THE
WHITE MAN WHO
WANTED
TO DANCE
by Sahedran
Ann Shelborne
It was a rainy Saturday night, my apartment softly aglow with small incandescent lamps placed all about the room, golden oldies playing on the radio – while I attempted to teach Michael how to dance.
To look at Michael he is Dionysus incarnate: nearly six-feet-tall, a beautifully proportioned body, the definition of his muscles revealed by the soft, sleeveless shirts and form-fitting pants he always wears, his long hair styled, framing his whole head in an electric halo; a black stud earring in one ear; and eyes that are sensitive and reflective, like deep pools of water. A recovering alcoholic, he has been to the blade’s edge of death and his face is old with suffering beyond his years, giving a depth to his beauty. The amber brown eyes are sensual and quietly beckoning – his whole presence emanating an intensely erotic male power.
I moved slowly next to him in the soft light of the room, my eyes downcast, listening, feeling for the rhythm of the music. Then I looked into Michael’s face. I have never seen such terror in the eyes of an adult. Completely against his will, he swayed a little opposite me, but his face reflected pure fear – like a deer frozen as it looks into oncoming headlights. The realization came over me in that moment that though he has taken on the outer appearance of a Dionysian male wildness and potency it does not yet truly emanate from within him. He is a prisoner of his thoughts and his social mask, unable to express his heart and soul through his body.
Aware of his own paralysis, he looked into my eyes and said softly, "You have the ultimate challenge in teaching this White Boy to dance."
To lie naked with Michael in our sexual love-making, to touch and be touched by him, is to float and roll, wrapped in layer upon layer of silk threads – deeply nurtured. The dark eyes that look into mine are adoring, captivating, vulnerable, and my whole being becomes liquid in his embrace. But when the moment of taking him into me comes – here, too, it reveals him to be a child of this culture: he gives totally of his mind, empties it out, holds nothing back. And of the flesh he is the same he touches and kisses and sucks and strokes; spinning, always spinning those ecstatic threads of silk around me. But at the moment of fusion, he does not empty out his heart, his passion, his soul. He cannot take the ride at that level; and when questioned – it is as alien to him as surrendering his body into movement while dancing.
After a year and a half of slowly building a friendship, we "leapt into the fire," and spent four meteoric weeks of absolute wonderment together – opening ourselves to that invisible stream of life just below the surface of the daily world: thoughts, feelings, fears, dreams, sensual touch all exploding in an intense sharing whenever we were together. But I have seen behind his mask; have accompanied him into his dragon’s lair – to the place of his greatest dread. And one day very shortly after our tentative dance that Saturday night he will write me a letter, filled with self-deception, logically explaining away the magic of our connection, overthrowing our budding relationship to retreat to the security of an old girl friend who will never ask him to "dance." So he will never have to face the abject terror, (and fierce longing in his heart), to break free of all the social restrictions and definitions in which he lives trapped, as in a cocoon.
I have seen the Butterfly within Michael, have reached out my hand and for one brief moment, brushed the soft, brilliantly colored wings with the tips of my fingers and have had my soul forever set on fire with love for him. I have felt his pain. Seen his fear. And then, in an agony of despair, watched as he recoiled from me.
I hope he will allow himself to dance freely one day perhaps he will do so in a fire circle, with other men, drumming and singing and chanting the old chants, evoking ancient rhythms. He has Indian blood on both sides, so perhaps, one day, this White Man will get up on his tip toes and dance as the eagle flies, as the stag runs, as the stallion mates in spring. And when that day comes I will know, will feel it in the depths of my own body and soul –through that invisible river of erotic connection, in whose waters Michael and I are forever joined.
April, 1992; Mourning our culture’s suppression of The Dionysian spirit in men (Sonoma County, California)
Reprinted from a larger work called The Holy Whore: A Memoir by Sahedran Ann Shelborne (P.O. Box 1965 Sebastopol, Ca. 95473)
