KEEP BREATHING

zen and the art of social dance

 

John Robert Mack

aka Jack Mack

 

 

 

This book is dedicated with love and joy

to all the students, teachers, and friends

who have danced with me.

 

 

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

My life is a dance, an interplay of words and movements, a tug-of-war between what had always seemed the opposite poles of dancer and philosopher. Dancers move. Philosophers sit around pontificating.  Neither the twain could meet, until I found myself pontificating on the dance floor and said to one of my students, “You know, I should write this stuff down some day.”

“Some day” finally happened.  The words written here come from the deeply held belief that dancing is more than exercise; it is meditation, therapy and play, as well.  Dancing is a way to cleanse the spirit, to connect with something simpler and truer than the mundane life of taxes and heavy traffic. It is also a wonderful way to connect with other human beings.

This book is for the many, many dancers out there who scroll through volumes of teaching materials and realize that most of those can only be read by people who already know how to dance and who, therefore, don’t need them.

This volume is something different.  It hopes to touch the dancer’s heart and perhaps create a smile.  If you learn to be a better dancer along the way, so much the better, but these words hope to enlighten your heart more than they hope to lighten your feet.

Of course, many dancers are simply the Saturday night “Would you like to dance?” is slicker than “What’s your sign?” type of dancers.  For them, this book might be just the thing to have laying on the coffee table if they ever invite a dance partner over for a drink.

 

 

Keep breathing.

The human body can go about three days without water.

It can survive over a month without food.

Deprive it of oxygen for more than seven minutes,

and someone’s going to need to pick out a headstone.

Whenever you get nervous or tense…

keep breathing.

Whenever you become frustrated or angry with yourself…

keep breathing.

Whenever you’ve done that move five hundred times

and not done it right once…

keep breathing…

…and do it again.

 

Dancing is fun.

Learning to dance should be fun, too.

No matter how complicated the move

or difficult the technique,

learning should be as much fun as dancing.

You may become frustrated

or confused

or angry

or embarrassed

or tired and sore,

but the process should be enjoyable;

ideally, it should be as enjoyable as the end result.

If you find yourself arguing more than you are laughing

or crying more than you are smiling,

it’s time to take a step back:

do a cartwheel,

eat an ice cream cone,

watch the sun set.

Believe me, when you go back to your lesson,

the lesson will be there still.

It always is.

 

“Dancer’s Etiquette 101”

If I make a mistake…

then proceed to make it again…

and again…

and again…

…what should you do?

You should smile

and let me keep making my mistake.

It’s my mistake, so it belongs to me.

Don’t take it away from me.

You aren’t the teacher.

The ideal learning situation has three participants:

1. The follower.

2. The leader.

3. The teacher.

Each has a unique job.

The leader leads.

The follower follows.

The teacher teaches.

Even teachers don’t teach

the people they date.

They hand them over

to someone else.

In a group class

let all the other students make mistakes.

If something goes wrong

again and again,

ask the teacher for help:

“Can you tell what I’m doing wrong?”

It’s the teacher’s job to figure out

who is causing the problem.

 

 

Unforgettable

I danced with my mother at my brother’s wedding. In my memory, a big band plays Nat “King” Cole. I’m wearing a white tuxedo minus the jacket and my mother is the beautiful, vivacious woman she was at thirty-five. Her hair changes and shifts like those pictures of Jesus where you see him sometimes with a crown of thorns, sometimes with a serene halo. One moment her hair is long and auburn, pulled up in a bun; the next moment, it is short and dark, permed curly and flecked with gray.

We laugh and whirl: the room has large white tile, like a cafeteria in the 1980’s, the walls are far away and a disco ball paints moving circles of light on everything and everyone. There are people there and tables for dinner, but in my mind’s eye an immense space surrounds us, bordered by blurry images that don’t matter—that didn’t really matter at the time.

I was dancing with my mother, and that was the all-important detail. It connected me to the times in my childhood when I’d danced with her. In slashes and splashes I was, for a moment at a time, the same little boy she taught to polka.

My mother and I had just become friends again after several years of adolescent (and post-adolescent) angst which ended when we both—for the same reasons, but with independent catalysts—entered counseling. That dance was a celebration of our new-found friendship—a new relationship built between two adults trying to find their way through a maze of addiction and compulsion… together.

And so we danced a dance whose steps I no longer remember, but I assume was a variation on the polka. To second and third generation Polack’s like us, everything was a variation of the polka.

In my memory, though, we dance a thrilling and dramatic Viennese waltz, spinning and spinning, driving the rest of the universe, for a few splendid minutes, into an innocuous blur which cannot touch us.

But that vision is impossible. I hadn’t yet heard of the Viennese waltz. I hadn’t yet taught a single dance lesson.

And my mother was paper light and frail from years of struggling with ulcers. I have no idea what she looked like at the time because my only true memories are from a few years later (when she was wasting away due to illness) and from photos I’d taken of her when she still had the bloom of youth.

I can’t go back to photos of my brother’s wedding because I have none, and my brother and I have not spoken in years… not since a year after my mother died.

And so I have a memory of dancing with my mother at my brother’s wedding whose substance is based primarily in fantasy, but whose existence is absolutely rooted in fact.

Just before my own wedding—barely one month after my mother’s funeral—I wept when I realized I would not be able to dance with my mother as I had at my brother’s. By then, I’d been teaching for six months, and I would have been able to dance a waltz with her—and Natalie Cole had just released a song called “Unforgettable” that she sang with her father. The song wasn’t a waltz, really, but it was my mother’s favorite song, and whenever I hear it, she and I dance together again.

 

 

Learning to dance is like building a house:

without a strong foundation, everything collapses.

Learn your basics and learn them well.

Someone who dances five moves beautifully

has every advantage over

someone who dances twenty-five patterns awkwardly.

Don’t rush into learning pattern after pattern

in the belief that such moves make you a good dancer.

If you don’t have the grace and dexterity

to execute them comfortably,

with strength and delicacy,

you will only become a joke.

There is so much more to dancing

than learning a bunch of moves.

Baryshnikov once danced to the music of Frank Sinatra.

He was breathtaking.

He was inspiring.

He was a cat

and a butterfly

and a drunk

and a puppy.

He was in love with the music,

and he made me fall in love with him…

but…

He didn’t dance a single “pattern.”

Not one.

So forget about the fancy moves…

and learn to dance.

 

 

Never be afraid to try a new move out in the real world.

If you wait until you feel comfortable

with your new moves,

chances are, you’ll never try them.

Remember:

the only way to become comfortable with a new move

is to screw it up so many times

you’ve exhausted every conceivable mistake.

Confidence only comes with practice.

My guess is that most of your partners

would prefer to try and follow some slightly funky moves

that you’re still perfecting

than to keep circling the dance floor

like a plane waiting to land

doing the basic for ten minutes.

 

 

 

There are only two rules you need to follow.

Everything else is optional.

1. Don’t look down.

Your head is 20% of your body weight.

Looking down will throw you off balance.

Also, nine times out of ten,

your partner’s feet are doing something

completely different from yours.

Looking down will only confuse you.

2. Leaders always start with their left foot.

Followers always start with their right.

That way, when things break down,

as will happen from time to time,

both partners know how to get started again.

Don’t you wish everything in life

were that simple?

.

 

We learn to walk by throwing ourselves off balance.

Watch a baby learning to walk.

She stands uncertainly,

leaning forward…

then back…

then forward…

then back…

building momentum.

Suddenly, she is inspired:

she pitches herself forward,

and her little legs start pumping

to keep her body on top of them,

until (hopefully) someone catches her

and keeps her from falling.

The thing is,

most adults walk the same way:

head pitched forward,

body diagonal to the ground,

eyes on the sidewalk,

always wondering why we feel off-balance.

Stand up tall.

Take a deep breath into your chest

then …

release the air,

but don’t let your chest fall an inch.

Now—

Pull your neck back

so your head is directly over your shoulders.

Don’t tip your head back

or tuck your chin under.

Have someone place a cupped hand

an inch or so behind your neck.

Now—

bring your neck to their hand.

Wow.

You’ve grown two inches.

Watch people move.

Most of them walk

with their head in front of their body;

they look like turtles

sticking their heads out of their shells

to see if it’s safe outside.

 

Dance Counseling

Dancing is a life-long relationship. It is a relationship between you and your body. Between you and the music. Between you and the rhythm. Like any relationship, it will change over the years. Sometimes, it will seem like your best friend and sometimes like your worst enemy… but as long as you want it, dancing will always come back to you.

Your life will change, and you will become frenetically busy sometimes. These are the times when dancing should be your best friend, but when it will probably seem like a distant relative. All you need to do is let the relationship change. Sometimes a marriage is about romance and passion and drama… and other times it’s about falling asleep in matching recliners while watching a movie.

Dancing doesn’t need to mean dressing up in rhinestones or a tux. It can mean turning on the radio and twirling around the furniture while you sweep the house.

And, like any relationship, you need to avoid getting into a rut. A marriage needs a little spice to liven it up once in a while. You run off to Cancun for a week of excitement and thrills… or you hole yourselves up in the house for a week and just tell everyone you’re going to Cancun for the week so they leave you alone.

Don’t let your dancing get into a rut, either. Take a belly dancing class. Learn jazz, tap or modern. What about ballet? Do you know how to do Cumbia? Any classes you take will make you a better dancer. Or just find a new playlist with music you’ve never heard before.

Anything.

There will be times when dancing is a struggle. For emotional or physical reasons, you just don’t want to, or you feel you just can’t take one step to the music. Do it anyway. If you can’t step… nod your head or wiggle your fingers. Dancing means moving to music. It doesn’t have to mean a night at the ball.

When I was told I had a herniated disc in my spine, I thought my dancing days were over. That was forty years ago, and what I discovered was that the only times my back hurt—other than when I lifted something stupidly—-was when I didn’t dance regularly. Mind you, you always ask your doctor before doing anything physical, especially if you have had an injury, but in my case smooth, relaxed dancing helps my condition tremendously.

But my relationship to my dancing had to change.

No more jumping up and down like a pogo stick for me!

Dancing has been with me my entire life so far… because I have allowed the relationship to change as I have changed.

 

Dance.

Dance with your parents.

Dance with your brothers and sisters.

Dance with your children.

Dance with somebody else’s children.

Dance with your best friend.

Dance with a complete stranger.

Dance with your accountant.

Dance with his wife.

Dance with your teacher.

Dance with your grandparents.

Dance with yourself.

Dance with the grocer.

Dance with the bank teller.

Dance with your pets.

Dance with a minister.

Dance with a principal.

Dance with a soldier.

Dance with the Devil under a full moon.

Dance with the angels on the head of a pin.

Whatever you do…

Whenever you do it…

Wherever you do it…

With whomever you do it…

And for whatever reason:

Dance!

 

 

Om

Yesterday, I danced with the universe.

We get so caught up in looking good, dancing well, leading well, following perfectly and spinning like a top that we forget, sometimes, to dance. Many people, it seems to me, forget that one of the primary reasons to dance with someone is to be with someone. We study at length and in depth the concepts of “connection” to “connect” with our partner, but, in reality, we’re just pretending that the other person even matters.

How much do you worry about how you look on the dance floor?  How often have you chosen your dance partners because you thought they’d make you look good or help you win a contest… or help you to dance better so you could then find an even better partner who would help you win a contest?

Shame on you.

I once attended a dance competition with a dear friend. Watching some of the most amazing dancing I had ever witnessed, I was surprised when my friend said, “Wow, this is all so phony. They’re all pretending to be sexy.”

“What?”

“They all act like they’re flirting and trying to be sexy, but it’s so obvious that none of them means it. It’s all fake.”

It amazes me how often we use dancing with a partner to pretend so many things. We pretend, mostly, that we’re connecting with our fellow dancers. How much do you know about the people with whom you dance? When was the last time you sat with one of them on the floor of their living room while they told you about losing that important promotion at work?

It’s easy to share our joy. It’s easy to share a dance… but do we ever stop putting all our effort into dancing well… and just dance.

One day, a friend and I were working on connection. What with the normal stress of everyday life it just wasn’t working, so I decided to try an experiment. I put on some very relaxing music and just moved around the room with her… no fancy patterns… no patterns at all, really, just walking around the room in time to the music with this very important friend.

I suggested she close her eyes and look around.

I did the same thing. (Of course, I opened them every now and again to avoid crashing into the walls… but you get the idea.)

Believe it or not… I saw her… my partner. Not like in a bad Star Wars special effect… but I could “see” where she was and became totally focused on her. Without all the distractions of what other people thought of me or what I thought of myself or what-pattern-am-I-going-to-lead-next… I really focused on my partner… and we “clicked.”

It was amazing. We locked in sync with each other… wherever I moved, whatever I did… she followed. I would go forward, backward, sideways, do little pivotty things… all non-patterned movement… and it felt like ballet. It was that smooth. It wasn’t anything fancy, I’m sure. To be honest, I’m not really sure what we did… but… I felt connected to her.

Then an even more amazing thing happened: with my eyes closed… without the aforementioned distractions… I saw myself as well. It was like a deep meditation where I could see myself as this pure ball of light and all the universe connected to me… and to us.

I tried to find that connection again the next time we danced. Of course, it wasn’t there as long as I tried to find it… so I stopped trying to find it and just “looked around” and found my partner again, and so we danced.

Click!

In general, dancers use their dancing as a way to pretend to connect to other living beings and to pretend to connect to themselves. The next time you dance with someone, I challenge you to stop trying to do the fancy footwork with your partner and just be with them.

The results, if your efforts are sincere and not just another pretense, may astound you.

 

 

The best way to lead or follow is to understand both parts.

For about six months, I taught classes

designed specifically for folks

who wanted to learn lead and follow.

At the same time, I taught mainstream classes

where the students learned only one part.

Much to my surprise,

I found myself teaching more to the first class

in a four-week series

than I could teach to the second,

even though they were only learning one part.

Oh, there would be some confusion

in the lead and follow classes.

People would flap their arms up and down

until they remembered the right dance frame….

(I kept thinking of Robby the Robot

with his flapping robot arms:

“Danger, Will Robinson!”)

…but, after the initial confusion,

they picked up patterns more quickly,

and their lead and follow was much stronger

than their single-part counterparts.

The only way to really understand what it is like

to follow five hundred basics before every turn

is

to follow five hundred basics before every turn.

The only way to understand how hard it is

to lead that turn

is

to lead that turn.

It is always helpful to dance in someone else’s shoes.

 

 

Dancing is a social occasion.

They are called “social dances”

because, when you dance,

you are meant to social-ize.

That means talk.

From the moment you take your very first steps,

you need to learn to be comfortable talking and dancing

at the same time.

(You thought walking and chewing gum was difficult?)

Why develop a skill meant to help you meet people

if you aren’t able to speak to them once you’ve met?

Most of my students must think I have no social life.

As soon as I teach them a new step,

I start talking to them:

“Any big plans this week-end?”

“How’s your new dog?”

“Is the baby walking, yet?”

I don’t do this because I have no friends.

It’s actually part of the learning process.

Your brain needs to let go of the feet

to make the mouth move.

Just don’t forget to stop talking

when the teacher is trying to speak.

 

 

Make mistakes.

Make lots of mistakes.

Make a few more.

You will only do it right one time

after you have done it wrong a thousand.

So go ahead and get the first thousand out of the way.

When you make a mistake

make it a BIG one,

and make sure you do it on your lessons

or in a class when the teacher is watching.

So many students become nervous and flustered

when the teacher is nearby.

They are afraid of “messing up” in front of the teacher.

Exactly!!!

That’s what you’re supposed to do!

I’m not there to watch you dance perfectly.

I’m there to see you mess up

so I can help you avoid that mistake in the future.

If I don’t see your mistakes,

how can I help you learn?

So make as many mistakes as you can.

And enjoy them!

 

 

Performance Anxiety

When I was a kid, someone told me that if ever I were nervous about speaking in front of a crowd, all I had to do to drive away the fear was to imagine that everyone in the audience was sitting before me in their underwear.

So I’m standing up front in the sixth grade, giving some sort of book report or something, and I begin to feel nervous. I remember this quaint piece of advice, engage my imagination, and, quite suddenly, I’m looking out at a classroom full of scantily clad boys and girls. Needless to say, the very last thing I’m thinking about is my book report.

Remember, this is the sixth grade.

I’m hit by a rush of preadolescent hormones, and I consider myself lucky to be able to mutter a single word. Actually looking up at my audience, clad as they are in next to nothing, is simply not an option. I’m certain they all know exactly what’s going through my mind, and if certain of my classmates, the ones who I find most distracting in a state of imaginary undress, guess what is going through my mind, I am in serious trouble.

For years, whenever someone made that suggestion again, I would blush brightly.

If I tried to use that philosophy while performing now, I’d be forced to face the fact that while, in my imagination, all those people out there looking up at me might be in their underwear, in the cold hard world of reality, I’d still be up in front of them wearing leather pants and a translucent Lycra top.

Again… but perhaps for different reasons… not helpful.

I performed in some way, shape or form nearly every weekend in high school, be it drama, debate, speech, music or track… almost every weekend for four years. I continued performing in theater all through college and beyond. At first, performance was an escape, a way to run away from home while still getting three meals a day. Later, it became a habit and a way make new friends. There was just one problem: from the beginning, and throughout the years, I suffered from acute performance anxiety. I felt total, abject fear of getting up in front of anyone for any reason whatsoever.

I remember the first speech contest I attended; I was fourteen, reading “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allen Poe. As I stood before a room of hostile strangers, I could barely read the words on the page because my hands were shaking so badly, and I could literally see the beating of my heart through the front of my shirt. I felt like a character in the story I was reading.

Then… suddenly… peace. The fear vanished. My hands kept shaking, but my heart slowed down. It was as if a part of my mind had simply decided, “This emotion sucks far more than I care to feel,” and then quietly shut the door against it. I thought it meant I had worked through the fear, that the fear was gone… but every Sunday, a severe bout of depression waited for me as I came down from the surge of panicked adrenaline pushed away every Saturday.

It took me two years to realize I was terrified of performing in front of people. Terrified… really

Well, if I worked very hard at my crafts, surely I would stop being afraid because I would become so darn competent and prepared… and that helped some, but I still threw up buckets the night before solo band competitions. I thought that meditation and breathing exercises and maybe even therapy would help me get to the root of my problem and thereby solve it. Those things helped, too, but the root of my problem was quite simple: the idea of getting up in front of people terrified me.

And so I took a job—teaching… dance no less!

That meant standing up in front of people every single day. What sort of psycho was I?

A Polish psycho… and a Virgo to boot. I refused to let my fears interfere with what seemed a wonderful career opportunity.

So I started teaching… and I broke out in cold sweats before every lesson and had to hide out in the bathroom or the office to regain control several times a day.

Ten years later, I attended a charity fundraiser to teach a few hundred folks how to do the two step, and I didn’t even realize I should be nervous until the room filled up, grew noisy, and I became afraid that I might not be able to project loudly enough to be heard.

But as soon as someone handed me a microphone, I forgot to be nervous again.

Really. It was fun.

So what changed?

Me?

Two things changed, and maybe a third.

1) Somewhere during college in Milwaukee, Wisconsin I discovered that going out to dance clubs and jumping up and down for four or five hours was amazingly therapeutic. It was great exercise, and I woke up the next day feeling great. The experience was euphoric… almost religious.

For holidays, however, I would return to the land of my birth a hundred miles north of Milwaukee. It was a smallish town where I could go out to a dance club and find the floor completely empty until midnight. Well, that only left two hours to dance and a whole lot of time sitting on a bar stool by myself

So, finally, I figured, “Screw it.” There weren’t more than three people in the place—I’d go ahead and dance by myself.

At first, I was nervous: two drink minimum the first couple of times I got out there. But no one laughed… or, to be more precise, I was so involved in my own dancing I never noticed whether anyone laughed. A number of times, the club would fill up without my realizing it

And an empty dance floor had distinct benefits: I could get into the music a lot more because I didn’t have to worry about bumping into or hitting anyone.

And more often than not, someone would say something complimentary when I finally left the dance floor… dripping wet and exhausted. What did they usually say? They would say I really looked like I was having fun, and they respected the fact that I could go out there by myself and dance with a freedom they knew they didn’t have.

It was the freedom—more than anything—that people admired.

So if I fell down (which I have done more times than I care to recount) and laughed at myself and kept dancing, their estimation went up. Not down… up. After a while that kind of dancing stopped being scary. It didn’t feel like performing any more. I was just exercising, and no one was forced to watch.

But put those people in rows of chairs and call the dance floor a stage… and the panic would still set in.

2.) I got up in front of people a lot. Every day. (That happens when you’re a teacher.) Sometimes I was brilliant; sometimes I was a complete idiot. I discovered that if I made mistakes in front of a class… they liked it. “Heck,” they thought, “if the teacher can make a mistake, and it’s okay… it must be all right for me to make mistakes, too.” And they would stop trying to be perfect… they’d make mistakes… and, because they were making mistakes, they would learn how to dance.

So I started letting myself be goofy in class, and it helped loosen up the students. Originally, I had been afraid that if I didn’t act “professional” enough (read as “stuffy” and “uptight”) the students wouldn’t respect me. What I learned (after a few months) is that allowing myself to be human (read “goofy” and “imperfect”) gives my students a feeling of freedom similar to the freedom I had found for myself on the empty dance club floor. Once I acted the goofball intentionally, the fear of looking foolish eased up. After all, that was part of the point, now.

The constant doing of it helps, too. Out of the countless lessons, classes and workshops I teach each year, a certain percentage goes poorly… but most of the time I do okay. If I only got up in front of people once a year—that one time would assume a tremendous amount of importance. The fact that I do it every single day reduces the significance of any particular failure.

3.) (Maybe) About ten years ago in meditation I had a vision of my future. I saw all the dance, theater, writing, teaching projects I hope to create over the course of my lifetime. I saw the kind of life those sorts of projects would most likely give me.

At the time, I was in the middle of a possible lawsuit and fretting (to say the least) about the outcome. When I looked ahead and considered the many potentially controversial projects in store for me, and I thought about all the public exposure I’d have if my career followed the direction I hoped—I saw all these things in my future and thought to myself, “Geez, if I let this little affair get me all bent out of shape, what am I going to do when I have hundreds of protestors outside my theater/dance hall/lecture hall because of the naked dancing nuns in my musical adaptation of the life of Saint Francis of Assisi?”

If I am going to be in a public appearance kind of job for the rest of my life—and my audience is only going to get (hopefully, anyway) bigger… I better face the fact and once and for all stop with the stressing out about it. It’s either that or get the heck out of public speaking and the performing arts as a career and go back into designing video games.

So I told myself to stop being so darn uptight about it.

And, believe it or not, I actually listened.

And, believe it or not, it worked.

Almost overnight… it was that simple… after ten years of hard work.

 

Thumbs are unnecessary for dancing.

They are a gift to us

to help us type efficiently,

to tie our shoes,

and to open doors and pick up spoons.

We do not need them to dance.

Avoid squeezing desperately with your thumbs,

whether leading or following.

A thumb lock of death will hurt your partner,

make turns more difficult,

and render your dancing awkward.

I once discovered,

quite by accident,

that all the followers in one of my group classes

removed their rings before coming to class.

Why?

Because they were tired of having their fingers squashed,

and the rings made it even worse.

Similarly,

avoid grasping your partner’s thumb

and holding it like a joystick.

You cannot control your partner’s movements

as you would a race car in a video game.

I never tire of watching leaders

who flap their hands like birds

trying to dislodge their partner’s chokehold on a thumb

so they can try to do open patterns.

 

 

Leading is a suggestion, not a command.

Leading a turn is your way of saying,

“Gee whiz, wouldn’t it be fun to do a turn?”

not

“Yo, You gotta turn, NOW!”

You suggest when to turn

and which turn to do;

it’s up to me to do the turn myself.

To execute a turn smoothly,

I need to spin directly over my center of gravity.

You, because you are not me,

will never know precisely where my center is.

If you force me to turn,

you will only throw me off balance.

Trust me to turn myself.

Give me the freedom to reject the turn

if I happen to be off balance at that moment.

If you try to turn me forcefully

when I’ve just stepped on a wad of gum,

you could twist my ankle.

You could also wrench my shoulder.

Either way,

I probably won’t dance with you again.

 

“Dancer’s Etiquette 101”

Part 2

If I make a mistake that hurts you…

stop me immediately.

 

 

Start Every Day Dancing

No, I don’t mean set the alarm an hour earlier so you can drag yourself out of bed to work on your Cuban motion. Just the opposite. Get up. Put on some music. Jump around… or shuffle around with your cup of coffee in one hand. Wiggle in a chair. Whatever.

I started doing this when one of my students decided to compete in country-western competitions. Newcomers usually started around 7:00. That’s AM. Not my usual dance time. Since most of my students have professional careers, my day often doesn’t start until mid-afternoon. So I figured I should start getting up early once in a while so my body could grow accustomed to moving around at the crack of dawn instead of the crack of noon.

Knowing better than to believe my body would tolerate anything that seemed even remotely like coordinated effort, I started by just putting on some fun tunes and moving around free-form like Stevie Nicks in a music video.

Wow.

You know what? I was in a good mood the rest of the day.

Now, I’d like to be able to tell you that I do this every single morning and that since I discovered waking up to dance, I’ve reached enlightenment and discovered a cure for cancer. Well, it’s more like three or four times a week. And no enlightenment, yet.

But—and this is the truth—the days I wake up dancing, even if it’s just five minutes, are always more fun.

 

 

Your partner is the center of your universe.

In nearly all turns,

the goal is to return to your partner as quickly as possible.

It’s me you’re dancing with,

so look at me.

Use your eyes.

Human beings will tend to move towards

whatever we are looking at.

(This is why there are so many secondary car accidents.

We want to see what happened

and crash into the median

as we stretch our neck in that direction.)

If you keep your eyes on me as you spin,

you will come back to me.

You are less likely to float away

or spin off into deep space somewhere.

If you let your eyes wander all over the dance floor,

that is exactly where you will go.

When I spin, I will keep my eyes on you.

In this way, we will stay together more easily,

we will avoid careening into other dancers,

and we will avoid losing each other completely.

This is also true in life.

 

 

The exception to the rule.

If I am spinning in a dance that travels,

I need to watch were I am going.

This should probably be obvious,

but it’s not.

As I turn, I watch the track

I’m traveling,

and most of my spins

will start and end there.

Once I finish spinning,

the center of my universe

returns to my partner.

 

Learn dances for the styles of music you like.

It seems an obvious suggestion to me,

but very few of my students

have ever thought to ask for dances for

their favorite kinds of music.

Bring some music for your teacher to hear;

ask what dances you could do.

Learn those.

Even the latest top 40 styles are danceable,

As are hip-hop,

grunge,

folk,

funk,

rap,

and rock…

You can do social dances to any of these

or any others you could name.

If you like big band,

learn Fox trot, swing or jitterbug.

If you like blues,

or any of the styles named above,

learn West Coast swing.

If you like Latin music,

learn cha cha, rumba, or salsa.

If you like Sousa marches…

join a marching band!

 

 

Dancing may not bring about world peace, but…

Just imagine for a moment

how different a place this world would be

if soldiers danced with each other

instead of firing guns and missiles.

How could we justify bombing a country

if we had all enjoyed a waltz together?

I think the world’s leaders

should always meet in a dance hall

and do the jitterbug

before sitting down at the bargaining table.

Maybe if children,

at an early age,

were taught how to dance with each other,

and shown good ways to meet and interact,

they would be less lonely

and less likely to pull out a gun

in the middle of a schoolyard.

And, who knows, maybe they wouldn’t grow up

to be world leaders whose only solution

is pushing a button or sending in the troops.

 

Lead/Follow

Why do women have to follow? After a hundred years of struggling for equal rights and greater choices in their lives, why are they forced into subservience on the dance floor? Of course, someone needs to lead and someone needs to follow, but why does it always have to be one way?

I once taught a couple where the husband was about 5’6” and the wife was well over six feet. Wow… did that cause problems, figuring out how to teach him to lead a tunnel or fancy pretzel was soooooo complicated. Several times I suggested that she learn to lead to make things easier… but she was adamant that her husband lead and she follow.

Mind you, she tried to backlead constantly. And of course, off the dance floor she was a university professor and made more money than her husband… but something just seemed wrong to her about leading on the dance floor.

Point blank, it’s usually easier for the taller of two partners to lead, and some folks are more inclined to follow, regardless of gender. Following is, in general, a more right-brain kind of activity; leading is left-brain. As a teacher, I need to know how to lead and follow equally well… but whenever I learn something new, it is much easier for me to learn the part as follower, because I learn through movement, and it is easier if my coaches lead me through a new sequence, rather than trying to say, “Okay, now lead a such-and-such followed by a thus-and-so.”

Besides which, darn it, I prefer following. Right now, most of my professional time is spent leading, and I would really like to be able to follow more, but if a woman asks me to dance, she is shocked and appalled if I ask her to lead. It’s like I’ve committed some kind of sin.

If everyone knew how to lead and follow, then everyone could perform the role to which they were better suited and which they preferred. Besides which, they would all be better dancers because learning to lead is a proven way to be a better follower (and vice versa).

And when 50 men show up for a class, but only 20 women do, there wouldn’t have to be 30 men standing around doing nothing… they could dance together… but that’s a different chapter.

 

 

Dancing need not be difficult.

An ancient African proverb states:

“If you can talk, you can sing.

If you can walk, you can dance.”

People see professional ballerinas

or the greatest of tap dancers,

and they think to themselves:

“Wow!  That’s wonderful!  It’s really great!

But I could never, ever do anything like that,

no matter how hard I tried!”

But dancing is meant for everyone,

not just the professionals.

When you watch the national championships,

you’d never guess that those refined, polite dances,

many, many of them,

were born in smoky bars,

street cafes,

civic festivals

or in brothels, even.

Dancing is not meant for a special, select few.

Anyone who can hold hands,

jump up and down,

sway side to side,

roll in their chair

or wiggle their butt

(even a little)

can enjoy a social dance.

That’s why the basic components of dance

are things we do in everyday life.

Social dance is built out of parts

most of us know

by the time we learn how to walk.

 

Sacrifice frame for nothing.

Just as the frame of a picture

holds the picture together

and keeps it in place on the wall,

your dance frame holds your dancing together

and keeps you in place

in relation to your partner.

Without a good dance frame

communication is impossible;

it’s like making a toy telephone

with two tin cans

and a string stretched between them.

As long as the string is held taut

between the two tin cans

you can talk from one to the other.

If the string is loose and wiggly,

nothing comes through.

It’s the same with dancing:

if your arms are loose and wiggly

communication breaks down.

Hold your arms correctly

for the dance you are enjoying.

Maintain tone in both arms.

Don’t let your elbows behind your back.

Don’t clutch your partner desperately.

And your dancing will always be picture perfect.

 

 

“Tips.”

If you get stepped on

—most of the time—

it’s your own fault.

It’s your job to get your feet

out of the way.

 

 

Whenever we feel insecure, we tense up.

If we aren’t certain of what is about to happen

our muscles turn rigid.

If we are about to try something really, really, difficult

every square inch of us becomes hard as stone…

which is really too bad.

Our muscles operate much more effectively

when they are relaxed.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have our bodies

at their most effective

when we’re trying something really hard?

If you are about to try a new step,

take a deep breath and relax.

Soft limbs will move more nimbly than tense ones.

If you are about to try a difficult spin,

take a deep breath and relax.

It’s easier to keep your balance

when your knees aren’t locked.

If dancing to really, really fast music,

take a deep breath and relax.

It’s easier to move quickly

if your muscles are not carved in stone.

 

 

What is the difference between a dancer and a dance teacher?

A dance teacher knows how to teach. It’s quite simple, and yet I’ve met many, many people who seem to forget this truth. They assume that because they have learned how to dance, they should also be able to teach someone else… and yet I don’t see people flocking to Taylor Swift for vocal lessons.

I love when I see folks with their friends on the dance floor trying to struggle through a couple of patterns—and it’s great to share your knowledge—but always remember that if your friend isn’t picking up the patterns, it’s likely more the fault of the “teacher” than the student.

Don’t get impatient or expect them to pick it up the way you did when you were with your professional private instructor. Be patient and always assume it’s your “instruction” at fault and try to find a different way to say it.

Oh… and this is one that really annoys me… demonstration is not the same thing as instruction! “Okay… you do the same thing I’m doing… just like this… okay, except on the opposite foot… no, like this… don’t you get it? Like this!”

If you can’t tell them—using specific words—which foot, in which direction and at what time, chances are it’s your fault if they don’t get it.

Keep in mind that I’m not telling you not to show your friends what you know (although you better be really, really, really careful if it’s someone you’re dating), but if you do, please be patient and don’t get mad at them if they don’t get it.

If they end up feeling stupid, they may never want to try to dance again… and that would be very, very sad.

 

Rejoice when you notice your mistakes.

Not necessarily because you made a mistake

(as wonderful as mistakes can be)

but because you knew you made one.

The first step to correcting your mistakes

is knowing when you make them.

If you only know you’ve goofed up

when your teacher

(or dance partner)

tells you so,

you’ll never be able to improve.

You start out oblivious to your mistakes:

“Huh? I did what?”

Then you notice after the fact that it happened:

“Oops, there it is again!”

Then you catch yourself in the act,

even though you are still powerless to stop yourself:

“Rats!”

Finally, you reach a stage where you can prevent

the mistake from happening in the first place:

“Sweet!”

This is how you improve—

and it all starts by noticing that a mistake has been made.

So don’t berate yourself for making a mistake;

praise yourself for noticing,

and never deprive your dance partners

of the joy of noticing their own mistakes

by constantly pointing them out.

 

 

To be a better follower, close your eyes.

It’s very difficult for you to back-lead

if you don’t know where you’re going…

though some still try.

Relax.

Take a deep breath.

Close your eyes

and trust that your partner knows what to do.

I won’t back you into a wall.

I won’t spin you into a post.

Trust me.

Following is a non-logical process.

Turn off your brain.

Let your body feel what I’m doing.

Don’t try to anticipate what I’m going to do next.

Wait for it to happen.

A good way for someone to tell if you are following

is to watch your feet.

If I’m leading, your feet should always hit the floor

a split second after mine.

Unless you’re psychic, they’d have to!

My foot moves before yours does

because I know where we’re going before you do.

That’s okay.

I won’t leave you behind.

Trust me.

Relax.

Keep breathing.

 

 

Leaders:

Try really, really hard to avoid backing your partner into a wall.

 

 

There is no mathematics for Social Dance.

Be leery of teachers who use absolutes:

Every…

All…

Always…

Never…

These are words that rarely apply to social dance.

There are as many ways to take a step

as there are teachers to teach it.

Teachers who tell you that they are right

and the others are wrong

are telling you more about their egos than their abilities.

My technique may be different from yours,

but neither of us is necessarily wrong

unless what we are doing simply doesn’t work,

and even then our techniques may simply be incompatible.

This still makes neither of us wrong.

“Different” is not “Wrong.”

“That doesn’t seem to be working for you;

why don’t you try it this way, instead,

to see if you like it better.”

Learn as many competing theories as you can,

decide which fits you best,

and stick with it…

until you find one you like better.

Don’t let me bully you into doing it my way

just because “I’m right and you’re wrong.”

 

Floor Rage

Don’t let another dancer’s lack of consideration ruin your fun. More often than not they don’t realize they’re doing anything rude. I see this sort of thing all the time: a couple is dancing and having a good time when some unthinking dancers practically run them off the floor zipping by faster than the speed of sound… or nearly decapitate them with a trick that would make the Brothers Karamazov cringe. Maybe the unfortunate couple can shrug this off once or twice, but if such rude behavior continues, the couple who had been having fun begins complaining and perhaps they start bickering.

Pretty soon, they leave the floor, or, worse yet, they retaliate by trying to cut off the rude couple or by bumping into them.

Wow. Talk about road rage on the dance floor.

I understand the frustration. I’ve been there. But trying to “teach them a lesson” helps whom, exactly? If they are that rude, you aren’t going to teach them anything by behaving the same way.

You’re only going to enforce the idea that such behavior is appropriate. Politely letting them know that their behavior is inappropriate might do some good… maybe… and sometimes complaining to the management helps—after all, they want people to be happy. But “taking things into your own hands” only turns you into the exact same boorish lout about whom you have a legitimate complaint.

While all your attention is focused on “punishing” the rude couple or in glaring at them and thinking evil thoughts, two things happen.

1.) You aren’t paying attention to the floor around you because you’re too busy being angry and, chances are, you’re doing the exact same thing to other couples that the rude couple did to you.

2.) You aren’t having a heck of a lot of fun, anymore.

So what do you do? If their behavior is physically dangerous, tell them so immediately. Chances are they have no clue. If it’s not actually dangerous, but merely annoying, just laugh at them. No, I mean it. Out loud, even. Most people who are behaving badly on the dance floor think they are good dancers, and their behavior comes from a desire to “show off.”

Or ignore them. Keep dancing and have a good time. Don’t give them an audience.

…and maybe hand them a business card with the name of a good dance teacher when they take a break. Tell them, “Ms. Reynolds did us a world of good when we were first starting out.”

 

 

Be grateful that you can dance.

Even as I write these words,

telling you that anyone can dance,

I think to myself:

“What about the people who can’t walk?

What about folks who have no legs

or who don’t have the use of the legs they have?

What good is all this jabbering to them?”

I’m afraid the answer is simple:

I have no idea…

although I have seen some amazing

dancers in wheelchairs.

If you can dance… dance… and be grateful.

Dance your joy.

Dance your sorrow.

Dance with your friends.

Dance with your family.

Dance with your lover.

And if you are afraid to dance

because you aren’t good enough…

because you’re too old…

because you aren’t beautiful…

because your partner is the wrong race…

religion…

or gender…

Think for a moment how lucky you are

to be able to dance at all.

There are those who will never dance a single step.

Keep it in perspective.

I don’t care if you are afraid to dance,

or if you think you are awkward

or your timing is poor

or no one will dance with you

or everyone will laugh.

If you can dance… DANCE!!!

And be grateful you have been given the opportunity.

 

 

Too many people take this life for granted.

They spend too many hours

at a job they hate

and too few hours

with the people they love,

doing the things they love to do.

I’m not saying we should be lazy,

but we need to maintain balance.

Which is more important:

A brand new car with all the trimmings

or

watching your little boy’s first step

or your little girl’s first cartwheel?

We spend so much time working

for all kinds of things

we never have the time to use

because we are too busy working.

I know some people need to work 80 hours a week

just to put food on the table.

I understand this.

I have been there.

But children need your time

just as much as they need

a new pair of shoes.

If you have time for them now,

they will have time for you later on.

If you don’t have time for them now…

 

 

You will learn no turn before its time.

Dancing is like an Olympic sport, now.

As with any athletic activity done badly

injuries can occur.

Done well, dancing will keep you active

to a ripe old age.

Done poorly, it can be dangerous.

If you try to lead a complicated turn

or trick

or drop

or lift

without proper knowledge

someone will get hurt.

I don’t say these things to SCARE you,

but to give you the proper respect.

Many lifts and tricks are as demanding as acrobatics.

I have seen people taken away in an ambulance.

Even “non-athletic” turns

can cause dislocated rotator cuffs

or broken ribs

or scraped knees

or bloody noses.

I have seen all these things happen.

99% of the time

they happen because someone

was too anxious to get to the fancy stuff

before they understood

how the basic stuff works.

You do not learn a trick by watching someone else do it.

Think of a magician

who makes his tricks look easy

by doing all kinds of stuff that you don’t see.

Would you try to saw someone in half

before the magician taught you how it was done?

Is throwing someone into the air so much less dangerous?

Don’t assume you can follow these tricks

if you have a good leader.

Don’t try to lead complicated pretzels

or nifty lifts

unless they have been taught to you.

Don’t be scared.

Be smart.

 

 

“Tips.”

The two biggest challenges to turns and spins

are so common

that whenever someone asks for help,

even before I see them try a turn,

I tell them:

1. Stand up as tall as you can.
2. Relax your knees.

Those two things help 90% of my students.

 

Benefits

Why do you take dance lessons?

Most people would answer, “Well, duh, I want to learn how to dance.”

The problem with this answer is that, in most cases, it is almost entirely incorrect. Hardly anyone takes social dance lessons so they can learn how to dance. If that was the reason, everyone would take their lessons, practice a bit and then take some more lessons. They wouldn’t go out to dance, they wouldn’t perform, and they wouldn’t compete. To be frank, if you really take lessons just to learn how to dance, you should be taking ballet or jazz.

So why do you take dance lessons?

There are as many answers to that question as there are people taking lessons. Some people remember how much in-love Grandma and Grandpa looked when they waltzed together. Some folks want to be graceful and poised. Some people want a hobby that burns more calories than doomscrolling.

One student told me, “I saw Gomez Addams do the tango and want to be able to do that, too.”

Many have said, “Dancing will help me get dates, right?”

Still others hope that doing something as a couple will help the relationship.

These are all wonderful reasons.

They tell you the benefits of dancing. They tell you what you hope to get out of dancing. Sometimes, remembering what it is you hope to get out of dancing makes it easier to put the work into it.

Sit down and write five things you hope to gain from dance lessons. Be honest. The best answer I’ve ever heard was, “To pick up chicks,” because it was the most unashamedly honest. Share your answers with your teachers. Make sure the lessons you take lead you toward the benefits you desire.

I mean, let’s be honest; the guy who wanted to meet women didn’t need a lot of patterns, and he certainly didn’t need a lot of theory. He needed the ability to dance with anyone he met, to lead his partners so effortlessly they felt graceful, and the knowledge of how to make a few simple patterns interesting enough that his partners would be able to dance and carry on a conversation at the same time.

So… why do you take dance lessons?

 

 

Everyone should dance naked in the rain

at least once in a lifetime.

Preferably on a regular basis.

Grab someone’s hand,

pull them into the night,

throw your clothes on the ground

and frolic in the deluge.

Frolic.

What a wonderful word!

Use it often and mean it.

Dancing shouldn’t be only for a hardwood floor

or a studio

or flashing lights

or tuxedos and beaded gowns.

Get outside into the sun

or under the moon

and feel the grass and mud

between your toes,

or prance along the ocean

on a sandy beach,

kicking up the sand

and plastering your skin.

It’ll wash off.

Especially if it’s raining!

 

How can dancing be a sin?

Where in the Bible is dancing condemned?

On the contrary, the Psalms tell us:

“Let them praise his name with dancing

and make music to him with tambourine and harp.”

I can have sex in a chair,

but that doesn’t make sitting in it a sin.

I can have sex in the ocean,

but that doesn’t make swimming sinful.

I can have sex on the dining room table,

but dinner doesn’t put my soul in jeopardy.

Anything, done with the right attitude, can be sinful.

Anything, done with the right attitude, can be innocent.

Certainly, dancing can be a form of courtship.

So is going to a movie…

or having a picnic…

or attending church…

Why is dancing the only one that’s considered sinful?

 

 

There can only be one brain working at a time

on the dance floor.

If we both try to direct our movements

we will constantly work at odds,

and our dancing will devolve into chaos.

There must be one leader and one follower.

Anything else would be like having

two captains on the same ship.

There are some teachers,

primarily in West Coast Swing and Argentine Tango,

who are experimenting with exchanging lead/follow.

I am very excited by this development!

It’s a great thing!

But, even here, there is only one leader at a time.

If you want to lead… lead.

Don’t assume that because you’re a woman,

or because you are small,

because you are passive

a vegetarian

or blue

you must follow.

However…

if you are following… follow.

Let your leader lead.

The most common sentiment is:

“If they’d lead me, I’d follow.”

followed closely by:

“Someone out there has to lead.”

If you don’t let me lead

I’ll never learn how.

When you are following,

let me make my mistakes

and don’t always assume the mistake is mine.

Leaders have so many things to keep track of,

starting with:

“What dance do I do to this kind of music?”

followed by

“How do I start this dance?”

and

“Okay, this is a great basic; what else do I know?”

“How do I get into that other pattern?”

“How do I avoid smacking my partner into that wall?”

“Am I anywhere near the right beat?”

“What do I do if the music changes?”

“Oh no, it’s speeding up!”

The list goes on and on.

Be patient,

forgiving…

and,

when all else fails…

close your eyes.

 

 

Leaders:

Never let your partners start to think.

Once they start to think

it’s almost impossible

to get them to stop.

(This only applies on the dance floor…

not in real life!)

 

NRFB 

There’s a phrase used among toy collectors: NRFB… Never Removed From Box. It means that the toy in question has never been taken out of its original packaging and is therefore presumed to be in perfect condition. These are the toys people consider the most valuable. There are some older toys, NRFB, that are worth thousands and tens of thousands of dollars. Yep, I’m talking Barbies and GI Joes and Tonka trucks worth more than I earned last year!

However, the moment you take that toy out of the box and play with it, it loses most of its value. The moment you actually use that toy the way it was meant to be used, it becomes worthless… just so much plastic or metal.

Wow, that is so sad to me. The moment you play with a toy… the moment you use it to fuel your creativity and go on an adventure with it, the toy loses its collector’s value.

Too many people live their lives the same way: NRFB.

Never Removed From Box.

They are afraid that if they step outside the box in which they live, people will lose respect for them, that they will lose their value. They never take the chance to see how far they can stretch… to see why they were really made… to see what creative adventures they were meant to have.

It makes me especially sad to see dancers living the same way. They learn the patterns and the acceptable dance moves and styling, and they always make sure they know which dance is meant for which song. If they aren’t sure, they wait for enough other people to get out on the dance floor so they can avoid doing the wrong dance.

As if that were possible.

Take yourself out of the box. Run the risk of “losing your value” so you can have fun with your dancing. Stop trying to decide which dance is the right dance for a song. That’s just another box.

Dance your favorite dance, regardless of the music. Or dance whatever dance feels right for the song and for your mood… or forget the idea of naming the dances at all and jump up and down until you need to stop to catch your breath. If you’re in a store somewhere, and they play a song you really like… dance up and down the aisles.

Whenever you’re dancing, always see how far your arms can stretch… how much your hips can wiggle… how big a smile you can smile… how goofy you can be… how sexy you can be… how much fun you can have…

Let the music play with you.

And ask yourself… if you were a Barbie doll, would you rather sit in a clear plastic box all your life so someone on E-bay will give someone else a thousand dollars… or would you rather go on a series of amazing adventures with someone who loves you for what you are really worth?

I challenge you to take yourself out of the box.

Do the things you’re most afraid to do.

Play the game.

Take the risk

And don’t be upset if you get a little dirty.

 

On a crowded dance floor,

it is your responsibility to be aware of the other dancers.

Let me say that again:

On a crowded dance floor,

it is your responsibility

to be aware of the other dancers.

Do not assume the floor is yours.

Do not act as though the floor is yours.

If you are the only couple on the floor

feel free to take up space.

Move around.

Flail your arms.

Do wild turns,

and dance from one edge to the other.

BUT as the floor fills up,

it is your responsibility

to keep your movements smaller.

Leaders: stop throwing your partner into the next county.

Followers: watch those kicks and mind your elbows.

And NEVER do tricks or lifts

when the floor is full!

Dancing is a cooperative game,

not a full contact sport.

The only contact you should have

is with your partner.

 

 

Remember:

There are no grades.

There are no tests.

Dancing is fun!

 

 

Following is not about thinking.

It’s about feeling.

I need to turn off my brain

and let my body follow my partner’s movements.

The signals come from my body

not my logic.

Mr. Spock would not have made a good follower.

 

A Rose is a Rose…

What makes a tango a tango and a two-step a two-step? The conventional answer is that in tango there are these three steps you take and then a side-together kind of thing, whereas in two-step, it’s two little steps and then two big steps. Or maybe it’s that tango is counted “slow-slow-quick-quick-slow” and two-step is counted “quick-quick-slow-slow.” Except that some people count two-step “slow-slow-quick-quick” and only American style tango has either that pattern or that counting.

“Well, in that case,” says Conventional Wisdom, “Tango has that marchy, dramatic music, and two-step has music that’s twangy and usually involves cheatin’ hearts, fast cars, and horses.”

Well, then why do we always dance that “three steps and a side-together thing” for that marchy music and the “two little steps and two big steps” for the twangy music?

“Well,” responds Conventional Wisdom, “‘Because that’s the way you’re supposed to dance tango, and that other way is the way you’re supposed to dance two-step.”

Hmmmm.

I use these two dances as examples because, in most minds, there couldn’t be two dances as far apart as tango and two-step.

I have been dancing since I was a wee snip of a lad. I would play music and dance around the room doing whatever the music told me. You see, I became great friends with the music. We’d have a conversation: the music talked to me with words and notes and feelings, and I responded with my body.

Fast, happy music made me jump up and down and spin around a lot. Slow, sad music made me wave my body around like I was a weepy underwater plant.

Then I started training as a dance teacher, and, suddenly, the music ceased to matter.

My coaches and step lists told me how to move through the patterns. And some of them went so far as to say that having music playing during a lesson created a distraction. “We’re worried about serious technique here; we can’t do that with all that noise in the background.”

I once attended an international dance conference as a photographer, which meant I had access to all sixteen rooms holding classes during every session. Sessions every hour to an hour-and-a-half for four days. Eighty per cent of those classes… lots and lots of classes… used no music at all… and many of those that did only used music for a small percentage of the class.

I was flabbergasted. For me, what makes a tango a tango is the music and the way it asks me to move. It’s the picture I see in my mind whenever tango music plays. I see passionate dancers and toreadors and bulls and capes. I see couples in an embrace so frantic it almost seems like they’re fighting. And, who knows… maybe they are.

The steps I do don’t matter. The official timing doesn’t matter. It’s the way the music asks me to move that makes it a tango.

Two-step music gives me that perfect moment a cool breeze hits when I’m in the shade hiding from the heat of the sun at noon out by a live oak tree. It’s a bottle of Shiner and good friends and all the weekend ahead of me before another week with my nose to the grindstone. It’s a laugh and a half and a tear in my beer.

Try this experiment: Do two-step patterns to tango music. Do tango patterns to two-step music. As long as I dance the steps the way the music makes me want to move… they work perfectly.

Put on Mozart and dance West Coast swing.

Dance Foxtrot to Matchbox 20.

Sometimes, it is easier to learn technique or balance or patterns without music playing. That’s certainly true… but it’s not dancing. Dancing is a game I play with my dance partner and our other partner, the music.

The steps I do don’t matter very much.

It’s the dancing that counts.

 

 

Correct posture isn’t something to think about

only when you’re dancing.

Wherever you go,

Whatever you do,

you should try to keep your back lined up correctly.

If you only stand up straight when you dance,

the moment your brain gets caught up in your feet

(almost as soon as you try to move, I would guess)

your posture will be the first thing to suffer.

This will throw you off balance

and make that new step even harder.

Go for quiet walks on the beach

and think about nothing but standing tall and relaxing.

Breathing helps, too,

unless you’re fond of the color blue.

Good posture isn’t about

holding books on your head

to prepare for a debutante ball.

It isn’t about looking snooty.

It’s about having a healthier back

well into old age.

 

 

90% of leading is moving in a specific direction…

…with confidence.

Don’t push your partners.

Don’t pull them.

Don’t yank them around with your arms.

If you want to change directions,

simply decide where you want to go

and go there confidently.

If you have a half-decent frame

your partners will go with you.

If you hesitate because of uncertainty,

your partners will get confusing signals

and try to second-guess you.

The moment they start thinking

it’s almost impossible to get them to stop.

There’s a saying:

“One who hesitates is lost.”

In social dance, it’s a little different:

“One who hesitates has a partner who is lost.”

If you want to go to promenade,

simply go there.

Don’t “open your partner.”

Don’t push them that way.

Just go there.

“If you lead it,

they will follow.”

For this to work,

(and there is always a catch)

you must have a solid frame.

Pretend your upper body is in a cast.

Once you are in dance position—

nothing changes.

If I turn to the left

by pointing my chest to the left,

my shoulders and my arms go with, too.

If I turn to the right

by pointing my chest to the right,

my shoulders and my arms go with, too.

If you leave your arms behind,

you will most certainly leave your partner behind, as well.

 

 

“More tips.”

The outside edge of your foot

was not designed to carry weight.

The strongest part of your foot

(the part built to help you keep your balance centered)

is called the metatarsal.

(It’s that knobby knuckle part just under the big toe.)

If you roll to the outside edge of your feet

and your legs are locked,

most likely, you will fall over.

(Or at least fall out of your turn prematurely.)

You’re simply not meant to move that way.

To spin, you need to center yourself

over that knobby part

so your body lines up in a single column;

now the laws of physics are on your side.

Most people, when they try to spin,

roll to the outside edge of their foot.

They don’t have enough control

to stay centered over their point of greatest strength.

Their momentum carries them off balance.

Learn how to strengthen your ankles

and keep your weight centered.

This will improve your turns and spins.

 

 

Wherever you are, there you are,

and there is a good place to be.

When spinning, keep your feet under you

and keep your toes pointing forward.

Don’t try to increase the amount you turn

by twisting your feet under you.

When your body stops turning,

chances are, that’s as far as you can go

and still keep your balance.

Also, don’t try to start your turn with your feet twisted.

This problem is much more common

than you might suspect.

Afraid that we won’t turn far enough or fast enough,

we unwittingly allow one foot

to step clear around behind the other.

It is difficult to turn if your feet look like this:

R

L

[Graphic inserted here.]

 

Yet many people try to do just that.

A clean, well-balanced, single turn

(or half turn, for that matter)

is more impressive than an out-of-control triple.

Also—as usual—if you let your body stop

when it wants to stop,

the doubles and triples you do eventually

will be awesome

because you will do them well.

Only turn as much as you can turn.

Only do as much as you can do.

Always be right where you are,

not where you wish you were

or where you think you ought to be

or even where you’re probably going to be in the future.

 

There is a black hole in the middle of the dance floor.

Watch any group class

which features line of dance.

Inevitably, as the students start dancing

around the floor,

they close in on each other

and wind up clustered together

in the middle.

When viewed from above,

I am quite certain,

they resemble a converging spiral.

There is a mystical, gravitational force

which pulls dancers into the center

away from the walls.

You must fight against this force

and try to dance away from the center.

The larger the circle, the more room you will have,

and the easier it is to dance.

 

Whoever is moving forward gets the gas pedal.

Even though the leader always gets the steering wheel,

the follower sometimes gets the gas pedal.

So whenever you take a forward step…

take yourself there.

Don’t expect me to pull you along

when I’m going backwards.

Your every forward movement

should fill the space

I am creating.

Your every backward movement

should create space

for me to fill.

Dance becomes a smooth transaction

of give and take…

BUT

don’t forget who has the steering wheel.

Even though you take yourself forward,

you still need to step where

I lead you to go.

This truth is one of the greatest challenges of following.

 

 

“Ancient Dancers’ Proverb”

A wise friend once said:

“Wow, she is such a good dancer,

you can see it when she’s just sitting there,

eating crackers out of a box.”

 

 

Do not use your partner as a weapon.

(This is a bit of advice for leaders.)

No matter how annoying

the other dancers on the floor may be,

it really isn’t acceptable to use your partner

as a projectile or sling.

There is a great temptation

to fling your partner at the floor hogs,

teaching them to stay in their own space,

but using your partner as a weapon

is unfair to your partner.

There are many creative ways

to “accidentally” bump into them on your own.

 

 

Male Bonding

What the heck is the big deal with two guys dancing together? I mean… have you ever watched wrestling? You get two nearly naked men, put them on display and have them grapple with each other in positions that would embarrass me. That seems normal to everyone, but put two fully dressed men on a dance floor with enough room between them to drive a truck through, and people freak out. I just don’t get it.

My first studio was a smaller business with two men and one woman teaching. The day before I started training, by coincidence I assure you, the only female teacher walked out.

As a result, everyone there, male or female, who wanted to learn to dance, danced with a male teacher. So I guess it never occurred to me that there was anything strange about it, and this was 1992.

“Well, you know,” Some People have tried to say, “Dancing is different from wrestling… dancing is romantic.’”

So every time I dance with someone, it’s a romantic thing? Eeeeew!  What about when I danced with my mother? Or my sister? Or my Grandmother who smelled like mothballs?

Every time I dance with a student… it’s a romantic thing? Man… I need to charge more! Granted, dancing can be romantic in a way that wrestling (usually) isn’t… but it’s not always romantic. Most of the times that two people are dancing together… it isn’t a romantic thing at all.

Besides which, going to a movie together can be romantic, yet no one assumes that every time I see a movie with someone, it’s a kind of flirtation.

The guys on a sports team run around naked in the shower together… and no one thinks there’s anything romantic or strange about that. Heck, reporters go in there to conduct interviews.

Why does watching two men dance together make people uncomfortable when so many other activities—many of which are just as intimate—are perfectly acceptable? Why can men can touch each other only when the contact is violent?

What does that say about our fathers and our sons?

I once watched a friend of mine while he taught his grandson how to dance.

It was the most beautiful thing in the world.

 

Having a solid dance frame does not mean squeezing your partner.

Most people,

when I ask them to firm up their frame,

hold me tighter.

That’s not quite the right idea.

Hold your right hand,

palm toward your body,

about a foot away from your chest,

with your elbow out to the side.

Having a strong, solid frame means that your hand

will stay about a foot away from your body

no matter what.

If someone pushes your forearm towards you,

keep your hand the same distance from your chest.

If someone pulls your forearm away from you,

keep your hand the same distance from your chest.

It’s kind of like being a statue.

If you do this, whenever your body moves,

your whole arm moves with it,

and your partner goes with you.

Your goal is to keep your arm from moving,

not to pull your partner off balance.

Squeezing your partner only tires you out

and annoys your partner.

(Well, not always, I guess.)

 

 

Always move forward from your center.

Pretend someone has hold of your belt buckle

and is pulling you forward like a toy on a string.

This is where your movement begins:

in your center…

not in your feet.

Many leaders,

thinking way too hard about their feet,

let their legs shoot forward

and consistently step on their partners’ toes.

They are trying to move by swinging their legs

and then catching up their bodies,

but their partners can’t feel the movement of their feet,

so they don’t know how to stay out of the way.

You can do tap routines

without your partners knowing what to do

because kicking your feet and tapping your toes

communicates nothing.

Your partners will feel the movement

but won’t sense any direction

because they are not connected to your feet.

They are connected—

via your frame—

to your center.

If you move from your center—

and have a solid frame—

your partners will feel their center being moved

and will know in which direction to step.

Away you go!

So keep your feet under you,

ease forward without letting your feet flop around

and move from your center.

 

 

Notes from a dance competition

There are two groups into which nearly all dance competitors fall: those who look like they enjoy competing and those who look like competing is an ancient form of torture

Dancing, in its original form—which came into existence shortly after humans decided that it was fun to bang rocks together to imitate a beating heart—was extremely spiritual in nature. The theory is that whatever form the movements took was a direct expression of the dancer’s visceral connection to the rhythm. In other words, people danced for the sheer thrill of dancing. Several thousand years later, we put on fancy costumes and torture ourselves with carefully choreographed routines whose sole purpose is to impress five or six people sitting up on a raised platform.

Why do people dance? Because they love to dance.

Why do people compete? To be brutally truthful, it’s usually because they want other people to tell them they’re good dancers. They want the recognition.

So who is more fun to watch, someone who has the joy of dance lighting their eyes or someone who has the fear of the gods flickering behind a forced smile or a frightened grimace?

Now think about who the judges would rather watch.

Ask yourself why you spend so much time perfecting your feet, and yet you never practice your face. See, your first goal should be that you are actually having fun on the dance floor. If that isn’t possible because you’re too nervous, you should at least learn how to fake it convincingly. Nobody wants to watch someone who looks like they are in pain; human beings, on the whole, are far too empathetic. The judges, being human beings, too, don’t really want to watch your tortured expression.

You will truly score more points if you look relaxed and give the impression you are having fun… that the dance you are performing is a direct expression of the joy you feel inside.

I know people who pay anywhere from $50 to $200 an hour to learn the exact placement of their feet during the second measure of a waltz twinkle. Next time you go in for a lesson… ask your teacher to show you how to smile and have fun while doing that twinkle.

Believe me, it’s a learned skill, just like turning a pivot.

I overheard a student of mine talking to another competitor.

“Are you having any fun out there at all?” he asked after she left the dance floor.

“Of course, I am,” she insisted.

“Well, you really oughta communicate that to your face.”

 

 

If I have one goal in this lifetime,

it is to make people think.

Many of my little bits of advice

contradict many of the other little bits.

That’s okay!

Some don’t have much to do with dancing, either.

That’s okay, too!

As long as they make you think.

Feel free to disagree with me,

and try to figure out why you disagree.

Ask someone else if they agree with me.

Talk about it.

If I say something which upsets you…

ask yourself why you are upset.

Think about it.

Think about it.

Think.

 

Thanksgiving

How often do you complain about how far you are from your dance goals? How often are you thankful that you can dance at all?

I have always been amazed by a student of mine. Let’s call her Sally. Her son was injured in combat in Iraq. He was in a hospital for months and months and had more injuries than I can even think to count. The one that comes most frequently to mind is the fact that they hoped to reattach his intestines sometime in the first year.

Every day, Sally sent out an email to a host of friends and well-wishers, telling us all about her son’s progress. After a lengthy stay in Washington DC because he was too weak to transport home, he was brought to San Antonio, which was quite a bit closer to their Round Rock residence.

Sally’s husband spent most of his time here in Texas, earning a living and taking care of their daughter. Every day, Sally reported how her son fared and said how grateful she was for all the loving, supportive friends she had and for all the amazing gifts with which she was blessed.

I remember how excited she was when her son regained the ability to operate the TV remote for the first time. It was such a blessing for them. She expressed such sincere gratitude for every tiny step forward.

It makes me think.

Are you a better dancer than you were a year ago? Than you were ten years ago? And even if the answer is no, then the question is, “Can you still dance?”

Yes. And yet I get angry and impatient when my progress isn’t as fast as I desire.

Some people are grateful to be able to operate the remote for the TV.

Wow… I am so grateful that I can dance and that I have the opportunity to write about it in a book like this one.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Now, what was that you were saying about your dancing?

 

 

Social dancing is about connection…

and lead and follow…

learning and teaching…

breathing…

moving…

knowing which way to go…

and what to do once you get there.

Isn’t that what life is all about, too?

Whatever you do…

wherever you go…

go there dancing!

Find a partner—

whether that partner is your spouse…

a lover…

a relative…

a teacher…

a student…

or your dearest, best friend…

or even someone you’ve just met—

hold them in your arms

and dance…

and dance…

and never stop dancing!

Chances are, you will not have the same partner

for every dance for your whole life.

In fact, you will most likely have many, many partners

over the course of a lifetime.

Some you will forget…

some you will remember…

but some you will carry with you

until they turn on the lights

and the band stops playing at the end of the night.

They may step on your toes,

and you may step on theirs…

but that’s all part of the learning process.

It’s okay.

Don’t stop dancing because you’ve made a mistake.

Don’t stop dancing because you’ve made a thousand.

The world’s best dancers

step on each other’s toes

and bump heads a lot

before they reach a state of grace.

All of those partners

and all of those dances

and all of those mistakes

are what give life meaning.

 

 

You have to go through Dork City

To get to Coolsville.

No one is born dancing.

We all go through an awkward stage

where our elbows seem like enemies

and our feet feel like traitors.

Embrace that!

When we’re afraid of looking stupid

our movements tend to be meek and inhibited.

We catch a glimpse in a mirror or a video

and our worst fears seem validated:

“See? I can’t dance.”

Yes, you can. Go home and close all the blinds.

Turn on music that forces your body to move.

Will it be pretty?

Not at first, but if you give your body permission

to bust a move with sincerity and feeling,

eventually, it will.

 

 

Life is change.

Change is not the only constant in life; it is life. The moment of conception is a change. Death is a change. So is every moment of every day between the two and beyond. And yet…

And yet most of us rant and rail against even the most insignificant changes. We fear change.

It’s like being afraid to breathe: causes problems in the long run.

In 1995, I moved to Texas. That was a change. Actually, it was two changes. The move to Texas was one change, going full time into ballroom dance was another. Up until that point, my life had been focused on theater and writing. Teaching ballroom was what I did to pay the bills. Somehow, it took over.

I have spent thirty years teaching social dance. With the term “social dance” I include everything two people can do together in public legally, not just traditional ballroom dances. I have spent thirty years doing this and developing a significant level of expertise. I have competed, have taught competitors, have taught teachers, have written a monthly column and a book. And, as always, I have loved working with absolute beginners.

Then my life again changed again. I moved to Virginia Beach and spent 2012 to 2015 focused on my writing. I attended workshops and classes and eventually taught workshops and classes. As with dance, I loved working with absolute beginners.

Then I returned to Texas, and an entirely new world exploded around me when I began work as a professional photographer.

Boom. Change.

However, when I discovered studio photography… it was like going home to the theater that had, in fact, been one of my first loves. I started using photographs to illustrate my stories.

And, of course, I took photos of dancers.

Lots and lots of dancers.

The point is, of course, that every change is a point on a spiral and not on a circle, so that even “returning to the point of origin” creates change. It’s a new level on the spiral.

We never truly relive the past.

You can’t cross the same river twice.

This project is an expression of the spirals of my life.

It is words… it is dance… it is photography.

It is change.

 

Epilogue

 

The world has changed since I first wrote these words. Dancing has changed. And yet, many fewer changes were needed than I had anticipated when I put it all together. The prose portions  were written for a publication called The Dancer’s Guide, which was the Central Texas go-to magazine for everything in the world of dance back in the day.

What has changed? Well, the rigorous strictures of lead and follow have relaxed, and some dance circuits now allow men to follow and women to lead, and the idea of two men dancing together isn’t nearly as freaky as it once seemed. Yay.

And yet… and yet.

And yet I have changed, too. My life has cycled through several rounds on the spiral, and yet… I just got off the phone with a dear friend who has been with me for longer than I have known how to dance.

And yet I just gave a dance lesson to another dear friend I met over fifteen years ago who was once in my teacher-training program and is marrying later this month. Yesterday, I met with a photography protégé to train for his first professional shoot.

Today I had a meeting with yet another dear friend to discuss our photo shoots for the next couple of months, and we created his new business card.

My life is full. I have so much gratitude to the myriad people who have been a part of this project and who have filled my life with joy… who have danced with me, and written with me, and have let me take their photo.

Thank you all. I love you.

Keep Breathing.

 

See you on the dance floor

 

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

No one becomes a teacher without teachers of his own.  Some of the greatest and most influential in my life have been Joyce Mack, Barbara Roloff, Helene Pohl, Ellen Hunnicut, Brian Liston, Wesley Girlinghouse, Roger Danielson, Chuck Franklin, Glenda Nelson and Barry Jones.  They have helped to make me who I am today, and I thank them humbly.

Most teachers, if they are willing to admit it, have learned as much from their students as they have taught. The students who have helped shape my thinking over the years are far too numerous to mention without an entire volume of their own.  I must, however, at the risk of excluding many who are equally important, single out a few who have been especially helpful in compiling the work at hand:

Julie, Marian, Monta, Ryan, and Tom… I thank you.

More gratitude than I can express goes out to everyone who braved both the heat and the rain to dance for my camera:  Monta Akin, Jim Roberson, Alex Eckhoff, Marian Roberts, Archie Roberts, Shawn Calamari, Mandy Wade, Rosera Tateosian, Steve Tateosian, David Arts, Lee Kelly and Mylie Alrich.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

(From The Dancer’s Guide.)

 

Who am I to think that the words I write here, page after page, are worth the time it takes to read them? I don’t have any national titles. I haven’t won any major dance competitions. I didn’t study at Julliard.

Good question.

What have I done?

Well, I’ve been teaching for forty years, I’ve taught dance, theatre, speech, debate, reading and, believe it or not, computer literacy. I’ve also directed, choreographed, and produced for local and regional theaters, as well as doing all of those same things at a couple of different schools and two colleges. I have taught thousands of folks ranging in age from five to ninety-five across all the fields I have already mentioned.

My first love is teaching… dance is just one of the ways I do it. My actual degree is in writing and philosophy because I have always been and always will be cursed (or blessed) with the need to think about things and to write down my thoughts about them. That’s where this book comes in. As a dance teacher, my primary focus is on teaching dance.

Most teachers I know are in love with dancing and teach to make ends meet. This is not always true, and when it is true it is not always a bad thing… however, the amount of time many other coaches spend perfecting their own dance skills, I spend researching, practicing and perfecting the craft of teaching. Sure, I spent a couple of hours last night bruising myself while I worked on a new routine I am choreographing for myself, but I spend just as much time reading educational theory and human psychology and talking with folks who are top educators in their own fields.

I also spend hours every week working on my writing. I have been paid to write a training manual for a local dance studio and was once commissioned to write a play. I even wrote a book about dance, collected from things I find myself saying to folks over and over again, and the people who have read it have told me they find it interesting and helpful… some of them have even said that they like to pick it up again and again and that they always find something new and useful in it.

Those sorts of compliments always make me very happy.

So those are the things that led up to the point where I originally wrote these words in a monthly column, but, when all is said and done, what is it that really makes me think I was worthy to do so?

Mostly, I guess it’s because Susan Wiggington let me.

 

2023-3-5 My Feet in the Water

I put my feet in the creek today for the first time. On the one hand, it’s kind of bizarre that I’ve been here more than two weeks and today was the first time. One the other, living in a land of rough terrain has proven to me just how unstable I have become from the weight gain and sedentary lifestyle. Even five years ago, I’d have jumped down into the water and wandered up and down the creek my first day here. Now? Well, let’s just say Jack ain’t so nimble.

The good news is, I climbed down into the creek anyway. I’m overcoming so many challenges here. (Climbed down is a bit of a stretch, says me from five years ago. Baby steps, says me today.)

Cold. Yes, the water is cold, which is why only my feet explored. It comes out of a spring fed down from the mountain. Not painfully cold, but cold. What an amazing feeling. The water pouring over my feet, the rock solid beneath me, the wind in my hair and the sun on my face. All four elements everywhere.

I settled into a meditation and pulled the energy into me. The stresses of the last few days melted away.

Stress is a relative term for me on my sabbatical. Getting consistent interwebs has been a constant struggle, but that is so first world problems. The folks at the company have been super helpful, even when not successful, and I think some of them have taken my cause as a personal one because they have no freaking clue why I am having such difficulties.

All that crap washed away with the water over my feet.

Ahhhh….

Here’s a little tour of my hideaway.

Does anyone know which Saint this is? I want to say Saint Francis Is A Sissy, but I’m not certain.

This is a fallen tree over the creek that one day I will cross. It’s not a great photo, but the creek is sort of across the bottom. You can kind of see the rock formations as the land rises away from the creek.

A tiny part of Dan’s garden. He has over an acre of land, and a huge gardening area I’ll photograph soon. This is the plot up against the house. I depict it here in winter, so you can watch as cool things happen over the seasons.

And this is the homestead itself. The place has a fascinating history, and I’m amazed at how much work Dan has put into restoring it. I saw it first back in 2012, and so much has improved. I’m impressed with his ability and dedication.

This is where I live halfway up a mountain.

2023-3-5  The Saga of the Stolen Shoe

 

This is Dan. I’m staying at his place in North Carolina for a while. He’s one of the people I call “brother,” but not in the new fangled version popularized with the diminutive version “bro.” There are a few folks who are my family of choice. To learn more about “Family of Choice,” read any of my novels.

We met freshman year of college because we lived on the same floor in the dorms. We didn’t know each other well, then, but a few years later, after we’d become best friends, I came across a Polaroid photo of him I’d taken in the back of my station wagon freshman year. He was from Oshkosh, so I likely drove him somewhere for some reason. Neither he nor I could remember that event. It’s interesting that someone who, at the time, was insignificant enough to me that I don’t remember driving him or taking his photo, is someone who cared enough to invite me all the way to North Carolina to hit a reset button on my life.

We drove around so I could take photos and stuff.

Which one do you like better? Why? Tap on image for full screen version.

 

I ask these kinds of questions to stay in touch with people. It’s a way to interact with the world at large when the world I now inhabit seems very small… well, these photos likely don’t make it seem small, but I think you’ll know what I mean.

 

Behind the scenes from Dan Kowal!

I see dead things.

 

And living things.

All kinds of things.

The above photo and the next set were taken at an artist retreat near where I live. Folks rent out cabins and focus on their art without the distractions of the outside world. Considering I had zero bars out there, they take their retreat more seriously than I.

An entire post will be devoted to the tragicomedy of my “Quest to Connect with the Outside World.”

I’ve decided that when I’m stupid wealthy, I’m going to create something like this place, but rather than charging, I’ll let folks stay for free and will also provide the bare necessities. Dan’s invitation to the side of a mountain is not the first time I have been provided such a sabbatical, so I want to pay it forward to other struggling artists, which includes dancers, musicians, writers etc etc.

I hope you especially enjoy the next image. See the very shallow depression at the bottom center/right? I had to pass through it to get to the perfect spot for the photo. What looked like wet grass was actually a demonic sinkhole that sucked my leg in to my calf and ate my shoe.

Note to self: “slip on” shoes are also “slip off” shoes.

I managed to retrieve my shoe from a watery, muddy grave, but only by putting my entire not-so-insubstantial weight into it.

So please enjoy the lovely, peaceful image.

Here’s another image of Dan. I’m quite fond of this one. I’m pretty fond of the man, as well.

 

2023-2-21 Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap!

Last Saturday, Dan brought me to a meeting of the local NAACP. What delightful people. Considering I’ve moved into a rural area that skews, shall we say, a bit more conservatively than San Antonio, I enjoyed hearing a group of folks speak with passion about Black History month and a movement to remove all the queer books from the Macon County library and pull it out of a larger governing body. I didn’t really understand the details on that situation, but it would effectively kill the library.

The folks were not happy.

After the meeting, they offered sandwiches and snacks, and I sat with a diverse group of women chatting. It was lovely. Really.

Then Dan and I explored Sylva, which is just over the mountain, and that’s a normal thing to say around here.

 

He introduced me to a nice book shop where I met the manager who wants copies of my books and tarot cards to sell, and we’re going to see about having a book signing there. So that was cool, too. And I met a lovely Wiccan woman at a monthly street market where she was selling her fun witchy wares. Tables there are only $25, so hoorah for that. Less than a week in, and I’m already making sales connections and meeting cool people.

I also met some chickens.

Thanks, Dan, for a delightful morning.

Then he decided to show me a lovely view.

“There’s a great little spot on the top of a mountain,” he said.

“It’d be a great spot for meditation,” he said.

“You’ll love it,” he said.

Apparently, there’s only one way to drive up the side of a mountain, and it includes about a thousand hairpin curves with nothing but a sheer cliff on one side of the road.

Holy crap! Holy crap! Holy crap!

I would have taken video if I hadn’t been clutching the seat and the handle with both hands all the way up the mountain. Okay, remember my little experience that first day where I briefly found myself on such a road? Yeah… I had no idea.

Every turn was at about a six-degree angle, and by the end it was literally one lane. We had to pull off the road when someone wanted to go down the mountain. Since we were on the inside, we hugged the mountain while they rode the outside track. Fortunately, none of them took the short cut.

Every time I flinched especially aggressively, Dan would say, “We’re almost there.”

He said that all fifteen hours we drove. (That’s hyperbole.)

When we arrived, it was indeed beautiful.

That’s Dan. I’m not there because all the shiny, slippery rock that looks like it angles up is lying to you. That’s a downward slope to the edge of oblivion, which would make a great title for a song.  I meditated while sitting on a handy fallen tree trunk. Far, far away from the ledge.

Life in the mountains will take some adjustment. 😮

Addendum: A Fed Ex truck just pulled into the driveway of the house across the creek.

First of all, I like being able to say, “Across the creek.”

Secondly… nope. Just nope.

 

 

 

2023-2-20  Front Porch Office

I left San Antonio one week ago today.

Why did I move to North Carolina? I have given several answers to that question. The truest one is that I moved four times in the space of a year and needed to move a fifth. Long story. This time, Dan invited me to live with him in NC.

“First of all, thank you,” I said, “but I have the kind of job that it can take six months to a year to build enough of a clientele to survive.”

He didn’t say anything.

I chuckled quietly.

The truth is I haven’t been earning enough to survive since the Pandemic hit. Sure, the country, in general, pretends it’s over, but the truth is I’ve not been able to rebuild enough of a business to pay the bills. And I’m not looking for sympathy, because it’s all worked out for the best. (I just knocked on wood.)  Had the last year not been so extreme, I’d never had taken the leap of faith. Taoists call it “the empty-handed leap into the abyss.”

The goal is to create online income streams through teaching, editing, tarot readings, etc that allow me to live comfortably. Then, when I return to Texas, I can do the things I love to do in person (teaching dance and taking pictures) more for fun than to pay the bills.

The return is almost inevitable.

One reason: snow.

I’m not a winter person.

Sure. Those icicles are pretty. But… they’re ice.

Wandering lazily towards March, we’re likely also heading into Spring. We might get some snow, but it’s not an entire long cold winter.

I also plan to use this time to heal. It’s been a harsh couple of years for all of us, and I know several people who’ve had it much worse than I, but since I made the leap, I figure I should use the time to shed some of the bad habits I picked up as coping mechanisms.

Visiting places like this helps tremendously. More on that journey next time. 😉

 

 

This the view from my front porch. Technically, the porch belongs to the house, and the house belongs to my brother Dan, but he invited me to live here, so I think I get to kind of see it as mine as much as anything really belongs to anyone.

2023/2/17  Sometimes, the tea just isn’t enough.

Day three in the mountains. Dreams last night. So many dreams.

The first I remember was unusual even for me. Pretend you’re a college student studying early film. Stuff like Nosferatu and Metropolis. You’re also fond of Dada and Film Noir. You decide to create an homage to all those styles and make it as random and disturbing as possible. Lots of crosscutting, modern CG to transform people into abstract creations. Random dialog is a must. Can’t have anything make any actual sense. And make it black and white… of course.

Then figure out how to plug it directly into my brain.

I never dream in black and white.

And that was just the beginning. I don’t remember the next series of dreams as well, but there were ghosts slamming lockers open and closed in a high school, and the noise really annoyed me… something about the spirits being trapped in there by some sort of vines inside the wall. I reached into the lockers, like through them, to pull out all the vines to set the spirits free so they’d stop slamming the dang lockers. It was pretty exhausting because the vines kept growing as I pulled other vines free.

Of course.

So… today I’m a little more subdued than I have been. I also think the adrenaline is finally wearing off. Originally, Dan had invited me to check out the music scene in Ashville tonight, but I think I might stay home and work on edits and writing.

Ashville is the Austin of NC. They seem to have a thriving dance scene and lots of hippy dippy tree hugging pagan folks. You know, my peeps. 😉

There’s what seems to be a cool techno party/art exhibit next Friday in Franklin itself, and I hope to attend.

Tomorrow I’m going to explore a bit more, so expect more photos when I’m able to get back to the library.

The view from my new “office,” otherwise known as the Macon County Library. That’s it on the left. I don’t have internet or phone service at the house, yet, but think I will continue to work from here when that gets sorted. They have “tuuoring rooms” that will be perfect for all the online services I plan to provide! Ten minutes from home.

 

2023/2/13

The roads from Dallas to wherever I was shortly before crossing into North Carolina were primarily flat to wavy. That was 8:20am to about 10pm on Tuesday. Sure there were some pretty large hills leading up to the final kick, but there were also enough cars ahead that clearly defined the hills and curves.

In the black of night, I crossed into the leading edge of the Appalachian Mountains, and nary a car was in sight. I was on my own. In the mountains. On curvy roads.

Very curvy roads.

Most of the time, a clear cliff face rose to my left and nothing but trees to my right… that I could see. All I could see was in the narrow beams of my head lights. Other than the road and the cliff on one side and the trees on the other, nothing existed. At the time, it was rather unnerving.

Somewhere before entering the curves of the mountains, I had been pulled over by a cop. That had been fun. He said I was speeding, but I had been going flow of traffic, and several people had recently passed me, so I suspect it was the Texas plates. He gave me a warning and told me to slow down, and I thanked him and now, at 10pm, my heart was pounding because I’m from Texas and you never know when a speeding ticket you forgot to pay means going to jail. This has happened to friends.

While waiting for the shake of my hands to reduce, I noticed that Dan had left a message asking my whereabouts. I responded that I had no idea, but had been pulled over by a cop, then I hit the road, afraid that if the adrenaline crashed, I’d be too tired to make the last leg of the journey.

The phone pinged messenger, but that was likely Dan commenting on my message and the road had gone curvy, so I ignored it. Then my phone made the texting ping. And again. And again.

Oh. Dan might have worried about me and switched to text. So I found a place to pull over. Nope. My phone uses the same ping to tell me when I have service, or when I don’t. It had gone back and forth several times.

And the message I had sent to Dan hadn’t sent.

I had no service at all.

Sooo… Middle of the night. Curvy mountain roads. No cell service or interwebs.

Wait… would the Google directions lady keep giving me directions if I had no cell service? Would I end up twenty miles from my destination at 1am with no way to find it? Dan had warned that I would have no service at his house.

Well, it was what it was, and the next hour was all one road… So…

That takes us back to me on the dark, very curvy roads, but now we’ve added that I don’t know if the Google lady will keep assisting me at the end of that particular road.

She did. I made it safely. Hoorah.

The next morning, I headed out to find cell service so I could check out the local library which would be my interwebs haven until I sorted out my own. Since I couldn’t Google from home, I figured I’d just backtrack to the last bundle of chain stores that would likely have service.

Then two large pickups ahead of me turned to a kind of side road with much verve and vigor. “Oh, I thought,” maybe that’s a way to civilization, too. They certainly seem confidant about—

Holy F-ing sh#$!

I said that four times.

Yeah, the road switched back about 160 degrees and dropped down to two feet for either lane. It immediately switched back again, this time at about 270 degrees and the road narrowed to one foot for both lanes. The downward edge of the road? A clear cliff face approximately ten centimeters from the pavement. It dropped further than the waterfall to Land of the Lost.

I cussed some more, pulled into the first driveway I found and headed away from that deathtrap with my tail tucked between my legs. Yipe, yipe, yipe.

So… I’m now kind of glad I drove that last two hours of curvy, windy mountain roads in the dark.

 

Capes. They came out of nowhere. Criminals who normally used handguns and AR-15s now used fireballs and teleportation. Then the good guys showed up, trying to foil the supervillains. Except… well… the heroes’ powers had shown up out of nowhere, too, and they weren’t… well, they weren’t very good at it… at heroing… but they had Powers!

They were Capes! They had to do Good.

So people died.

There were heroes and villains before the capes appeared. Few and far between, but perhaps if we know more about the superheroes who were born before thousands of people gained powers out of nowhere, maybe we can understand the entire phenomenon a little better.  Before the capes, nearly all origin stories were tragedies. Maybe that’s why they were better heroes?

 

 

Channel’s origin.

“I died,” Morrison says, very effectively bringing me out of my reverie.

“Excuse me?”

“That’s when it started for me,” he explains. He doesn’t move, just stares up at the passing clouds. “I was in this car accident? Drunk driver. I was, like, fourteen. Splat all over the place. Nine other kids died and stayed that way. My liver was in three pieces, and when they stitched me up, I died on the table. Stayed that way for two minutes.” He sort of glances at me.

“It was pretty cool,” he adds, “being dead. I sat in the car, and then my Tia Sophie opened the door and invited me to get out, which I thought was kinda weird since she’d died when I was ten. I didn’t really know I was dead. We talked a long time.  She told me not to worry about my dad, that he was a stupid son of a bitch who didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.”

He stops and laughs. “Sophie was always the best. Don’t know how she and Dad came from the same family. Anyway, I don’t remember most of what she said, but when I came to in the hospital a week later, she stood there for ten minutes. She faded away.” He stops and stares at the clouds, tying to remember something. “They started working me that same day. At first it was just once in a while. Last month, it all went crazy. Now, they won’t leave me alone. Sucks shit.”

I wait for him to say more.

“The weirdest thing she said to me was, ‘You know, Morrison, when you think about it, no one really needs thirty-one flavors of ice cream.’” He laughs. “Not that I remember anything else we talked about.  Just that.” He looks at me. “Isn’t that the strangest thing for a dead aunt to say to a person?”

I chuckle and nod. I do that a lot.

Some days later

Up on the rooftop, click, click, click. . .

I’m waxing melancholy. The night is cool, but my leather jacket keeps me warm. I suppose my feet wouldn’t be so cold if I weren’t barefoot.

The wind tugs at my ponytail. The past tugs at my mind.

Seems to be an awful lot of that lately.

A year ago, it all seemed so clear. My fear of getting someone killed convinced me not to let anyone close enough to get hurt. I wonder now, who I was afraid would get hurt.

The punk kid sits in the living room with Trish. . . no, the other punk kid, Morrison, working on his blocks. Coming along well, too. His energy leaks through the walls. Warm.

Something catches my eye in the night sky, a movement that shouldn’t be there.

I blink a few times, focus on the vague motion. . . and whoopdie-shit if I don’t land meself in the middle of Poltergeist Parts I, II, and III.

An entire caravan of dead people floats outside my apartment. I can’t even begin to count them. They float and glide and shit. You’ve seen the movies; use your imagination. I watch them for a while, rather comforted that my shield keeps them out.

I have never in all my life seen anything even remotely like this.

Uh, Trish? I send.

? she returns.

Please join me and keep the kid occupied.

She sends me another ? but gives Morrison a couple of tricks to play with before wandering onto the balcony.

I lift her carefully from the patio and fly her to my side on the roof. She carries an intense residue from Jake. Wow. She’s really in love with him.

I forget my original purpose. “Do you realize how serious you are about my roommate?” I ask it out loud because I don’t much like two-way psychic conversations.

She smiles, and her energy radiates.

“Does he know?” I ask.

She shrugs. “I’m not sure. I keep forgetting how sensitive you are.” Her blocks go up. I don’t tell her that they wouldn’t even phase me. “Is that what you wanted?”

“No, no. . .” I say, turn and point. “You see that?”

She nods.

“What the fuck?”

Ester William’s ghost follies swim in unison above us.

“They want Morrison.” Trish watches them far too calmly.

“You’ve seen stuff like this before?”

“You haven’t?” she asks.

“Uh, no.”

She looks up into the swirling cloud of dead folks. “Morrison must be opening you. It’s what he does. Maybe through me, actually.”

Which makes sense. He’s a medium for spooks, and she’s some kind of catalyst.

 “You’re in touch with the dead on your own?” I ask.

She nods. “I’m in touch with most of the universe, I just can’t do anything about it the way you can.” I watch her watching them. “It’s actually rather beautiful.”

Yeah. So’s the sun, but I don’t want one hovering over my house. “They can’t get in?”

“No.”

Good.

Morrison strolls onto the balcony to see what’s up. Well, this could be interesting. He swings into view and scrambles onto the roof.

“You guys talking about me?” He crouches a couple of feet away, smirking, notices Trish’s gaze, follows it. “Whatcha looking at?”

“Ghosts,” she says.

“Yeah?” So he can’t see them either. Hm. “What do they look like?”

“Have you seen Poltergeist?” I ask. “Same thing.”

He laughs. “What are they doing?”

“Waiting for you,” Trish says.

“I think I’m getting the hang of blocking them,” he says.

“Yep,” I encourage.

Morrison sits beside me, his shoulder brushing mine.

“Is Jake almost done with work?” Trish asks.

I reach across town. “He’s on his way.”

“I have to go to school tomorrow,” Morrison says. “There’s a big test in Physics.” He searches the sky for some sign of the threat there. “Will I be able to keep them out?”

“No worries,” I tell him. “I’ll shield you until you can do it yourself.”

He brightens. “You’re coming to school with me? Can I use you for show and tell?”

I laugh. “I don’t need. . .”

There’s something funny about the van pulling into the parking lot.

“. . .to be. . .”

There’s a block on them.

“. . .right there with you.”

Trish taps my shoulder and points into the sky.

Uh-oh. A new ghost has joined the Twilight Zone parade. Call him Casper. I make out a face, eyes red and burning; it’s the spirit who spoke through Morrison the night before.

The other spirits prance around the new guy like pups around their mother. He doesn’t move, just hovers there, watching. Staring.

“What do you think he’s up to?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” Trish says.

“What who’s up to?” from Morrison.

I ignore him for the moment and slide into the spirit’s mind, figuring it should be the same as sliding into anyone’s mind.

Wrong!

Hatred. . . Anger. . . killed by. . . by the state. . . by the giant. . . by the boy. . . a murderer, killed children. . . hated children. . . boys. . . didn’t die. . . shouldn’t have died. . . wasn’t his fault. . . his fault. . . pain. . . more hatred. . . wants the boy. . . must have him. . . must stop the pain. . .

“Angel, we have company,” Morrison grabs my arm, his touch burns me like fire.

I jerk away, glaring at him, but it’s just residue from Casper’s mind. . . or whatever that was that I read. I touch Morrison’s shoulder to let him know he’d just startled me.

He points at the ground below, but I’m caught in his eyes, a glow there, his warmth.

Wow. Fuck that. I shake my head and look down.

About a dozen Army-looking guys swarm out of each van toward the back door of our building. They don’t see us on the roof. Well, who’d think to look on the roof, anyway, but there are lots of branches, it’s dark, and the lights down there let us see them without being seen.

I sweep their minds. They want the kid. They’re supposed to take him to. . . shit, can’t see where.

Which is when I notice the guy in the trench coat staring right at me. He’s the one who has the Army guys all blocked up. Strong empath, psychic, clairvoyant, no psychokinesis, but advanced in his field. Name’s Yareth. I don’t read it, but I’ve heard about him. He helps the government nail unsuspecting psychics. He’s a bad guy.

His goons swarm up the stairs, so he doesn’t bother to tell them where I am, figures they’ll figure it out, decides to. . . shit!

The block closes around me before I can set up against it. The guy is good.

It only lasts a split second before I break through. . . but it’s enough.

See, Yareth set up a block around me to cut me off from the goon squad.

Consequently, he also cut me off from Morrison.

It only lasts a fraction of a second, but the ghosts move really, really fast. . .

Morrison screams.

The goon squad bursts into the apartment, and I thank God I’m not a stereotypical queen since the place is still a shambles. The embarrassment would destroy me.

Morrison turns to me, smiling, eyes all aglow, the air around him crackling with life.

He rises, keeps rising, until he hovers about a foot above the roof.

Yareth’s jaw drops and bounces around on the pavement. Sure, he’s good in his field; however, this brand of paranormal is not his field. Dumb shit.

Casper lifts Morrison’s hand to point at me. “You,” the voice from hell says through Morrison’s mouth, “are an annoying pain in the ass!”

His ghosts swarm me but are held at bay by my personal shields.

Meanwhile, back in my apartment, the soldiers tear the place apart looking for us. They do the backs slamming against the wall, “Fan out, boys,” bullshit you see in movies. . .

Then one of them hears Morrison scream. He holds up a hand to stop the others. They stop. He points up to the roof real serious-like.

His second-in-command thinks, “No shit. We all heard that scream.”

I try to find a way inside Morrison.

Casper notices the soldiers and decides for a little revenge or something. Seemed like he was killed by the state. Not sure of the details. Ghost brains are fuzzy.

Morrison turns his back on us and floats off the edge of the roof and down.

Inside: A young Luke Skywalker type awaits orders in the kitchen. He and three other soldiers stand poised for battle. The scream unnerved young Luke. This is his first time in the field, and he doesn’t really know what to expect, figures they’re after drug dealers or something. Wow. What a little kid.

One of his buddies taps his shoulder and points behind him.

Luke turns around, rifle ready, only to be blinded by a pair of my skivvies. He grabs the cloth from his face, looks down at it, notices the Calvin Klein label then looks up in time to see a closetful of dirty laundry swarming him.

Before he can shout, a turtleneck wraps itself around his head and chokes him. My Levis bind his legs, and several pair of dress pants wrap up his arms. His gun falls to the floor as my wardrobe buries him.

The three other soldiers struggle just as hard against their own fashion issues. As they bobble about the kitchen, the fridge starts to shake. It rattles away from the wall and the door shudders open, throwing a dazzling green light across the linoleum.

Half a dozen condiments soar into the room and squirt their contents all over the struggling goons. As the ketchup hits the floor, Luke’s boot strikes it, and he does a perfect Home Alone spill, sliding into one of his buddies and toppling over the rest of the guys.

Steee-rike!

The other soldiers fare no better. All through the apartment, they battle vacuum cleaner attachments, cutlery, and vibrating dildos.

Their leader shouts instructions which no one hears.

Screeech. . .

Even the captain or whatever stops trying to restore order when the ceiling fan pulls itself from its roots and chases him up the stairs.

Which is the scene Yareth finds when he pushes the broken door out of the way and enters the battle zone.  Doing a good job of feigning calm, he picks his way through the bedlam, appearing ever so official with his trench coat flapping around his legs.

See? I knew the trench was a good idea.

He steps over a guy wrapped up in duct tape and makes his way to the living room just as Morrison pauses outside the plate glass balcony door.

Yareth stops, meets Morrison’s fiery gaze, smiles. This is the kind of thing he joined the FBI to do. What a nut.

The rest of the ghosts, daunted by Yareth’s blocks, ignore him.

Casper just gets hot.

Knowing what’s about to happen, I wrap everyone in the living room with a solid wall as Morrison raises his arms. The waves of energy which surround him crackle into bolts of lightning and sweep out from his entire body.

The glass patio doors explode across my living room.

The guys who can, throw themselves to the floor and wonder why they are still alive as the shards careen away from my shields.

Yareth, impressively, stands his ground as a tornado of glass surrounds him, wheels about him, and subsides to the floor.

Morrison floats into the apartment through the new hole in the wall. How in God’s name am I going to trick the insurance company this time?

I shove the soldiers out of the way into the corners where they can say Hail Marys.

Yareth’s shoes crunch on the new glass carpeting Casper installed.

The ghost floats Morrison to the center of the room, his attention on Yareth.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m still trying to find a way into Morrison’s mind. It’s going to be a lot harder to fool Casper a second time.

“What do you want with this boy,” says the voice from hell.

“My employers want him,” Yareth says, “for study.”

Casper laughs. “I need him for a much greater purpose.”

Yareth tries to read the ghost. Doesn’t really know how.

Meanwhile, Trish and I climb down onto the balcony.

The soldiers push to their feet.

“Get out,” Casper screams, pointing at the broken door behind Yareth, and the sound shatters whatever glass had been left intact.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Yareth says.

I love to watch idiots dive in way over their pathetically bullheaded heads.

Casper laughs a sinister, ghostly laugh.

The debris on the floor shivers and shakes.

Oh. crap.

“Get the fuck out of here,” I shout.

The shields around the goons redouble as my entire apartment explodes into a typhoon. This time, the furniture leaps into the action, and let’s not forget millions of shards of broken glass added to the mix.

“You have no idea what you’re dealing with here,” I shout. Not that I do, either.

Soldiers scramble for the door.

Trish touches my elbow. “Use me. While it’s entertained by Yareth, use me to get to Morrison.”

I don’t have time to wonder whether she is ready for this. I dive into her mind, feel a rush unlike any I’ve felt in years. The air hums with energy. My mind blows open more than I’ve ever dreamed possible.

Without a second’s thought, I swoop into the eye of the hurricane, and, now that I have all this additional power, I find Morrison easily and slip my block around him.

Something is wrong though. . . the cyclone doesn’t stop.

Morrison falls to the ground in a heap, but the room keeps on spinning.

“Get them out of here,” Trish shouts at me.

Which is a good idea, but first I lock the ghosts in with a shield designed to keep them from escaping the apartment. I think I know where this is heading, and I don’t want all this pissed off ghost energy loose in the neighborhood.

Then I fly the soldiers through the air with the greatest of ease. I even yank Yareth out of the apartment. I carry Trish and Morrison to ground, wrench a plunger from the maelstrom, grab it with both hands as if it were a trapeze, and head for cover.

Inside the apartment, Casper has come up with a new definition for the word “merry-go-round.” Like psychotic fish trapped in too small a bowl, the spirits flash and dart and bump against the walls and shields.

Casper screams in rage. The hatred and power inside him build, spinning out of control.

On the ground, I plumb new depths of power with Trish at my side, double, triple, quadruple the strength of the bubble protecting the rest of the world from the hell inside my humble abode.

The energy builds way beyond Casper’s ability to control.

Or mine.

This is bad.

Very bad.

“Get down!” I shout and throw to ground anyone who doesn’t obey immediately.

I cover us all in one shield.

Wait for it. . . wait for it. . .

BOOOOOM!

Fuck me! Too much energy. Too much boom.

I have to open the bubble around the apartment.

I barely manage to shield the inside walls, protecting the rest of the building, but the shields on the outside walls go “pop.”

My home of the past two years blows into the sky like so much confetti and dust shot out of an incredibly huge canon.

Ash falls from the sky like rain.

I black out.

I come to a minute later, roll onto my side, and check on Trish. She’s sitting up, rubbing her head with headache #202, but basically all right.

“You all right?” I ask so she knows I care.

She nods. “Where’s Morrison?”

“Being taken to that truck,” I tell her, nodding in the direction of a cluster of goons.

Luke Skywalker bends down, offering a hand to each of us. His mind reads friendly, so I take his offer and scramble to my feet.

“Thanks,” I mutter, already on my way to help Morrison.

His hand stops me, and I answer his question before he can waste my time asking it. “Yes, it was me saved your ass up there. You’re welcome, and if you want my advice, request a transfer away from Yareth. He’s an idiot and will get you killed.” I stomp my way to Morrison.

Two soldiers try to stop me, but I slide them a few feet away and keep moving.

Pissed off doesn’t even approach my current feelings.

I reach the group with Morrison at its center in cuffs, check that Trish is still with me, and push a few more soldiers out of the way.

I touch Morrison, turn him to face me. He’s pretty pissed off, too. The handcuffs drop to the ground, and he rubs his wrists. He looks at me, up at the charred mess which was once my home, then back at me.

“I got distracted,” I tell him. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” he asks. “I get your home disintegrated, and you apologize to me?”

I grab his shoulders. “Don’t waste your energy feeling guilty. It’ll just annoy me.”

Yareth stands behind me, now.

“Besides which,” I add, “if Barney Fife here had the least fucking clue what he was doing, this wouldn’t have happened.” Are the soldiers loyal to him or are they as disgusted by his incompetence as me?

“You are interfering with a federal arrest,” Yareth says. He’s a cocky son-of-a-bitch, even for a G-man.

I turn to him. “What are the charges?”

“Running away from home. His father has been searching—”

A quick scan of Yareth’s mind lets me interrupt. “He didn’t cross state lines, so you don’t have jurisdiction. Don’t bullshit someone who can read your every thought, Yareth.” I let that sink in, then add, “Don’t waste your time with blocks. You can’t compete.”

“We’re taking him in.” Fists on his hips apparently let me know he’s serious.

Laughing, I point up at the apartment. “I wasn’t scared by that, Yareth, what makes you think you scare me? Your men can’t touch me.” Calling them goons wouldn’t win friends. “Get the fuck out of here and leave me alone.”

“I could arrest all three of you—”

“On what grounds?” I shoot back loud enough for all his men to hear. “This whole thing was your fault! You knew exactly what your men might run into.” I wave at the cluster of soldiers. “Did they know? Did they know you had no way to protect them from this kind of paranormal activity? I had that fucking ghost completely contained until you cut me off. When you blocked me, the ghost hacked Morrison and blew my apartment to smithereens, endangering the lives of everyone in this building.”

I do a quick check. “That’s one hundred civilians right now. They’d all be dead if I hadn’t blown all that energy straight up, protected them from the devil you unleashed. You caused this. You did, and if you really think you can pin the blame on me, you must have ignored the basement full of papers which is my file at the Pentagon. The cops in this city know me. The fucking President knows who I am, as does the managing editor of fucking Newsweek.”

I pause for a breath and drop my voice to something quiet and menacing. “If I don’t have a check at the studio covering damages and then some by tomorrow afternoon, I’ll go to the press and straight to the Pentagon.” There are times when the little brush I had with fame pays off. “You aren’t going to get him this way, Yareth.” I put my arm around Morrison. “Go home.”

We turn and walk to the curb.

Trish joins us as we sit. Is all that true?

If it works, does it matter?

She chuckles.

Yareth’s men wait for an order.

He knows they believe me, that they realize I saved them and that Yareth walked them into a deathtrap. He was in such a hurry, he didn’t think it through. A professional at his level should have done a hell of a lot better.

Police sirens approach, as well as fire engines and ambulances which, thankfully, will have no use here.

Yareth tries to read me. Fails. Decides to check my file more thoroughly before trying again. Tries really, really hard to keep me from reading him. Fails. Decides to get the hell out and regroup outside my range. Which would mean a trip to San Marcos, but he doesn’t know that.

Without a word, his men pile into their vans and take off just before the police arrive.

Luke Skywalker stands to attention before entering the van. He salutes me.

I need to remember him. He deserves my respect. I place a fist into the opposite palm at chest level and bow a salute Jake taught me in martial arts training. I’m not sure if it’s kosher for a civilian to salute a soldier; I don’t care to offend the nice young man but I want to show my respect.

Yareth doesn’t blow me a kiss goodbye. That’s okay as long as I get a check to cover the damages.

Damages. . .

Holy shit. Everything in the world I owned is sawdust.

Well, this has happened before.

Trish takes my hand. “You okay?”

I nod. “Just pissed off.”

Police cars scream around the corner.

The residents of the complex finally decide it’s safe to see what happened. They swarm out of the buildings full of questions. My tired mind blocks them out and keeps them away.

“What do we do, now?” Trish asks.

“I say we get the hell out of here,” Morrison suggests.

I shake my head. “I need to make sure the cops who know me find out what really happened, otherwise I don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting the Feds to pay up.” I push to my feet. “You two stay here.”

I spot Ricardo. He heard the address on the radio and worried all the way here. How sweet. I open my mouth to give him shit about it. . .

Then I don’t. That’s part of what Morrison said about me keeping people at arm’s length.

I hold out a hand that Ricardo only glances at for half a second before taking. I pull him into a one-armed hug around the shaking hand. “Thanks for rushing over. We’re all okay.”

As he pulls away, I see the relief. And a bit of intrigue over the first hug I’ve ever given him.

I’m halfway through the report when Jake shows up. All things considered, he takes the news pretty well. Sort of stands there staring up at the smoking hole, asking, “You’re sure someone’s going to pay for all this?” again and again.

Oh, yeah. I’m sure.

Soon enough, the fire and EMS folks realize they aren’t needed. They make like a baby and head out.

The cops keep nosing around questioning witnesses for the look of the thing.

Marcus shows up, all concerned and shit. He shouts my name before I notice that he’s there.

I wave in his direction, and he runs over, folds me in his arms, which, truth be told, feels good.  For the first time, some part of me maybe almost wants to react.

Nah.

Instead, I go find Morrison. I sit beside him on the curb. “You okay?” I ask.

He smiles. “Never a dull moment.”

“Need a doctor or anything?”  He shakes his head and watches the cops. They make him nervous. It’s weird to him to be able to sit here with them so close. He’s not used to someone protecting him.  Hm.

“Look,” I say, “I have a couple questions.”

He cringes. “Yeah. Sorta figured.”

I give it to him. “You told me all this started when you were hit by a drunk driver and died.”

He looks at the ground, and I read everything I need to know. There was no drunk driver. Morrison died in a neighbor’s tool shed, tied to a table with a map of Texas carved across his abdomen. The neighbor’s wife had gone looking for wire clippers while her husband washed up at the garden hose. She called 911.

Morrison hadn’t lied about everything, though. He did die.

He did see his aunt.

And he wasn’t the only one to die. There were nine others.

The neighbor went to jail.

Where he died, too.

Fuck.

Morrison will hate this.

“You don’t want to hear this,” I tell him, “but you knew this guy when he was alive.”

Morrison folds his arms over his stomach and hunches over. “He’s back.” He shivers.

There were heroes and villains before the capes appeared. Few and far between, but perhaps if we know more about the superheroes who were born before thousands of people gained powers out of nowhere, maybe we can understand the entire phenomenon a little better.  Before the capes, nearly all origin stories were tragedies. Maybe that’s why they were better heroes?

Catalyst’s origin.

 

Happy New Year’s Eve and shit.

I’m out on the balcony, watching the clouds wander overhead and worrying. Orange juice and rum are thrown haphazardly together in a cold glass in my right hand. My left hand works the muscles in my right forearm.

Call me Angel, which is what most folks call me because I told them to. My name is really Danny Angelo, but only my roommate and my boyfriend call me Danny.

Three stories below me, the deserted parking lot glistens from the recent rain. The air smells clean and wet. The sound of some famous idiot cheerfully extolling the virtue of this year’s inane pop icons reaches me through the glass doors from the belly of my living room.

I feel Jake in the doorway. The best friend-slash-sidekick.

“You gonna watch the ball drop?” he asks quietly. Ice tinkles against the glass in his hand. He drinks.

My eyes are trapped in the clouds. “Yeah, sure.” I try to sound enthusiastic. It just doesn’t work very well.

A van full of revelers pulls loudly into the parking lot.

The screen door shushes open, and Jake pads quietly to my side, leaning against the railing, looking at me.

“You want to go?” It’s the first time he’s asked tonight. I’m impressed at his restraint.

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“We’re not going.”

“Okay. Then come inside, get drunk with me, and watch the fucking ball drop in Times Square.” He smiles a lot, trying to cheer me up, to get my mind off what might happen downtown.

Likely.

“Okay,” I say.

We turn to go inside. . .

And there she is in the doorway. Trish.

“Holy shit.” I have no clue which of us said it. Could have been either.

Every muscle in Jake’s back twitches, and I hold out an arm to restrain him.

“What the fuck do you want?” I ask.

She’s not there. There is no trace of her energy. It’s the exact opposite of the dream I had. . .

Fuck. That’s how she tricked me the first couple of times. Like a dope, I’d expected the dream to be an accurate threat. Duh.

“Never trust a woman,” she says. “Especially when it comes to your dreams.” She’s in my mind. Fuck. “Such language from the self-proclaimed savior of all mankind.” She clucks her tongue.

I repeat, “What the fuck do you want?’

She moves to the end of the balcony, her back to us, and leans casually against the railing, watching the drunks tumble out of the van and toward our apartment building.

I try desperately to not think about the van people.

“Are you afraid for them?” she asks. “Afraid I might hurt them?”

I don’t respond. What does she want?

Jake’s chest presses against my arm. His breath slips in and out in little hisses.

“To answer your question, I’d like a drink.” She turns to us, smiling. “Whatever you’re having.” Her eyes shine bright and clear. Her dress is almost sheer and billows around her legs. “You like it?” She touches the fabric of her skirt. “I figured a dancer would appreciate a dress with movement.”

Unable to think of a thing to do, I mix her a drink.

She feels things moving in the kitchen and smiles. “Ice please.”

I pull ice from the freezer and drop it into the glass. We all wait while the glass wanders through the open kitchen window and into her waiting hand.

She sips, sighs, and places the glass on the balcony ledge. “It’s just like an episode of Bewitched.”

I try very hard not to notice the folks hanging out in the parking lot, trying to open the door to the building. It takes them far too long.

“I’m not letting them in,” she explains.

“Why not?”

She shrugs. “It amuses me to watch you squirm.”

Jake finally speaks. “Has anyone ever told you you’re a bitch?”

She drinks. “You’re just mad because you didn’t get a chance to fuck me.”

The pressure against my arm increases.

“What do you want with me?” I spit out.

“Well, at first I thought maybe we could work together,” she says. “I saw you in the papers and thought, ‘Hey, we could do some serious damage together,’ then I realized you were a do-gooder and thought, ‘Well, maybe I can seduce him,’” She laughs. “Fat chance. So, I figured I’d come check you out, see how strong you are, see if maybe I could make you realize how boring it is to do good, that whole dark side of the Force thing.” She shrugs.  “No go, so I’ve decided you have to die.”

Screams from below as all six van people are swept into the air and tossed around like rag dolls above the parking lot.

I close my eyes.

She’s still not there.

Fuck.

Jake pushes past me and throws himself at her.

Which is when the sky falls down on Chicken Little.

Keep in mind that for five years, I’ve been in tune with every living creature for anywhere from one to five miles of me, depending on the stage in my development. Imagine suddenly having water in your ears, smoke in your eyes, and cotton up your nose.

She shuts me off. It’s like having a pillow shoved over my face.

Jake flies into the air, and I cannot hear his mind cry out to me, telling me not to worry about him, just to stop her. For the first time in five years, the only reason I know what he’s thinking is that I know him so well.

 She doesn’t move. . . not that she needs to. All the hand waving and facial grimacing in movies is bullshit.

Time slows down.

I test the shield around me.

I nab one of the van people as he starts to fall from the sky, then catch a second, then a huge knot of pain hits my forehead as I grab the third. The first slips, and I actually need to concentrate to hold up all three at once.

Her grip on my mind tightens, and I engage a huge amount of will to set up a block against her. . . a tiny block, but enough to catch a fourth victim before depositing the first.

Oh. . . this is all happening very fast. Very, very fast.

I hear a scream and have to physically look to see the van lifted into the air.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Okay, there is nothing, nothing in my best shape, I could do about that van. I can’t even let it concern me unless I need to jump out of the way.

Which is when the railing splinters, and Jake flies out into space and drops out of sight.

The sound of the railing sickens me.

I’m blind. I can’t hear a thing.

The last two van people drop out of the sky.

The van hurtles at the apartment building across the lot.

And what’s-her-name’s glass makes a beeline for my face.

A lot of shitty things happening at once.

I catch the van people, which just about exhausts my energy and hits me like a metal pipe to the forehead.

She tries to clamp down harder, but now that I’ve felt what it’s like to be attacked like this, I can keep my head at least as open as it is.

I am stretched so thin with this that I can’t find Jake. I pray very fast and keep telling myself, “He’s a gymnast, that’s like being a cat. It’s only three stories. This is exactly the sort of thing he warned me about. Don’t freak out.”

The van impacts. Several very disturbing noises happen. Does anyone need my help? Don’t know, and there isn’t a damn thing I could do, anyway.

For the first time in years. . . I duck.

The bitch’s glass shatters somewhere behind me.

At the same moment, I throw my own glass, relying on my hands for the first time in a very long time.

The next moment:

The van people touch down.

About a dozen alarms go off in the building behind me.

Jake hits the ground, and I don’t allow the sound to register.

My glass hits her square in the forehead.

Bam.

…

Wait.

Holy shit!

I hit her!

Wait. Did she block it? Her face registers nothing. Nada.

Then she crumples. . . just falls into a heap with a red spot in the middle of her forehead.

Just like that. Kapow.

Was she stretched too thin to do a thing about it? Lifting the van must have tapped her out. She couldn’t even see it coming. . .

Except that there was nothing wrong with her eyes.

She didn’t even react. . .

Her stranglehold on my mind isn’t instantly released.

Wait, is something even spookier going on?

She didn’t duck because she couldn’t see it. Couldn’t see anything.

She didn’t react to the blow because she couldn’t feel it.

Oh, my fucking God.

Fuck!

“Trish” had nothing to do with it, which is why she was invisible psychically.

She’s not psychic.

Someone else has been using this woman like a puppet the whole time.

My head hurts. There’s this woman laying on my balcony all crumpled up with a red stain on her forehead dripping down her temple. She’s breathing.

I still can’t feel Jake, so fuck it. I tap all my energy, pull my board from the apartment, and sail to the ground.

I push through the crowd that has gathered around him.

He lays on his back staring up at the trees, unmoving.

Not moving…

Is he even breathing?

Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. . .

No, no, no, no. . .

I drop to my knees.

He turns to look at me.

I breathe.

Thank God.

I really thought he was dead for a second there.

He sort of smiles. “Hey, shithead, is she dead?” From the way his face is all tight and stuff, he’s in a heck of a lot of pain. Normally, he doesn’t much respond to injuries. Bad childhood.

I shake my head.

“Too bad. She could use a serious case of rigor mortise.”

“How’re you?”

“Hurts like hell. I think I broke a rib.”

“I thought gymnasts always hit the ground rolling.”

“We do. It’s just a matter of what we roll into.” He glances sideways at a nearby tree. “I bounced off that sucker. It’s really solid.”

“Ouch.”

“You didn’t freak out?”

“Nope. Just beaned her in the head with a cocktail. Knocked her cold.”

“Cool,” he says and winces.

“It hurt a lot?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“I couldn’t find you. She had this block around me.”

“I figured. Is there an ambulance coming or something?”

I don’t know.

This lady next to me says there is.

Jake’s face changes, curiosity overcoming pain. “Wait a minute. She’s knocked out, right?”

I nod.

“So why are you still blind?”

“It wasn’t her,” I tell him. “There’s someone else controlling her.”

“Oh, fuck.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

His face twists.

 I take his hand. “Just try not to laugh or anything.”

“So tell me a joke. That’ll do the trick.”

“Bitch.”

We wait in silence. Every now and again, his grip on my hand tightens, probably whenever he tries to breathe. . . probably. Shit.

“Danny?”

“Mm-hm?” I hear the EMC sirens.

“I’m glad you didn’t freak out. I was afraid she’d get you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. I’m a gymnast. We know how to fall. You’re just a superhero geek. She might have messed you up.” He starts to laugh, swears instead.

“Serves you right.”

Which is when the ambulance arrives.

I glance up. The arm hanging over the edge of our balcony tells me Trish is still there. Good. “Jake?”

“I’m fine. Go check on her. Find out what’s going on. . . and Danny?” I let the ambulance guys in to check Jake out. “Don’t forget to report in, right?”

“Right.” I squeeze his hand one more time.

The ambulance guys tell me they’re taking him to St. David’s.

A bunch of cops mill around.

“Hey, Danny,” Jake says as they load him into the ambulance. “So it wasn’t really Trish, then?  I mean, she wasn’t in on it?”

I shrug and shake my head at the same time.

He smiles. “I hope she isn’t.”

I try to laugh, almost succeed. As the doors close, I call out, “Thanks, buddy!”

He’ll know what I mean.

To avoid drawing further attention to myself, I slip through the crowd and to the door rather than gliding up on my board. I run up three flights of stairs, open the door before I arrive, and hit the balcony toot sweet.

She’s still there. Good.

I take her pulse. It’s strong. She’s just asleep, now.

She pulls away from me, rolls over, and curls into a ball.

Carefully, I lift her into my arms, carry her into the apartment and lay her on the couch. She doesn’t awaken. What the hell do I do next?

I stare down at her, listening to the shouts and sirens outside, testing the walls of the block around me, trying to find cracks or holes.

What do I feel? Besides wondering whether Trish had anything to do with this misadventure or whether she was a pawn, I’m pissed. I work very hard to keep my anger under control. That’s what this week’s mystery guest wants: me angry and guilty so I screw up.

Fuck that. Jake’s right. I’m just pissed. Guilt and shit have no place in my life.

This block in my head is bizarre though. It’s gotta be how the real villain kept me from seeing Trish. It’s folded inside my head, blocking me in and keeping the world out, but I’d never in a million years notice it from the outside. It’s almost like a sponge.

“He?” a voice says from behind.

I don’t move.

My heart beats like a son-of-a-bitch, though.

“You assume Trish was being controlled by a man? How sexist of you, Angel.”

“My apologies, Ms. . .?”

“Turner. Elizabeth Turner.”

“My apologies.” Hm. Sponge. I push my energy out and then squeeze back on myself. Ouch. Energy bleeds through, though. I use it to squeeze harder. Double ouch.

“Clever man.”

The block vanishes. The world roars back so hard my knees go weak, and I stumble to get my footing back. My mind does a full speed ahead catalog. Everything seems in order.

My adversary chuckles.

Trish’s mind is still closed to me. It’s there, though.

Did Jake feel me come back on-line?

“You should be dead,” she says.

“Oh?”

“Hitting her with your martini was a fluke.”

“Rum and orange juice.”

“Whatever. It was a fluke. You got lucky.”

Hm. “You were at your limit. Lifting that van was a nice parlor trick but it tapped you out. You didn’t even see it coming.”

She chuckles. “You’re not going to get my goat that easily, Angel. And I’m not going to be led into divulging my limitations.”

I shrug. “Had to try.”

She tests my barriers.

“You let go too much,” I tell her. “You aren’t coming back in.”

She laughs.

“So do we do the whole, ‘What the fuck do you want from me?’ thing again,” I ask, “or are you just going to tell me this time.”

“Aren’t you curious to see my face?”

It unnerves her that I don’t look at her, so I don’t move. “You’re the psychic. You tell me.”

She laughs. “No matter. You’ll be just as dead.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

Okay. Psychic battles are boring. Two people standing motionless in the middle of a room with a death grip on each other’s brains.

We start out testing each other. Her power is vast compared to mine, but I’m using a lot more of my brain. I’m faster, my strategies are much more complicated. I can pull almost all of her attention to one line of attack then sneak in around the back without her noticing.

What exactly are we trying to do? I’m not sure. . . overload a synapse, close off some central functions—like heartbeat or breathing. Really, it’s pretty fucking stupid, but throwing shit at each other in the physical world is even more pointless.

Here at least, we have a shot at turning our opponent into a vegetable.

Which is about the time her sponge invades my head again. It soaks my energy.

Slowly, I draw my sensors in to keep up my defenses. I lose the city, am reduced to the apartment complex then start shutting down lines one by one, until it’s just me and it’s just her.

The rest of the world vanishes.

I’m trapped in one tiny corner of my mind, lashing out at her, chipping away uselessly at her defenses, pissed off that it happened so fast I didn’t think to try my last trick again until it was too late.

“You’re not as strong as when I first found you,” she says. “A month ago, this wouldn’t have even made you flinch. Has it all been too much? All that senseless death, your boyfriend in danger, your sidekick, your friends. . .”

She’s right. I am weaker. I haven’t been sleeping. . . have been hyper vigilant. “So what’s your point?”

“I misjudged you. I thought you were stronger.”

“Sorry to disappoint.” Without allowing myself to realize why, I focus my whole attention into one thought, let the rest of my mind fall open to her as if I were giving up, and when she closes in for the kill—I blast her.

My knees go weak. I drop to the floor, pouring all my power into one tiny part of her mind, the part that is connected to Trish.

Huh. Any chance this can work? I crash through the blocks around Trish’s mind, dive into her thoughts and make my own sponge to protect her—within seconds, my enemy is blocked from her puppet by her own little trick.

The world goes cloudy. I don’t know what the fuck she’s doing to me, but it hurts. . . a lot. My own blocks crumble, and I taste her assumption of victory.

She completely ignores her hold on Trish so she can attack me directly. . . wisely realizing that if I’m drooling in my own vomit, I’ll let go.

That doesn’t happen though.

Someone screams.

Really loudly.

And again.

The hammerlock on my mind weakens, shudders, and shatters.

I am free.

I stumble forward and catch myself with both arms and one knee, still half-blind. What happened? Who screamed?

Did my gamble pay off?

Slowly, I turn around.

At first, my eyes tell me it’s Trish lying there in a pool of blood. . . but a younger version with brass in her hair kneels beside the corpse, curls hanging over her face. And the corpse is darker, her hair long and straight and black.

Holy crap. The gamble some part of me took by freeing Trish came up with blackjack.

Trish holds a very big knife. She looks up at me. “She was going to kill you,” she says, but I can tell it’s a question.

I nod.

“And she tried to kill your friend.”

I nod.

“But he’s all right.” Her voice is little-girl.

“He’ll be fine.” I fucking hope.

Trish looks down at the dead woman. “She’s killed a lot of people.” She’s piecing together lots of half-memories, trying to put her mind back together. Mind control leaves a person discombobulated.

“Do you know why?” I ask.

She looks at me, at the woman, and she wipes her face with the back of one sleeve. “I think she was insane. The things she could do with her mind, I think they drove her mad.”

Boy, can I relate. “What did she want with me?”

“You?” Trish says at last. “She was afraid of you.”

Wow. “Of me?”

Whooops. She’s going into shock. Carefully, I set up a couple of blocks to keep from peeking accidentally. Even the least brush could send her out for good. Her mind has been ravaged. It’ll be months before she’s back to whatever rates as normal for her.

I dial 911 on the phone in my pocket and type in an address. They’ll send someone up.

“You’re so much stronger than she is,” Trish says.

I don’t bother to respond. The woman obviously has no clue about what’s been going on.

“Don’t say that,” she responds quickly.

Holy shit! She reads me.

I throw up a block.

Her eyes go wide and scared. “I’m sorry,” real fast. “I didn’t mean. . . it just happens. . . I don’t have any control, really, not since she took over. . .” She sucks in a deep breath and lets it out.

Now that I know she is psychic, the look in her eyes means something totally different.

“I don’t have a lot of power,” she says. “She could take my mind and use it to. . . make hers more.” She shakes her head, trying to clear things. “She wanted to do the same with you, but you were too aware, too strong, there were too many twists and turns in your brain. . .”

I chuckle.

“So she was going to kill you,” the young woman told me. “She knew you’d eventually notice her and try to stop her.”

“Stop her from doing what?”

“Anything.”

Hm. How hard is blood to remove from a carpet?

“She liked being all-powerful, didn’t want anyone around who might be more.” Trish looks down at the corpse. “She was awfully vain.”

“So she was using your powers to stop me?” I ask.

“She used me to amplify herself,” she says. “Like a catalyst. It’s what I do.”

“Wow.” For several reasons.

“Yeah.”

“A friend of yours?”

“She’s my mother,” spills out before it connects, then, “was my mother.” Which is when Trish notices the knife, drops it. “Oh, my God.” She looks up at me. “Did I kill her?”

“Yes.” Well, what do you expect me to say?

She looks down at her mother. “We should call the police.”

“Already done.”

“Angel?” she asks, her eyes still glued to the carpet. “If she was my mother, how could she make me do those things?” Our eyes connect. She really expects me to answer. “How could she do that to me?”

 

 

 

Capes. They came out of nowhere. Criminals who normally used handguns and AR-15s now used fireballs and teleportation. Then the good guys showed up, trying to foil the supervillains. Except… well… the heroes’ powers had shown up out of nowhere, too, and they weren’t… well, they weren’t very good at it… at heroing… but they had Powers!

They were Capes! They had to do Good.

So people died.

 

The sky was blue with just a few white puffy clouds to keep things interesting. San Antonio traffic was light for midday, so the noise wasn’t bad. The food truck selling Korean tacos, mercifully, had no line. As Moriarti ate, and ignored the juice covering his fingers, his sister paid for her own meal.

“Just fucking talk to him!” Sarah shouted in her I-don’t-care-what-people-think voice. She tended to loud.

The taco salesman maintained an unexpressive face. Behind him, the silent TV showed a LIVE report. Some cape in blue spandex had robbed a bank and some equally lame poseur, this one in green, chased him through the city streets, stopping traffic and causing a fender bender. Fucking capes.

Sarah followed Moriarti’s eyes to the TV. “If someone doesn’t get these capes under control…” She bit into her taco. “Someone is going to get killed.” That part had been spoken around a vast quantity of pork, and Moriarti had only understood her because he was her brother.

She raised a finger at him and glared. “You will not redirect me. Just fucking talk to him.”

Moriarti took another bite and considered his options. He started down the street, and she fell in beside him, the queer bars they passed kind of sad and desolate in the unforgiving Texas sunshine. Moriarti was decidedly straight but spent time wherever folks were less judgmental.

And what the hell did he have to say to his dying father anyway? The cancer would take him in the next few months and good riddance.

“What do I have to say to him?” Moriarti demanded. “His son is dead to him, I thought. How does a corpse make conversation?”

“Ugh!” Not as eloquent as her usual, but expressive.

Brother and sister made an unlikely pair. Although about the same height, Sarah had long, straight brown hair of a decidedly unimportant color. Brown eyes. A body that was athletic and an aura of, “Go fuck yourself, I hate you,” that tended to drive men away from her otherwise attractive features.

Well, that was the one thing they had in common: the “Go fuck yourself, I hate you” vibe.

Moriarti’s manifested in a body nearly completely covered in tattoos and piercings, hair that was Crayola red and eyes that lived a permanent squint. Today he chose shirtless to point out to his sister just how far he’d journeyed since telling his father to fuck off at the age of sixteen when he’d first realized that the compound where they lived without internet, television, or, well, pretty much anything from the 21^st century was not, in any way…. Normal.

“And if he asks me to apologize for escaping,” Moriarti insisted, “I will deck him.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” Sarah countered. “If he asks you to apologize, I will deck him myself.”

Which was exactly the point.

“Then why visit him at all?” Moriarti asked.

“What if he wants to apologize to you?”

What the ever-loving hell? Really?

Sarah stopped. She bent over and laughed so hard the word “guffaw” came to mind.

She laughed some more.

So did Moriarti.

“Okay… Okay… That is never going to happen.” She straightened up. “Just wanted to say it to see how I reacted.” She shook her head. “Whew. That was hysterical.”

Her hand took his arm, turned Moriarti to face her. “Look,” she said, “if you won’t do it for him, do it for me.”

Which was far more likely to work. Sarah had always been his best friend. Dad had taught them how to fight using pretty much every weapon imaginable, and they’d been the perfect sparring partners for all the long years after mom died and dad devolved into what Moriarti had later learned was called a conspiracy theorist.

After Dad closed off the outside world, apart from the wackos who came to the compound to listen to Dad’s end of the world as we know it bullshit, Sarah was the only one in his life who’d ever made any kind of sense.

“It means this much to you?” He asked.

She nodded.

“Why?”

“Because I know you,” she said, “you want to come across as this hardass, but five years from now the guilt will hit you and you’ll be a whiny little girl, and guess who will have to deal with it.” She made a big thing about looking around before pointing at her chest with both thumbs. “Me.”

Nice. Moriarti chuckled. “Okay, okay,” he said. “For you… for no other reason, I will visit the old fucker before he dies.”

Her hands opened in supplication. “Thank you.”

And then a bizarre blue blur shot between them.

Whoosh.

A hand.

It hit her chest and pushed, speedster momentum and all.

She fell backwards.

In Moriarti’s memory, it was like distinct images of her falling away… stumbling off the curb… falling on her ass on Main Street… tucking into a ball. Years of training kicked in, and she rolled over her shoulder into a crouch.

A semi horn. Loud.

Sarah rose to one knee and prepped to leap back to the sidewalk as years of training had instilled in her.

Then another blur. Green this time.

From the sky to the street beside Sarah.

She glanced over to see what it was.

“Don’t worry, miss,” a nasal voice shouted, “I’ll save you!”

A cape. Some idiot in tight green spandex that revealed way too much.

He planted himself between Sarah and the oncoming semi.

It was one second.

But it was all the distraction needed to freeze her.

One second.

Tick.

Then the semi hit them both, horn blaring, and it blew past.

A blur of enormous motion.

A semi. A fucking semi, horn blaring and brakes screeching.

Sarah and the fucking cape just gone.

Gone.

Wait? What just happened?

The semi eventually ground to a halt half a block later.

Wait.

What?

Where was Sarah?

The semi stopped half a block away, a bright red steak extending behind it.

“Oh, shit,” someone said. The cape. He stepped out from the front of the semi. Perfectly fine. His hair wasn’t even mussed.

“I didn’t think…” He met Moriarti’s eyes. “I just got my powers last week,” he said. “I thought… why didn’t it stop?”

Why didn’t a semi speeding at least forty miles an hour just stop for you?

Because physics, you idiot!

Sarah! Moriarti ran to the side of the semi, but a huge pair of arms stopped him. “You don’t want to go there, buddy.”

“My sister!” It finally hit him. Sarah! Was that red streak because of her? “Sarah’s under there!”

Strong arms held him back. “Holy fuck, that was your sister?”

Was? What did he mean was?

Moriarti struggled against the arms. “I need to see if we need to call an ambulance.”

The arms tightened. “You don’t want to see that. You don’t.”

“But what if she needs help?” Moriarti screamed.

The fear hit him. The pain.

The arms held him tight. “Nothing can help her, man. You don’t want to see her…”

The asshole in the green spandex, he crouched down by the semi. He looked. “Oh, fuck me.” And he puked buckets.

A red streak spread out behind the semi.

That was Sarah.

That red streak was all that was left of Sarah.

Moriarti’s knees gave out.

He fell to the sidewalk.

Someone screamed so loudly it fucking hurt.

Oh wait… that was him.

 

 

Standing outside the hospital, it seemed less than I had expected. It’s two doors down from a Dollar General where I bought smokes for Jaime because he didn’t have his ID.  He took the following shots while I was on my mission, so these are photo cred Jaime.

He found the place for me. I told him I was looking for weird, funky, bizarre places to shoot. He said, pretty much, “Hold my beer.” He contacted Stephanie Mayfield, the current curator, and a fun negotiation started….. eventually ending in an invitation to hear her story and check the place in prep for a full photo shoot. More shots by Jaime.

 

 

 

 

 

He makes shit spooky, right? So…. originally, we thought she was going to hold our hand through a tour, but she unlocked the building, set the lock and chain on a counter and said, basically, “Lock up when you’re done. Don’t die.”

Yikes! And….. also…. coooooooool. Jaime and I have both had our share of supernatural shite… soooo….. bring it on!

 

 

 

Okay…. focus was a BIRCH! Which is a thing there, I’ve learned. Seriously, the camera did not love Jaime, and normally, it does.

 

Who could not love that face? Well, apparently folks there were unimpressed. Sorry Jaime, I think you’re all right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Curious to see more? So are we! Keep checking back for the full experience!

 

Austin, Texas

Thursday, 8:00pm

 

Spook was dead.

He’d been killed back in 1961 at the age of seventeen but never stopped walking around and shooting off his mouth. Or so his brother, Ross, liked to say. For the record, Spook hated the word “zombie.”

He’d recently started studying witchcraft and had learned how to summon a demon. How cool was that?

He had a Booke of Shadows from none other than Merlin himself! And a local witch, totes powerful and the real deal, Dina had assured him it was the perfect book for someone of his “extraordinary ability.” Well, she’d pronounced it kind of funny, but English was not her first language. Who knew what you could find on Amazon!

 

 

 

He stood in his basement, arms raised and eyes closed, reciting a spell of demonic summoning. “O Fortuna. . . velut luna. . . statu variabilis. . . semper crescis. . . aut decrescis.” Dust motes sparkled in the light of blood-red candles and swirled inside the arcane containment circle painstakingly inscribed on the bare concrete floor.

 

 

Spook’s “Ye Olde Booke of Shadows” had called for “thee blude of a styll-brything mongrel poured unto the colde, colde stone whilst it screamed its fynal cries of terrour after its throat was verily slitte.” But that was impossible, since an animal with its throat slit couldn’t cry out in terror anymore. Spook had a deal with the butcher down the road who sold him farm animal blood at cost, just to get rid of the stuff. Close enough.

 

Spook continued his spell as he dribbled the cow’s blood into the concrete, which ate it up greedily with faint suckling sounds.

 

 

Spook hung out with a Goth crowd that’d taught him how to dress the part at a place called Bitter Sweets on Austin’s east side. All these years of spell casting and hunting creatures of the night, and Spook had never realized the importance of image. His short black hair rose in a spikey mess. His normally dark, Mexican skin was made up pale and kohl surrounded his eyes. He wore black leather pants, a black shirt, and a burgundy cowl with the hood down.

 

 

Who’d have known it’d take so much effort for an actual life-challenged American to blend into the death-becomes-us crowd?

He opened his eyes and raised his voice. “Vita detestabilis. . . nunc obdurate. . . et tunc curat. Ludo mentis acie. . .” His voice dropped an octave and reverberated with a cavernous echo. “Egestatem. . . potestatem. . . dissolvit ut glaciem.”

 

 

The dust motes swirled into a vortex within the protection circle and a column of light ignited, bright enough to drive away the shadows and expose the clutter in Spook’s basement.

The illumination revealed the usual assortment of old—but still perfectly serviceable—chairs and tables, a collection of demon banishing swords laid out for easy access, boxes of clothes bound to come back into fashion someday, a standing mirror of soul capturing, and a Hello Kitty lamp.

 

 

 

 

An ethereal breeze stirred the various sheets that covered the furniture. Faintly, in the background, a chorus in three-part harmony rose up to support Spook’s voice.

The spell was working.

He could feel it.

The power started as a tickle at thebase of his spine and spread through his nervous system, which was nothing more than a conduit for magical energy since his death and reanimation. Warm. Tingly.

Oh yeah, it was working.

 

“O Fortuna. . . velut luna. . . statu variabilis. . . semper crescis. . . aut decrescis.” Soon, the gate would open and his own personal demonic companion would step through the dimensional rift and shuffle up this mortal coil to keep him company.

Perhaps, a trifle extreme, but Spook missed Ross.

“O Fortuna. . . velut luna. . . statu variabilis. . . semper crescis. . . aut decrescis.”

“What the hell are you doing?” someone shouted nearby.

What the shit? His house was protected through six dimensions!

The chorus cut out.

 

 

“Blast!” Spook’s voice still held all the reverb and echo of a demonic overlord.

The maelstrom in the center of the room suddenly and rapidly swirled down into a tiny spot on the floor like water down a toilet in fast forward. The last of the magical energy disappeared into the concrete with a pathetic “thwip.”

Spook looked up.

 

[Maestro.]

 

A middle-aged man in a trench coat regarded Spook with what could only be labeled contempt. He looked Spook up and down, and then his eyes settled on Spook’s face with an expression so utterly blank, it was worse than scorn.

 

[Maestro looking blank. Spook POV.]

 

In the dim light of a basement in a mid-century modern home and surrounded by furniture from the last fifty years, the burgundy cloak and boots were possibly a trifle excessive. And how much make-up had Spook actually applied?

 

[Spook closeup.]

 

Emotionless, the stranger extended a business card. “I just happened to be passing through your neighborhood and thought you might need some help controlling the demon you’re trying to summon.”

Spook sucked in a quick breath. How did he know? He grabbed the card. It read:

 

[Shot of Meastro handing card replaces below card.]

 

 

 

 

Spook glanced from the card to the man. “What. . . demon. . . what?” He floundered. “Do I look like someone who would try to conjure—?” He glanced at his reflection in a nearby mirror, suddenly embarrassed at the get-up. With the crowd at Bitter Sweets, it had seemed restrained. Hadn’t it?

 

[Spook in fancy mirror. Reflection of Maestro in background.]

 

The stranger, Maestro, spoke gently. “You look like a reject from a Goth Hello Kitty convention.”

Spook wanted to disagree but searched Maestro’s eyes. He was definitely a fellow mage. Sorcerer? Witch? A powerful one, whatever he was, from the complete sense of control he radiated. Other than the power in the man’s eyes, though, he was so bland he’d be nearly invisible in a crowd.

Oooh. Was that just how he liked it?

 

[Maestro looking bland. Spook trying to look impressive.]

 

Spook drew himself up. “How did you know I was summoning a demon?”

Maestro pointed at the floor. “Anyone in at least ten dimensions could feel that spell… not that it would have worked.”

“What?” But Spook had followed the Book of Shadows to the letter.

“This?” Maestro took two steps to the podium holding Ye Olde Booke of Shadows. He held it up with two fingers as if it offended him. “If you tell me you got this on Amazon, I am going to hit you with it.”

 

[Maestro with Ye Olde Book.]

 

It’s like the guy read his mind! Spook had done all the research, though! “Dina promised me—”

Argh. Ach! Ah, damn. Dina was a bitch.

Well, she was a witch, but she was a bitch, too.

Double damn.

 

[Spook with hands up in disgust. Maestro in background touching things.]

 

“Dina promised you what?” Maestro replaced the book and moved around the basement touching things and being all judgy-looking.

“You really don’t want to know,” Spook said, hands covering his face—wait! Makeup!

“No. I really, really do.” The man held up a Hello Kitty lamp with that same blank expression that utterly judged Spook.

 

[Maestro with Hello Kitty lamp. Spook deflated.]

 

He stood there, waiting.

And waiting.

“Fine.” Spook snatched the lamp and returned it to the spot his niece had put it. She’d said his basement was too dark and gloomy. She’d been six at the time. Ten years ago. He traced the cartoon cat with one finger, missing his family but not wanting to watch them die. How old was Ross, now? He had to be at least seventy.

 

[Spook with hello kitty lamp.]

 

“She said it was the perfect book for someone of my extraordinary skill.” Nope. Not going to look at him. “Except she didn’t pronounce it that way, she pronounced it extra-ordinary.” Damn it. “Except close enough that I misunderstood.” Or he’d just heard what he’d wanted to hear.

But he could do stuff! He spun to face Maestro, this total stranger who had broken all of his enchantments and kept looking at him as if he were nothing. He lifted one hand, palm up, fingers curled. “Lorem Ipsum sit amet.”

 

[Spook with fireball.]

 

A fireball spun into life and burned merrily. Spook tossed it from hand to hand a few times then brought his hands together to extinguish the flame, then opened them. Would Maestro be impressed?

 

[Spook playing with fire.]

 

Without a word, the other mage stepped into the containment circle Spook had inscribed into the cold, cold earth, taking a very high step over the inscriptions. He turned a complete circle, obviously examining it. . . and judging it.

“Well?” Spook asked.

 

[Maestro judging containment circle.]

 

Maestro’s trench coat barely moved, the shrug was so small. He stared at Spook, with those empty eyes. They made him feel like the smallest, most insignificant. . .

“Well?” Spook repeated.

“I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy,” Maestro said casually.

Fire engulfed his entire body! Holy crap!

 

[Maestro on fire. This should be a challenge.]

 

Spook jumped back and stumbled into a couch. Held on for dear life.

Holy crap! Holy crap! Holy crap!

Fire! On his entire body! The heat was incredible.

 

[Spook hiding behind couch.]

 

The flames swirled, now, slowly at first, like a slow-motion tornado of fire.

“A Yankee Doodle, do or die.”

The fire swirled faster and contracted inward, more closely following the shape of his body.

What was burning? What was being destroyed?

Wait. Nothing. Nothing was on fire. But Spook felt the heat!

No? It wasn’t real? This man could make him feel the heat. Heat that wasn’t there?

Spook reached out.

Yikes! Fucking ow!

He sucked on his fingers.

 

[Spook sucking on fingers.]

 

“A real-life nephew of my Uncle Sam.” Maestro raised his arms. Below, the containment circle glowed bright purple.

So did his eyes! By all the gods and a goddess or two, his eyes glowed purple!

“Your eyes. . .”

The glowing purple containment circle lifted from the ground and rose into the air. Purple smoke wafted from it.

 

[Maestro lifting the containment circle while on fire.

Seriously. How the fuck am I going to do this?]

 

“Really,” Maestro said in that completely judgmental voice. “Body on fire. Levitating containment circle. . . and it’s the purple eyes that you notice.” He crossed his hands over his head, drew them to his chest and thrust both arms quickly toward the floor. “Fuck off.”

All of it: the fire. . . the containment circle. . . it all blew down and out with an impressive and heartfelt FOOM!

 

[Maestro making everything go foom.]

 

And the man hadn’t even broken a sweat. “Throw the book away and stop trying to summon demons or I will return, and the fire will be real.” He left the circle and approached the podium.

Okay, fine with the dire warnings, but. . . “Fuck off is a magic spell?”

Maestro closed his eyes for a second. “Did you hear what I said?”

 

[Maestro and Spook on opposite sides of the podium.]

 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Spook closed in and waved it off. “No more demons. Got it, Daddy-O.” Who needed lame-ass demons with a guy like this in town? “Wait,” Spook asked. “Do you live in Austin?”

Someone nearby cleared a throat. Rather pointedly.

Now what? “Did someone plan a party in my own basement and not invite me?”

Even Maestro’s head snapped to one side quickly. Surprised? Him?

 

[Maestro looking surprised.]

 

Um. Wow. Interesting. . . dude. . . in the containment circle. A shirtless dude with skin that. . . well, sort of. . . shimmered? Or something? Bright red hair. Dark eyes. . . And what?

Spook sniffed. Sulfer!

 

[Collin looking sexy.]

 

“So sorry for the delay,” the demon said in a refined British accent because the scene wasn’t surreal enough without it. “Here I am.” He gestured broadly. “How may I be of service?”

 

[Collin gesturing broadly.]

 

Maestro dropped into a crouch and a fireball appeared in both hands. . . without a verbal spell of any kind! What the what?

“Ipsum lorem,” Spook intoned. A sort of lighter-sized fireball ignited on one finger. Fine. “Sit amet.” The fireball grew to a respectable size.

Damn it!

 

[Collin holding up hands to slow them down. Spook and Maestro with fireballs.]

 

The demon held up both hands. “Gentlemen. No need for unpleasantries. After all, you did summon me.” His eyes narrowed, and he drilled Spook with a gaze that was the opposite of Maestro’s, full of avarice and greed. “Well, one of you summoned me.”

What? Ha! Suck it, judgy Maestro! Spook had his own demon, now!

But before Spook could perform the requisite happy dance, Maestro looked the demon up and down, glanced at Spook, then gave the demon his full attention, fireballs glowing from yellow to white.

How did he do that? Most humans got all tired and shit if they did too much magic. Spook had never figured out why he didn’t—

“No,” Maestro said flatly. “That spell he did. That did not compel you to appear. Not you.”

 

[Collin with his mouth open to speak and greatly enlarged.]

 

Collin opened his mouth to speak. . . or perhaps to swallow a cat, because it opened a bit more than it should have.  His mouth closed into a grin. So, he was going to lie, but changed his mind, right? “Well, that’s kind of you.” He crossed his arms. “And. . . No. Well, no it did not, did it?”
[Collin grinning. Arms crossed unless that will hurt the makeup,

in which case he can do something else. Maestro and Spook with fireballs.]

 

What? But he was right there in the contain—

The demon left the circle and dropped into a comfy chair sideways, one leg over the arm. Huh. Spook liked to sit in it that way, too.

 

[Collin in chair.]

 

“No offence, kid,” Maestro said. “It wouldn’t have summoned a fluffy kitten.”

“Offence taken, Daddy-o,” Spook shot back. “Enough with the Hello Kitty jokes!”

Again with the blank stare. “Oh, dear gods.” Maestro turned to the demon. “Why are you here?”

The demon’s leg swung a few times. He regarded his fingernails, which, against all odds were not long and pointed. Spook had battled a few demons over the years, and most of them had sharp, deadly—and often poisonous—fingernails. This guy looked like he spent a couple hours a week with Asian women buffing them.

 

[Maestro and Spook with fireballs.]

 

“I need your help.” He met Maestro’s gaze. Wow. That had to be hard for him to admit.

“And who are you, exactly?” Maestro asked. “And how did you get past my cantrips?”

What? He’d put up even more defenses?

But the demon springing to his bare feet distracted Spook. “How extraordinarily rude of me.” His smile said that he ate babies for breakfast. “Collin de Plancy. . . at your service.” He rose and extended his right hand.

Maestro glanced from his fireballs to the hand extended.

 

[Collin extending hand, Maestro looking judgmental.]

 

With a sigh, he shook out the fire and gripped Collin’s hand.

Collin sucked in a surprised breath and his eyes widened and flared orange. “You’re unexpected.”

Maestro’s eyes narrowed, and he yanked his hand away. “What do you mean, unexpected?”

Collin sucked in a breath. “I… I’m not going to play that one off, am I?” But. . . he didn’t actually explain it either, did he?  He turned to Spook and extended the hand. “And you, sir. . . Who are you, exactly?”

[Collin and Spook shaking hands.]

 

Well, Spook wasn’t going to be out-cooled by Maestro. “Call me Spook.” He grabbed the demon’s hand.

What the fuck! Hellfire and brimstone, armies in battle, demons and angels waging an all-out war!

[Shot of Indi Gogh as demon.]

 

Rages and rages of demons, and this. . .  Collin in command. . . but not really in command. Somewhere in the middle. Balancing outcomes. What the hell? Literally.

Maestro moved closer. No! Spook could handle this. He pushed against Maestro’s chest.

Focus!

 

[Spook stopping Maestro, who has a “oh, really?” expression. Collin looking bemused.]

 

The demon smiled. “My, my, my…. I guess the banal pleasantries can be abandoned.” He released Spook’s hand. “My goodness, neither of you is at all what you seem, are you, and yet…. I don’t already know you.”

What did that even mean?

Maestro’s eyes narrowed. Would the fireball make a return visit? “I’m afraid you have us at a disadvantage.”

“No, he doesn’t.” Maybe Spook knew something Maestro didn’t know, after all.  “He’s a demon.  Middle-management demon… an Earl or something. What the hell’s an Earl?”

Maestro scoffed. “A demon named Collin?”

Nice.

 

[Collin and Spook facing off. Collin disgusted and pissed. Spook self-satisfied.]

 

The demon scoffed as well, but his face screwed up into a look of pure disgust. “I command twenty-nine legions of demons,” he insisted, glaring at spook with smoldering eyes, and not in a figurative way.  “Middle management, indeed.”

Ha. Spook had gotten to him. “A title doesn’t make you cool, dude.”

“Neither does a hip, petulant attitude.”

“Says you.” Spook straightened his cape. Having this Maestro guy at his back meant Spook could go for broke, right?

 

[Spook with Maestro’s hand in his face.]

 

A hand in his face told him otherwise. Really? Spook smacked Maestro’s hand away.

“What are you doing here?” Maestro asked the demon.

Collin met Maestro’s gaze. “I need your help.” His face portrayed far too much innocence to be real. “You do that right? Help people.”

Maestro cocked his neck to one side. It cracked. Same on the other. “People.”

Oooh! Burn!

Collin closed his eyes. “Ah, prejudice. Nice. And against your own kind.”

Maestro stepped closer. Anger radiated from him. . . um, once again, literally. “I might be many unsavory things, but I’m not a demon.”

 

[Maestro facing Collin, glowing, Spook in background.]

 

Collin raised an eyebrow. “But not really human, either. Are you? Not anymore.”

What the heck did that even mean? But Spook kept his mouth shut. This demon seemed to know more about the other intriguing stranger than Spook could divine with a week’s time and a Ouija board.

Maestro gave Collin his empty face. “How many times will I need to ask?”

“I can pay you.” Collin held up a bracelet dripping with enormous diamonds.

 

[Collin holding fancy bracelet. Fuck… where am I going to get one of those?]

 

Holy shit!

Wait? “You get paid to help people?” Spook asked. What an idea!

Maestro looked at him with disgust. “Why else would I do it?”

Well, Spook was a sucker doing it all those years just to, oh, who knew, save innocent lives, maybe?

Maestro rolled his eyes.

Was he reading Spook’s cauliflower mind?

The mysterious stranger pulled out his i-phone and pointed it at the bracelet. It made noises. Wait, was that a Supernatural ghost detector app? Bwa ha ha! “Those things don’t work, daddy-o.”

 

[Maestro pointing his phone at the bracelet.]

 

“This one does.” He made some adjustments.

“On what planet did you find that?” Collin asked.

“It’s just an i-phone,” Maestro said in all sincerity.

Ha! Nice. Wait, was that a dig?

Collin did a very exaggerated nodding thing. “Oooh, I get it.” He winked. “You don’t want the sidekick to know you’ve been to other planets.”

 

[Collin nodding. Maestro and Spook looking at each other like neither of them wants to think of Spook as sidekick.]

 

“I’m not his sidekick,” Spook said.

“He’s not my sidekick,” Maestro said at the exact same time, but the way he said it made it mean.

“Wait a minute,” Spook said, “Have you been to other planets? That’s a thing?”

“No,” Maestro said. “He’s full of shit.”

Yeah. Spook didn’t buy that. “So, aliens are a thing? That is so cool!”

What would aliens look like?

 

[Image of what Spook thinks aliens would look like.]

 

Maestro deflated a little. “Really not something I ever wanted him to know.” He squinted at the demon. “How could you possibly know?”

Collin shrugged with an innocent face.

Maestro stuffed the jiggety-whatsit from another planet into a pocket.

Spook made grab for it. What could it do?

Before he could snatch it though, Maestro managed to slide it away and grab Spook’s wrist. Hard. Ow.

His eyes burned, and, also, not metaphorically.

 

[Maestro holding Spook’s wrist, eyes ablaze.]

 

“If you ever try something like that again, I will melt you.” His voice was low and icy.

Hyperbole? Possibly not.

Spook yanked his hand away and rubbed his wrist. “I wouldn’t want to be your sidekick. You’re a dick.”

“And you’re a seventy-year-old child.”

“Well, they do tend to get stuck at the age they died,” Collin added.

“You’re also a dick,” Spook told him.

Collin’s hands sort of displayed his demony form, as if to point out that he was, after all, a demon.

 

[The trio, with Collin displaying himself.]

 

Maestro took the necklace. The thing he had must have convinced—

Maestro startled as if he’d been hit by an electric current.

“Maestro?” Spook moved in, but the other man held up a hand.

“Mary?” He held up the necklace, drilling the demon with orange, glowy eyes. “This was hers?”

Collin gave a Cheshire grin.

 

[Maestro looking pissed. Collin grinning. And Spook looking clueless.]

 

Mary? Spook’s ex was named Mary, the one who’d killed him and turned him into a zombie. Had to be a coincidence. Had to be. Right?

“Who the fuck are you?” Maestro said with more emotion than would have seemed possible ten seconds earlier.

“Someone who has come to collect a debt.” He settled into one hip and gave all his attention to Spook. “I may not have been summoned, but it seems a trifle foolish to drunk text someone who owns your soul.”

What the hell did that even mean?

 

[Collin looking sexy and self-satisfied. Maestro looking worried. Spook still clueless.]

 

“Drat.” The way Maestro said it made it sound like the worst expletive ever. Then he turned to Spook. “Hey, Spook, smile for the camera.”

“What?”

Maestro held up his phone and it flashed.

Wait. Really? Photo opp, now? Spook was so surprised, he pretty much froze.

Maestro turned back to Collin and touched his arm. “Doohickey,” he said, “teleport to back yard.”

And they vanished.

What. in. every. hell. ever. imagined?

[Spook by himself.]

 

 

 

Maestro immediately released the demon. “What are you doing here? You’re not here for my help.” He knew why the demon was there, but he wanted to hear it say the words.

“Collecting on an old debt.” Collin smiled.

 

[Maestro and Collin in back yard.]

 

And there it was. That evil witch, Mary, had tortured Spook for sixteen hours, vivisecting him like a frog in a junior high science class then putting him back together so she could do it all over again, just to drive him insane so a demon could drop by when he died and devour his soul. Well, the insanity thing, and she’d also performed a very complex sex ritual. . .

Sigh. Maestro had also been forced to attend that as well out of fear of discovery.

“You know I’m not going to let you do that,” Maestro insisted. Just don’t think about it.

 

[Maestro and Collin in Anime battle stances, hai!]

 

“I assumed you’d try to stop me.” Collin grinned. The energy from him amped up. The waves washed out like a tide. “Do you really think you can stop me from collecting your pet?”

“He’s not my pet,” Maestro said. “He doesn’t even know I was there.”

“Really?” The demon’s energy slithered away to a neutral position. “Color me intrigued.”

 

[Collin and Maestro facing off, but relaxed.]

 

No one but Maestro’s old friend Percy, who’d ended up taking the boys in when Morri didn’t die, knew what had happened. Would it help the guilt to tell someone? Like a demon he was about to kill anyway?

 

[Maestro and Collin almost casual.]

 

“Mary ripped Morrison apart a hundred times for you,” Maestro said, “to break him down. I was there. I had to listen to his screams because I was so outclassed by her at the time. I didn’t know a millionth of what I know now.” He’d cowered in the choir loft of an abandoned church while that bitch had tortured Morri for hours and hours and hours. And he hadn’t been able to do a thing. He’d been too afraid.

 

[Maestro, looking pretty much like he does now

backed up to the usual couch, looking scared.]

 

Collin smiled. “So, she inspired you?”

Fuck him and everything like him. . . but don’t let it show.

“She used voodoo to keep him alive while she did it,” Maestro said, “then left him there to die.”

Realization dawned across the demon’s face. “Oh! But you were there. You stitched him back together. That’s why the little bitch didn’t just die for me.”

“I literally put the lad’s intestines back in his abdomen.” The thought of it still made Maestro nauseous after everything he’d seen before and since. “His heart back in his chest. Added my own gris gris, a tattoo on Spook’s chest to keep him alive long enough to go home and see his parents one last time.”

 

[Spook with Ankh on his chest.]

 

“And you did all that why?” The demon crossed his arms.

“Because I’m a parent,” Maestro admitted. “And I never got to say goodbye.”

And that, more than anything that had ever happened to Maestro, made him who he was.

Collin stared at him.

Well, fine.

“So. . . . you don’t get to touch the boy,” Maestro said.

And Collin looked over Maestro’s shoulder with a raised eyebrow.

Drat. That only meant one thing.

 

[Spook in socks standing nearby.]

 

“You. . .” Spook said. “You turned me into a zombie?”

Of course. An undead brain wouldn’t be affected by the stasis app on his Doohickey. Drat! He’d have to adjust the settings. “Spook.”

“No. Don’t even try.” He moved around Maestro, into his field of vision. “You came into my house today as if I was a total stranger, but. . .” His face showed revulsion. “You’ve handled my intestines? Who does that without mentioning it?” He flinched. “Ew.”

 

[Spook and Maestro facing off.]

 

The guy who kept him walking around and shooting off his mouth.

But saying that would not be productive.

“I know I have a million questions to answer,” Maestro said as calmly as possible, “but there is a demon here who wants to devour your soul.”

Collin did an appropriately timed finger wiggle.

 

[Collin wiggling his fingers.]

 

“So perhaps we deal with that first?” Maestro suggested.

Morrison opened his mouth and raised an accusatory finger, but he paused.

The finger dropped, and the mouth closed.

“Point taken,” he said, and the finger now pointed at Maestro. “But you and I will still have words, young man.”

Oh, dear gods, he was such a child. Thank the same gods Maestro hadn’t been rendered immortal until he was almost forty.

 

[Spook pointing with one finger. Maestro looking annoyed. And Collin looking amused.]

 

 

 

Since there was still a demon who wanted to take Spook’s soul, maybe he should cut Maestro some slack until they’d vanquished the bastard.

But. . . still. . . he’d put Spook’s intestines back into his body? How the fuck did he not remember that? Well, he had been in shock and possibly kind of insane at the time.

Maestro cleared his throat.

Yes! Focused.

Spook called up a fire ball and threw it.

Collin batted it away like a cat with a crumpled piece of paper.

 

[Spook and Collin with fireball.]

 

Damn.

“Is that the best you have?” Maestro asked. He settled down, held one hand out and a sword appeared in it.

 

[Maestro with a sword. Spook looking surprised.]

 

Holy shit! How did he call up things out of nothing?

“Banishing sword,” Maestro said as the blade sailed Spook’s direction, hilt first.

He caught it, flourished it a few times. Nice! Perfect balance.

“Wait.” Spook faced the creepy stranger, the one who wasn’t a demon. “How is this perfectly balanced for me?”

Again with the blank look. He held one hand out to the side. A second blade appeared. “Please, continue to make me regret reassembling you after the vivisection.”

 

[Spook holding sword. Maestro looking nonchalant with second sword.]

 

Collin struck at Spook with a blade of his own.

Spook blocked it. Wait. Where the hell did he get a blade?

 

[Spook blocking Collin.]

 

Spook kind of had to pay attention to the melee. The demon was freaking fast, and despite his being outnumbered, he held his own.

“You don’t completely suck at melee,” Maestro said, his eyes drilling Spook.

“Well, Percy drilled us every day.” Yikes. Hopefully, everyone ignored the obvious double entendre.

“He learned swordsmanship from King Arthur,” Maestro said. “I’d hope he knew what he was doing.”

What? Spook’s guard dropped, but Maestro covered him until he got his point up again.

 

[Maestro and Collin parrying while Spook drops his guard.]

 

“What the fuck does that mean?” Spook demanded, blocking a low blow and spinning for his own gambit while Maestro kept Collin occupied. Nice. They actually worked well together.

Would he counter?

Spook struck low.

Yes! Maestro feinted high to draw Collin’s attention.

 

[Maestro slicing high, and Collin parrying while Spook strikes low.]

 

Spook’s blade sliced the demon’s leg.

He hissed, danced out of the way.

“Percy,” Maestro said. “Percival? Have you read no Middle English?”

What? Holy shit! “Percy was Sir Percival?”

And suddenly a million odd questions made sense.

Including the way Spook and Maestro had managed to corner the demon.

“He taught you,” Spook said, menacing a cringing Collin. “Percy taught you, too.”

 

[Spook and Maestro menacing Collin by the pool.]

 

Maestro grinned in what had to be the most honest expression of emotion so far.

“He was my first,” Maestro said. “But I’ve also learned from some of the deadliest badasses in the galaxy.”

Holy spit! “I will never try to outcool you.”

“Aargh!” Collin shouted.

Oh yeah. Deadly battle with a demon who wanted to steal Spook’s soul.

Spook and Maestro menaced him identically. Nice.

 

[Battle scene.]

“Wait.” Collin held a hand up.

“What?” Maestro demanded.

Collin snapped his fingers. He smirked.

Half a dozen identical demons appeared to flank him. The smell of Sulphur was overwhelming and obvious.

Fuck.

 

[Shot of lots of Collins. Damn, I wish I had a tripod. Collin 1 is pointing at Maestro.]

 

Collin pointed the snapping fingers at Spook and Maestro.

Maestro raised a hand. “Wait,”

Collin raised an eyebrow. “What?”

Maestro snapped his fingers and held out his hand. An amber crystal appeared.

 

[Some sort of crystal in Maestro’s hand.]

 

Really? He thought a new age-y thing like that would—

“Fuck me!” Collin rushed toward Maestro, then pulled back. “Wait. I’m not stupid, either. I’m not touching that thing.”

 

[Maestro holding crystal. Collin hanging back, Spook reaching for it.]

 

“What is it?” Spook asked, reaching out.

Maestro smacked his hand. “Soul cage.”

Oh? What was that? “Whose soul is in there?” No way would he let either of them know he’d never heard of a “soul cage.”

“There’s more than one,” Maestro said.

Wow creepy.

But Collin seemed close to orgasm over the thing. “You would give me this to save the boy?”

 

[Collin on his knees to be at eye level with the crystal. It should glow a little.]

 

Boy? Spook was. . . well, compared to these two. . .

Maestro held it out.

Collin snapped, and the demons vanished. Wow. He made a yanking motion and the cage flew from Maestro’s hand to his.

He made a little sort of orgasmic noise.

Yikes.

 

[Collin with soul cage.]

 

And Maestro just handed it over? This thing that had a sort of big-time-ish demon close to jazzing? He gave it to Collin to save Spook’s soul?

“You must have very strong feelings for this one,” Collin said.

Which mirrored Spook’s thoughts. Sure, the decades of stranger danger stalking creeped him out, but. . . he had to really—

“His soul,” Maestro said, “and your silence.”

“Excuse me?” Collin asked, obviously as confused as Spook.

 

[Spook and Collin regarding Maestro in confusion.]

 

Maestro sighed. “I give you the soul cage, and his soul is free, and you don’t ever speak about it again.”

What?

“I see.” The raised eyebrow had to mean something. But what?

“E-ver,” Maestro added mysteriously.

“I see.” Well, the way he said that carried busloads of meaning right along the overpass above Spook’s head.

Double damn them both! What did all that mean?

 

[Collin holding up crystal with a raised eyebrow. Maestro looking stern. Spook looking annoyed.]

 

Collin held up the crystal. “It has been a pleasure doing business with you.” And now he wouldn’t even meet Spook’s eyes, as if he suddenly didn’t matter.

“I assure you the pleasure was all yours.” Maestro’s smile was a complete fake.

And sure, maybe falling off this demon’s radar was a good thing. . .  but who wanted to feel. . . inconsequential?

Collin vanished.

Damn it. What had just happened?

Maestro sighed. “Morrison.”

 

[Spook with hands on hips. Maestro looking down.]

 

“What was that thing?” Spook asked. “And how do you know my real name?”

“You really don’t want to know.” He turned Spook to the house and moved him forward.

“Oh,” Spook said, remembering their earlier exchange, “I assure you, I really do.”

“Fine,” Maestro said, opening the back door. “I don’t want to tell you.”

 

[Maestro pushing Spook along.]

 

And he wouldn’t break the way Spook had. Fine.

They made their way through the house to the basement stairs.

“So—” Spook started.

“Don’t.” Maestro pushed him gently down the stairs.

Gently was good, right?

“What he said about—”

“Don’t.” Maestro kept a steady pressure on his back as they descended.

“I was just going to say we make a pretty good team, right?” Spook turned to face the unusual stranger in the middle of the room. “I mean, he knew he had to summon those demons to defeat us, right?”

 

[Spook and Maestro over circle. Spook hopeful. Maestro resigned.]

 

Maestro stood silently.

“We both learned sword-fighting from a freaking knight of Camelot.” That would take Spook several weeks and numerous bottles of magic-enhanced wine to process.

Nothing. No reaction.

“Look,” Spook said, “You just saved my freaking soul, okay. So, thank you for that.”

Maestro nodded. “You’re welcome.”

Well, it was something.

Could he push it? “But the whole creating me in the first place and sort of stranger danger stalking me all these years…” Spook shrugged. “It’s going to take me a while to get my head around that.”

Maestro brushed past him. “No. It’s not.”

What did that even mean?

“Come on.”

 

[Spook and Maestro back in positions from first meeting.]

 

Spook followed Maestro to the edge of the containment circle where they had first met. “You can’t drop all this in my lap and expect me to pretend I don’t know about it. And space witch? Just pretend. . . .” He put his fingers in his ears. “La, la, la. I don’t know anything.”

 

[Spook with fingers in his ears.]

 

He pulled the fingers out and shrugged. “What am I supposed to do with all this? Pretend I know nothing?”

They stood there in the spot of their meeting.

Maestro’s face had gone all neutral again.

Really? After all the revelations and vanquishing a demon, sort of, he was going to pretend it had meant nothing?

What the hell?

Then Maestro’s face beamed. Really, this guy could beam?

 

[Shot of Maestro smiling way too much and pulling Spook in for a selfie.]

 

“Celebratory selfie?” He reached toward Spook.

Really? Well, sure, this was more like—

Flash.

Wow. Bright.

 

[Closeup of Spook, flashed way bright.]

 

#

 

Damn it. What had he been thinking?

“You won’t have to pretend you don’t know anything,” Maestro said, moving away. Idiot.

He’d adjusted his app to make sure it worked on the zombie. When he awoke, Spook wouldn’t remember anything.

 

[Spook looking dazed, Maestro back to Maestro.]

 

“It’s time to intone the spell,” Maestro said.

Morri stood there frozen. If only Maestro could keep him that way like a bug in amber. He’d interfered because the whole summoning a demon out of loneliness seemed. . . well. . . desperate and dangerous.

If the stupid ghoul was heading down that path. . . well, Maestro wasn’t even sure what to do with him had he gone that far to the Dark Side.

 

[Maestro leaning a bit oddly close to Spook, maybe reaching out to him.]

 

Nope. Not going to get involved.

Too dangerous. Too many dark options for the future.

Too many chances for this part of the planet to get flash fried.

Okay. Time to go. No room for sentimentality.

As Maestro climbed the stairs, Spook started the demon summoning spell.

Nope. Way too dangerous to contact him. He couldn’t summon a demon, anyway, and Collin wasn’t a danger for the time being.

Maestro would leave well enough alone.

No reason to contact Spook, after all.

 

[Maestro in front yard with swords, walking toward street.]

 

He left the hideously tacky house and headed to his van, a classic from a simpler time.

He threw the swords into the back of the VW Microbus.

Wait. Why was his van flashing purple and green? And at that obscene hour of the morning, why did neighbors in house coats dot the curb, staring in the direction of Spook’s house and pointing?

 

[Maestro in street with purple and green lights.]

 

Drat.

Double drat.

Maestro looked up.

Yep. A giant hellsmouth swirled over Spook’s home.

 

[Hellsmouth over the house.]

 

He may not have figured out how to summon a demonic version of My Little Pony, but he’d opened that?

Neighbors gathered, most of them likely assuming this was some sort of publicity stunt for the latest reality show.

God damn Austin, Texas!

What to do? Allow hundreds of civilians stood to die so Maestro could prevent Spook from possibly annihilating the state in a few years.

Godsdammit, time travel was a bitch.

Maestro stomped back to the porch.

He hit the doorbell.

He hit it several times more.

[Maestro at front door.]

 

No. Screw it. Too dangerous.

Every time he’d tried to alter the timeline, he’d wound up exploding the fucking planet!

Why would this be any different?

Nope.

He turned to leave.

The door opened.

“You better have pizza!”

 

[Spook shouting in doorway.]

 

The little twerp’s voice still reverberated with demonic overtones.

Fuck.

 

[Shot of Maestro over Spook’s shoulder.]