Confessions of a Back-Up Dancer

Thursday, May 23rdBEATZ BEACHSIDE DANCE STUDIOSAN DIEGO, 4:45 PMOutfit: postman pants, black sleeveless tee with small but horrifying deodorant stain under left breast. (Was it there all day?)Hair: a disaster. The roots aren't funny anymore.Mood: distracted.Fortune: Signs can lie. (I'm getting fortunes from this website tito told me about. They send a newsletter to my email every day along with like 35 ads but whatever, I like the fortunes.)I was seriously bored at work today. Manning the front desk of Beatz Beachside Dance Studio in San Diego can be totally mind-numbing, especially when the only class going on is a seniors swing class in the far studio, studio C. Old people seniors, not high school seniors.Anyway, I was reading some gossip online about Darcy Barnes and Jesse Nixon, the reigning teen king and queen of the pop universe (as seen on (M)TV!), and how they're supposedly secretly dating or something. the article said something about a house they'd bought together in the Hollywood Hills or one of those places. seems weird that they're dating even though they've known each other since they were like seven and on that Please Don't Do That on Television show or whatever it was called. I don't know if they're going out or not, but I guess it's kind of fun to think about. and I know one thing, if she's not dating him, she's a fool cause he is FINE.I was so bored I read the article three times and was starting in on a fourth when the lovely Tito, my best friend in the universe who works at We Bop! the super-expensive tween boutique next door, threw open the front door and rescued me."hey girl!" he yelled. "look what I found in the back of the boutique! go try this on." he held out a baby tee with a cowboys and Indians scene on the front.I go, "Tito I'm gonna look like a waitress at some goofy western-themed bar where the waitresses wear daisy dukes." Tito just goes, "Go try it on. it costs $85."I was like, "what idiot spends $85 on a baby tee?" then I asked tito to watch the desk for a sec so I could go try it on. I ducked into this empty practice room, slipped off my sleeveless shirt, and pulled the new t-shirt over my head. with mirrors on three sides, I could see immediately that it fit perfectly.perfectly, that is, if I was, for example, Darcy Barnes.I mean, this t-shirt fit. Tight. My boobs never looked bigger. they weren't darcy barnes's size, of course, because all I got is a b-cup. ok, b-minus. ok, fine, I'm an a.I stared at my reflection for a while, humming that old-school Darcy Barnes song "Love You Like a Lollipop," which happened to be drifting in from the lobby. swaying, watching my belly button swoop and drop and twist. it was riveting. it took a moment before I realized I'd actually started doing the steps to "Lollipop," which I'd learned from watching the video about 400 million times. (I have the DVD, so sue me.) Anyway, before I knew it, I was totally going for it. my feet were racing, my head swinging, my hips shaking. the beat was constant but irregular...each verse had a bar where the tempo dropped, but I knew when those passages were coming and was ready for them. my body was cruising from beat to beat. I was becoming darcy herself.I'd done it -- I'd entered that zone you reach when you're dancing and you're completely consumed by the music, and your feet bypass your brain and carry your body weightlessly. That place where you stop thinking and start feeling. it doesn't happen every day, in fact it's pretty rare. I guess every dancer probably calls it something different. But Tito and I call it going THERE.I was two bars away from the part in the video where the guy lifts darcy by one foot and tosses her into a backflip, and I realized I needed a guy. without warning, tito slipped in behind me. I never thought, "Where did he come from?" because Tito's just like that...always there when you need him. And THERShaw, Tucker is the author of 'Confessions of a Back-Up Dancer', published 2004 under ISBN 9780689870750 and ISBN 0689870752.