Dreams of Gene Kelly

I grew up in the nineties.

There were some great things about the nineties. Lots of sitcoms that feel like chicken soup. Grunge music. The birth of some great bands. National fiscal surplus. Sure, the nineties had it all.

But not for me. For me, the nineties were the slow build, the quiet before the storm. Like when you’re watching that nice couple in the horror movie walk right into the creepy house, calm as can be, and you’re screaming “Don’t go in you fools!” but they can’t hear you through the rounded glass screen of the old box t.v. you keep in a cabinet. You know, the cabinet with the doors you close when you hear a car pull up in the driveway so you can pretend you were doing homework. That’s what the nineties were like.

When I was little, I was adventurous. I was always climbing on trees and counters and kitchen shelves. I was exploring, looking for something. Usually cookies or rock candy. But even after I found them where my mom hid them on the back the of the top shelf that even she had to use a step stool to reach, I was still seeking. After the third cookie I could feel that the answer to my quest probably wasn't in the fourth.

Then one day my sisters put on a movie. On the big boxy t.v. I could see it was raining. And the people wore well fitted suits and dresses, and danced and sang. If you haven’t guessed already, it was Singing in the Rain with Gene Kelly. Suddenly, I was no longer looking. I had found something.

I was too young to overthink it, or to have some existential awakening. Instead, I simply knew I wanted to be like him. I wanted to dance.

I'll admit it, I was a pretty cute little kid. So I imagine when my mom saw the way I stared at those movies that I watched over and over, she couldn't resist. Pretty soon my parents bought me a little sheet of hard plastic to put over the rug in my dad's den downstairs, and some tap shoes. I would dance for hours down there. I didn’t need to copy someone else’s moves or find a teacher. The dance came from somewhere inside me. It was a part of who I was.

Eventually, I decided to level up and got myself enrolled in ballet classes like my sister was. It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t nearly as fun as my training in the basement, but I knew it was the next step to following the dream Gene Kelly had planted.

I remember the butterflies and nausea before my first performance. I remember the pain of trying to bend my inflexible body the way the girls in class did. I remember being told, and believing, that I could become great if I stuck with it.

I also remember going to a birthday party when I was seven. The birthday boy was a year older than me. He was a dancer and a singer. And he was proud of it. I didn’t have time to admire his pride before I saw the price he paid. His friends made fun of him, pushed him around, bullied him until he was crying atop the play structure. I think he even wet his pants.

These were his friends. His only friends. And this was how they treated him for following his dream. It was too girly.

I think I tried to dance one more time on my little tap floor before I kicked it and broke it. It went in the trash along with my dance shoes. Nobody could know. And nobody did.

As I got older, I learned from the other kids that being like a girl meant you were “gay”. And being gay meant you were going to be a target. I’d really dodged a bullet. As fifth grade came to a close, and stories filtered in about middle school swirly’s and beatings, I heaved a sigh of relief. I wouldn’t be one of those kids.

But 9-11 had happened. And little did I know, the kids at middle school had been taught for the past year to fear people like me—terrorists. I’m half Persian after all (which means my dad is from Iran, which means I'm half middle eastern). That’s right, their parents and friends and uncles and aunts and political leaders and newscasters all agreed I was the enemy.

The first time I was called a terrorist, I learned to hate my blood, my skin, and my name. It wasn’t the word; it was the look in Samuel’s eyes.

I'd skated by under the radar for months. Nobody knew that my heart yearned to dance and sing. Nobody had taken the time to consider where my name came from. In English class I'd been paired with Samuel a few times. We'd gotten along. I was too shy to call him a friend, but he'd been nice. Until the day when he'd come in with a different look in his eyes. Fear and anger. Not that of a child, but that of a nation, of a generation, all carried on his little shoulders. Hate.

If you've never been part of a subset of your society that is universally viewed as the cause of a great and recent tragedy, then you don't know how dangerous it feels. How dangerous it it. The way you wonder every day if someone will attack or humiliate you. How you wonder if you will ever not be hated, despised. You wonder what you did wrong. You learn to hate brown people too, because it's their fault that you fear for you life every day. It's the Iranians, and Iraqis, and Pakistanis, and Afghans who turned the world upside down, made your whole country hate and fear you.

In time, I learned how to stay safe. The key was to make the joke first, or take it to the next level. Or, if it wasn’t a joke, I’d make it one by making fun of myself.

“Hey you F***ing terrorist!” they’d say.

“You’d better watch out!” I’d say, “Watch out before I pull the bazooka out of my backpack and blow you up.”

And they’d laugh and I’d laugh, and I’d count my lucky stars that I wasn’t “gay”, because those kids had no way to humor themselves out of it. They were victims, and as far as I could see, they always would be. I just had to make sure nobody knew I liked to dance or sing. Or that my family were Sufi, because that sounds Islamic, which sounds like a terrorist kind of thing.

So I didn’t dance, even in private. And I didn’t pray, even in solitude. I turned into a monochromatic person—all the color drained out. Became whatever I thought people wanted to see. I said whatever I thought they wanted to hear. I tried to fade into the background. If life had been acted out on a green screen, I would have painted myself green.

And the dream of Gene Kelly died. And I knew I had murdered it.

At some point, I started envying the kids who got bullied. At least they were brave enough to honor themselves.

I survived middle school. I survived high school. I didn’t dance once. Even at dances. I forgot what it meant to be moved by my spirit. My own heartbeat became foreign to me—an alien drumbeat that I didn’t understand.

After I graduated, I felt an immense weight lift. I knew the world outside of school had to hold more. I needed to celebrate, and with the sparkle of a diamond, my sister gave me the chance. She got married.

The ceremony was in a glade of redwoods atop a mountain. The ring bearer was a chihuahua named Hercules who nearly missed his cue. There was laughter and tears of joy. And there was wine.

And I drank the wine.

Speeches were given. And nobody gave as grand, loving, or lengthy of a speech than Dad. It was forty-five minutes. The food went cold, wedding cake drooped and my sister's new father in law started snoring. I'm being dramatic of course, the cake was fine, the food hot, and the snores weren't that loud.

And I drank the wine.

The sun started setting, and the leaves waltzed in the breeze, glimmering gold. Their rustling song mixed with the music that started as my new brother led my beaming, crying sister in their first Dance as a married couple.

And I drank the wine.

I was looking for something again. Something that might be out beyond the trees, or under the dress of a pretty bridesmaid, or at the bottom of the next glass. Turns out, it wasn’t in any of those places.

At that wedding, I had my first true communion with Dionysus, the Greek god of the party. He was at the bottom of my last glass of wine. But even he wasn’t what I was looking for.

I’d never felt so free. Even when I drank at high school parties, all life had felt like a performance. But Dionysus smiled in me as I gave myself to the wine.

He bolstered me with courage when my sister’s friend dragged me to the dance floor. He lubricated my rusty joints with wine as I forced my body to move. It was awkward at first. But then I saw her dancing. Sophia. Chestnut hair and honey eyes. She was smiling and laughing and moving. No practiced steps. Just dancing. And for a moment I could have sworn it was raining, and we were splashing in puddles, laughing, and singing in the rain.

At the end of the night, the grandmother of the groom called me over, and accused me of being possessed by the spirit of the recently deceased Michael Jackson, but I know the truth. It wasn't MJ, or the warmth of Sophia's smile, or even Dionysus. It was me.