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One male in a hothouse of young females
I played the piano for ballet classes at a girls' fine arts camp for two summers back in the late 1960's.
A young woman I had just met and hit it off with named Dottie Allen had gotten a job teaching voice in that camp, and had recommended me for the ballet job as 'someone I'd like to spend the summer with.'
The name of the camp was Belvoir Terrace; it was (still is) in Lenox, MA, and it was owned by Edna and Sam Schwartz. Sam and Edna had bought the estate originally belonging to Morris K. Jessup, the man who had financed Perry's expedition to the North Pole in 1909. This included a sprawling castle of a house [http://www.belvoirterrace.com/], a barn and gatehouse, and beautiful spacious grounds.
Sam had made his money in the meat business, a fact you intuited when you shook hands with him (he only had a thumb on his right hand.)
When she was a young girl, Edna Schwartz had had a fascination with the color purple. So this hue was diffused through everything at the camp. The uniforms were purple; Edna's dresses were all purple; streaks of purple ran through the faux marble table tops in the dining hall; and even Sam's golf cart was purple.
Belvoir was a gynocracy – that is, an institution run by females. At the top were Edna and her daughter Nancy Goldberg (Sam was merely an eccentric fixture.) Then came the androgynous program director Bev Belsom (always carrying a whistle on a lanyard) and her assistant 'Rusty'. Then the 16 or so female instructors: each of these had a bunk consisting of a few girls. Finally there were the 100 campers themselves.
There was also, seemingly by an accident of mutation, a handful of males: a painter, a writer, a flautist, a guitarist, a jazz instructor, and the ballet accompanist (me.)
As the reader can see, there was an interesting ratio (around 20 to 1) of females to males. Men could be easily distracted there; this man was. Dottie had gotten me that job so that she could spend the summer with me; but she had chosen the worst possible place - one rife with smoldering adolescent female passions.
I had never been in a ballet studio before, nevertheless played for a class. The one at Belvoir, a converted carriage house, was quaint (one entered through a large stone arch.) The ballet instructor was a taut little Argentinean spitfire named Nora. Madame (as she was also called) cultivated all the mannerisms and eccentricities of her Latin heritage: these included elaborate kisses on both cheeks, and a few quaint terms she used in class, such as 'Push colita!' (which meant 'Tuck in your tush!')
There was a decent grand piano in the studio. And there, for the first time in my life, the vast repertoire of piano music I had learned could be put to a definite use - and I would get paid in the bargain! I had only to learn which sort of music was appropriate for each bar exercise.
I found the ballet studio to be an incubator for fostering narcissism.
Any artistic endeavor which involves the body invites narcissistic tendencies. A pianist will be particularly concerned about their wrists and fingers. A singer will be even more self-absorbed, since a part of their body is itself the vibratory mechanism.
But a dancer! As their entire body is involved in their artistic performance, they are naturally concerned with their whole body – not only its health and well being and its ability to execute the desired maneuvers, but the very looks and appearance of that body itself.
And so what one sees in a ballet studio are balance bars - and mirrors on every wall. A studio may have only a handful of dancers in it, but these are multiplied by reflections and reflections-of-reflections, until the space seems absolutely choked with dancers.
Given this sort of reflective environment, there is the temptation for a dancer to gaze at herself – and then gaze at herself anew. I have seen the gamut run by dancers in this respect, from those who, more or less indifferent to their looks, constantly sought to hone their technique, to those who were drunk with their own reflections.
I think (pace McLuhen) that the ballet studio, with its plethora (partly reflected) of young ballerinas, was a cool medium. That is, those glances and gazes in the mirror tended to be haughty and self-critical. (But woe if the gaze wandered: it might very well turn to ice at the moment that it revealed another ballerina who seemed slimmer or more beautiful or more agile!)
But what happened when a single male was dropped into this mix? What was cool became hot; what had been some harmless narcissism became a simmering caldron of intrigue.
I knew a few of these girls outside of the ballet studio. In the course of getting to know them, I suppose I might have kidded around with them a bit. (Okay, let me be blunt and say I flirted with them. I only hesitated to use this word because, as I was 24 while they were 14 or so, I could already hear the Ladies of the League of Decency sharpening their knives. I would therefore like to assure them that this was innocent harmless fun. [Cue sound of grinding wheels starting up.])
Once we were in the studio, all this – communication – was reduced to the compact form of glances at one another in the mirrors. Girls who were used to looking at themselves now enjoyed the pleasure of being regarded by what is known as The Male Gaze. I learned the art of the quick ardent glance, the locking of eyes for an instant, the fleeting form of a wink. Thanks to mirrors on all sides, I could send flickering glances to several girls in quick succession. It was a veritable kaleidoscope of suggestion!
But I went further: this sort of communication extended to the very music I chose to play for the various bar exercises. I had established with each girl a favorite piece which could trigger a memory of our relationship: a Chopin Nocturne for one (useful for pliés); a Brahms Waltz for another (good for balancé); and so on. (Yes, I drew heavily from the Romantic repertoire [my specialty] for these associations!]) And of course there was the fallback piece which allowed me to communicate with all of the girls simultaneously: Mendelssohn's 'Wedding March' (which happened to be perfect for grand battements.)
With all those distractions, I was utterly ignoring Dottie. Finally, tired of waiting, she asked me out on our first date: it was to see the movie 'Rosemary's Baby.' But she could not compete with the intrigue in the ballet studio; and that was pretty much the story for my first year at Belvoir.
My playing at least was good enough that I was invited back for the following summer. Dottie and I saw one another a few times over the winter; and, free of the distractions at Belvoir, our relationship blossomed.
But when we returned to Belvoir the next summer, I once again felt drawn as if by a powerful magnetic force back into the web of the young females there. Besides the ballet, there was an additional attraction that second year: a bright older camper who was a great conversationalist. She and I would chat for hours about religion and politics and a whole host of other subjects.
I wanted to write about the last night of camp; for that is where the most interesting things happened - and when some incidents occurred in relation to that particular camper.
On that last night the geraniums were removed from the huge flower pot in the center of the circular drive behind the house, and a fire was built in the pot. Everyone stood around this blaze in a huge circle and linked arms and sang various sorts of sentimental ditties. Of course there was a lot of crying and swearing of eternal friendships and all the other things you would expect in such a situation.
What interested me was the ways in which those final evenings would begin to resemble A Midsummer Night's Dream. People who had behaved like perfectly rational beings during the rest of the summer would do crazy irrational things on that last night. I myself was in a distinctly puckish mood that evening: I was feeling wild and reckless.
I was wanting to see my comely conversationalist. But the darkness of the perimeter had swallowed her up. I knew that her room was somewhere on the second floor of the house. So I went right into the house through the back door there. The stairs were to my left.
No one was watching. A thrill ran through my body as I began the slow ascent of the curved wooden staircase leading up to the girls' living quarters.
Now I know what the reader is probably thinking: that I was that worst kind of vile male scum known as the stalker. But this is clearly not the correct term; for it implies that I knew where the girl was at all times and that I was putting myself proximate to her despite her desire not to see me. But, first of all, she never expressed any such desire; and secondly, I had no idea where the hell she was. I was in fact looking for her; so rather than stalking, you might say I was prowling.
Ah, but to what end (asks the jury very insistently)? Am I hearing another unpleasant word being whispered – that of predator? Then I must protest again because of what that word implies. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, as incredible as it may seem to you, as hard as it may be for you to believe, the absolute truth is that I only wanted to talk with the girl! (Yes, conversation was my aphrodisiac at that time.)
Whatever my appellation, I slowly ascended the staircase to the lair of young girls, much as Cary Grant did in Notorious to rescue Ingrid Bergman. (I know, this is not an apt analogy, since I wasn't trying to rescue anyone. I think I'm thinking more of the electrical charge occasioned by climbing up into a forbidden and dangerous realm.) Of course Cary half-ran up with a distinct sense of purpose. Whereas I crept up with a very foggy purpose in mind.
I finally reached the top of the staircase, and I began my stealthy sneak down the hall. I glanced into the first room (no one saw me, luckily: I could just imagine the hue and cry! Or would they feel safety in numbers and give me the Falstaff treatment?) – some girls were packing and chatting.
And suddenly the full idiocy of what I was about hit me. What was I doing up there in a forbidden area, blatantly tempting fate? I stepped back into the shadows in an alcove off the hall. However, this was not a place I could hide: someone coming by would certainly spot me. I was almost wont to curse my stupidity for putting myself in this position (I say 'almost' because in truth I was still caught up in the thrill of my adventure.)
Suddenly I heard Nancy Goldberg's voice: she was on her way up the stairs; in a few more seconds she would see me there, hiding like a common criminal. (But gentlemen: I protest the use of the word 'common' here!) What could I do?
Well, I could act as though I had been sleepwalking, and that I had just awakened, horrified at where I was. [But that would hardly be convincing, considering it was still relatively early in the evening.]
I could pretend that I had been kidnapped and dragged up there against my will. I could scream holy hell, thus turning myself from perpetrator to victim in one deft maneuver. [But then I would have to identify my captors; after all, everyone knew everyone else in that small community.]
Or: I could make it look as though I had come up there under mistaken assumptions. Perhaps I might have thought that there was an 'open house' in the girls' living quarters on the last night. Using this charade, I would have to appear utterly innocent and devoid of all subterfuge.
Nancy was proceeding apace - I had no time to formulate any other excuses. (Sometimes we have to go with the excuses we have, rather than the ones we wish we had.) So I put my hands in my pockets, affected a casual devil-may-care air, and, stepping out of the shadows, sauntered right by Nancy while whistling 'My Funny Valentine.' She saw me and was of course aghast. 'What are you doing up here?!' Me: 'I thought we could visit up here on the last night.' Her: 'Men are never allowed up here!' 'I found that out!' I replied laughingly as I started down the stairs.
Somehow I met up later with the girl I was seeking. We wandered over to the churchyard next door, and clambered up onto the tops of the two stone pillars on opposite sides of the entrance. And there, chatting merrily across ten feet of separation, we were found by Nancy Goldberg in her purple camp station wagon at 2 A.M. (She would later tell people that she had caught us in a 'compromising' situation.)
I knew that that was it for me at Belvoir – I had burned my bridges behind me.
The following summer, just as Belvoir with its manifold intrigues was beginning again, Dorothy (her true name) and I were on our honeymoon up at my family's cottage near the Delaware River.
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