This happened ...

Me and Mike and Elliott and Miss P. went to the Juilliard School dance performance 3/27. I took this picture of the dancers' final bow. I was jealous of the way they looked in their outfits - and also their youth. Although, I never looked as good as they do, in any outfit, at any age. I remember looking as a youth at dance performances on PBS, coming close to tears at the grace of the dancers. I was fat then, and would slosh around my parents' living room, as graceful as a beached whale. One day, I knew, I would be skinny and a dancer. I developed exercise bulimia - sometimes running 10 miles in one day - and one "runners' knee" diagnosis and many years later, I know I will never be a dancer. But my future, like that of a dancer, probably holds the promise of painful and time-consuming knee-replacement surgery.

I made out with Mike in the subway on the way home. It was magical. It was only the fourth or so time I had made out with someone I already knew. Most of my sexual encounters have happened when I've gone out to pick someone up, and they've mostly been one-night stands - some, anonymous. That's why my fondness - mutual, I thought - for Mike was so innocent and thrilling for me. On my way home, I was plotting how I would make it work with Mike - for once, not plotting how I would fuck things up. But the next day, on the phone, he said he'd rather be friends. I immediately felt fat, ungraceful, exposed, and surprised. I don't remember what I was wearing when that happened, but if I did, I would certainly never wear that outfit again.