftly.

  “He’ll learn to like it,” Carl ughed.

  That feeling again, the most disgusting interior waterboarding torture imaginable, overtook me. It almost paralyzed me once more. But these two smug idiots didn’t deserve my fear. They deserved my anger. I brought a high heel down onto Carl’s foot with as much force and momentum as I could muster. Carl screamed, and I wriggled my way out from between him and his boyfriend.

  Kyle put his arms around me, and we stared down the two interlopers.

  They both looked ready to put up their fists.

  However, the music took a turn at this point: it grew faster, more frantic, more chaotic. The musicians reveled in their kinetic energy as they unleashed a song of pure passion and power. And I saw an opportunity.

  I fisted Kyle’s chest and said, “Kyle, honey, I do believe these vilins have challenged us.” “Vilins?” Carl said. “Is he serious?”

  “She is,” Kyle said. “And I agree. I think a battle is in order to win back the honor of this fair maiden.”

  “Something tells me he’s not either of those things,” Carl growled.

  “What kind of battle?” Keith squinted.

  “A dance battle, of course!” I procimed, hands on my hips, standing as tall and as proud as I could manage. The four-inch heels definitely helped.

  Carl rolled his eyes. “God, you are such a fa-”

  Keith put his hand over his partner’s mouth, eyes wide, teeth grinding. “You’re on.”

  Carl whined. “But I don’t wanna!”

  “You’ll dance-battle and you’ll like it!”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then no blow-jobs for a month!”

  Carl’s steely resolve and angry pride shattered like a window meeting a wayward baseball. “Giving or receiving?”

  “Both!”

  “Noooo faaaaiiiiirrrrr!” “Shut up and dance!” Keith said, aggressively spinning his boyfriend.

  Kyle and I chuckled at each other in spite of ourselves.

  And then, it began. An explosion of rhythm and speed, limbs interlocking, feet shuffling, hands all over each other. I felt his chest and his arms, swelling with muscle and slick with sweat; I traced his neck and his face, prickly with stubble, a masculine energy that Rose was more than okay with feeding into; I guided his hands over my face, traced them down my chest and my hips and then guiding them to my rear.

  He gave my ass a squeeze, and I did the same before leaping into his arms. He tossed me into the air once more, and I spun, and nded in his arms and did it again and again and again until he was twirling me about on the ground. All the air around me was a rush, a cyclone that I was the center of. A hurricane of feminine grace and strength, colliding with the masculine shores of Kyle’s bountiful, muscur body.

  Something began to obstruct my vision- my wig was falling out of pce. For a moment, I hesitated, fear ncing my chest, a reality where I outed myself exploding before my mind’s eye. But Kyle stopped it: he pced his hands around my head and fastened the wig in pce. He fixed it. Kept me safe. Kept me secure. Kept me as Rose.

  I could have cried, but instead, we kept on dancing. And dancing, and dancing, and dancing. By the time the song was over, Keith and Carl were completely out of breath, while Kyle was holding me aloft and spinning me and spinning me, fixing my wig each time.

  Our opponents just balked, clearly dumbfounded.

  It only got worse for them when everyone else started appuding Kyle and I. He set me down, and I curtsied while he bowed, and I just felt so damn strong and so girly and so happy and I…

  I was keeping my promise.

  “Yeah, that’s right!” Kyle said. “You just got served!”

  “Oh fuck you!” Carl said.

  “You got F’d in the A!” I shouted, shoving my index and middle fingers in their general direction.

  “You fucking dick!” Carl said, stepping forward, only for his boyfriend to grab him by the back of his shirt and drag him out of the room.

  And Kyle and I just ughed, and ughed, and ughed.

  The music slowed, a crooning melody of gentle romance, and Kyle pulled me into his arms once again. We started slow-dancing, breathing into each other and into this moment.

  I enjoyed it for about five seconds before I realized that Kyle knew I was wearing a wig. He’d… He hadn’t even… He’d just…

  Okay, but what the actual fuck? Why wasn’t he saying anything?!

  I had to know. Best to py it coy.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “No problem. I had fun teaching those creeps a lesson,” Kyle said.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Then what did you mean?” he said, looking down at me with those big, powerful blue eyes. God, they were like the ocean. I just wanted to dive right in.

  I gulped, my heartbeat ardently refusing to slow down. “M-my hair.” “Oh yeah, that.”

  “You, uh, you don’t seem exactly seem surprised that I… That it’s…”

  “That you’re wearing a wig?” Kyle said with a tilted eyebrow.

  I closed my eyes and gave a shallow nod.

  “It’s not a big deal,” Kyle said. “Like you said, you’re insecure about how you look. I get it.”

  “I’m not sure you do,” I said, opening my eyes but not looking up.

  “Try me.”

  I gulped again, then said, “You need to answer my question first.”

  He groaned, but said, “Fine. What was it again?”

  “Where did you learn to dance like that?” I said, finally meeting his gaze once again, refusing to blink as he held me to his chest. “All you said was that you had a great teacher. Who was it?”

  He blinked. Heh. I had him now.

  “I learned from the most beautiful woman in the entire world,” Kyle said.

  My jaw dropped. The stirring I’d felt in my chest yesterday, when I’d been at Violetta’s, when I’d pictured Kyle and I getting cozy together, returned with a vengeance. It was like I was vibrating through reality and being carried up into the stars, basking in the fires of Heaven itself. That could only mean…

  He thought I was…

  But he wasn’t supposed to know that! So what the hell was he doing, and why did I like it so damn much! And oh God, oh Lord, he was leaning in. He was going for it!

  Then his lips were on mine. Then his tongue was in my mouth. Then he was there in Heaven with me. And there was only us. Only Kyle and Rose, together and… And happy. I was keeping my promise, and he was helping me. Making me happy, making me feel so terribly good. His touch, his embrace, his scent, his heartbeat: all of it overwhelmed me. All of it, all of him, made me happy.