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There are any number of things that could have discouraged me from going to the audition. The hour-and-some-change drive, or the fact that I had never been to a casino before and knew I’d have to navigate my way through numerous groups of people, whirring machines and flashing lights. None of it helped the mounting panic I was trying to ignore.

A week prior, I’d come across the announcement about dance auditions and decided to register. This was a bold decision – the last time I’d intentionally committed to physical exertion of any kind had been the 5K I’d run last October. Since then, not a lot of movement, plus a bout of COVID.

After a quick check-in process, I was asked to wait in the empty lobby until the auditions began. I took a seat on the lobby floor against a far wall, and focused on some deep breathing. The cold from the floor quickly moved up through my leggings and the music from the loudspeakers ricocheted off the walls. While registration began at 12pm, there was only one other person there with a pinned number and a pensive expression.

I’ve never had a formal relationship to dance, despite being in the Dance Club for all four years in college. I was never confident enough to go “full out” during performances, and at each audition I was convinced it would be my last. And I always felt like auditions were more than just auditions – what was at stake wasn’t just a spot in a piece, but a piece of social capital (and that’s a hard feeling to shake). So I never called myself a “dancer” – instead, I would say “I’m in the dance group” or “I dance sometimes”, but never “I’m a dancer.”

From the lobby floor, I can hear the music in the arena next door, plus a woman energetically shouting encouragement. After the final eight counts, she thanked them for attending. Slowly, the stream of hopefuls trickled up the escalator, and I was surprised to see they were children – and small ones at that. Silently I hoped they’d all done well. It wasn’t that I had any particular interest in their individual performances, but more that I’m personally aware of the biting sting of failure at a young age; I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

Children and their caregivers continued filing out of the arena and through the lobby, each looking surprisingly calm and disinterested – as though instead of a high-stakes dance audition, they’d instead left a routine dental exam and been told there was “nothing out of the ordinary.” This only served to make me more nervous, as I now imagined the judges watching my performance and sliding a note between themselves: “worse than the eight year-olds?!!”

Having lost the battle against my insecurity, I scooted around the corner to face the bathroom in an effort to block out the external stimuli. Putting in my earbuds, I contemplated how to calm my fraying nerves. The first song that comes to mind is the one I’ve been singing to myself for the past three weeks: “Romeo and Juliet.”

I was born in Philadelphia, an only child, and I was three years old when my mother passed. In the following months, my father and I stayed at his mother’s house in Springfield. He’s always maintained that we fled Philadelphia because it was “unsafe” and “the neighborhood was changing,” but in reality I think his guilt was a ghost that haunted him as much as the memories of my mother’s presence. Guilt about not being there for her even when he was in the same room.

Nights in my grandmother’s old house terrified me. Each night I hoped my father would pause while tucking me in, his hands resting on the quilt and say, “You know what? How about I stay with you a while, until you fall asleep?”

But I never asked and he never offered, although there were the occasional late-night or early-morning snacks. “Sweetie,” he would call, peeking his head around the door, his voice uncharacteristically saccharine and cloying, “how would you like some oatmeal?” In the kitchen, I would watch him cook as he answered the endless stream of questions I would practice during the day traipsing around my grandmother’s acre of land with a dog on either side: “First, I’ll ask about the moon – if anyone knows how big it is, he does…”

My favorite part of these moments with my dad were the music lessons. I would take my place on my grandmother’s couch, seated behind the coffee table that had a built-in record player. I was a captive, three-foot-tall audience.

First we would review the records, each accompanied by a small, technical or informational anecdote. Never about himself per se, but more in proximity to his own existence – like what year the shopping mall that he was browsing on the day he learned Jimi Hendrix had died closed, or his definitive ranking of music-playing devices. Nothing you couldn’t live without, but to a four-year old at one in the morning, I felt how I imagine Joseph Smith did in 1820 seated in a nondescript forest in western New York: inspired, confused and ready to prove my reverence.

There is a sentimental clutch of songs that I attribute to these sporadic listening sessions: “Your Love” by The Outfield, “Let’s Groove” by Earth, Wind & Fire, all of The Police’s greatest hits. But the single most important one – by far – is “Romeo and Juliet” by Dire Straits, specifically off their Alchemy: Dire Straits Live album from London’s Hammersmith Odeon in 1983. I’ve tried listening to the other versions, but they’re not the same; without that first, desperate “We love you, Mark!!!” the entire song is thrown off.

The whole song is brilliant, but it’s the final chorus that gets me every time:

Juliet, when we made love you used to cry

You said, “I love you like the stars above, I’ll love you ‘til I die.”

And there’s a place for us, you know the movie song

When you ‘gonna realize, it was just that the time was wrong, Juliet?

At four years old, the full meaning of the song was lost on me. Love was undifferentiated; the love I felt for my father was no different than the love I assumed he had felt for my mother, or that they had both felt for me. It would be another ten years before I read Shakespeare or considered the complexities of romantic love. But the soaring piano and Mark Knopfler’s plaintive verses felt so deeply sad – he was pleading a case, begging his Juliet not to leave – all with a desperation and sincerity that nestled in the very core of my being.

My mother had only been gone for a few months, and although I had given up praying, there were nights I would lie awake bartering with God not take my father too. When we sang and danced in these moments, I felt like I had been rewarded for my penitence, and I would etch each moment into my memory in case it was the last.

When the song ended and the dance was over, my father would walk me back to my room. Sometimes he headed back downstairs and I wondered what I had done to bring our visit to an end, swearing to be more sincere and committed the next time around. Mostly though, he would drift off to his room as well and I would wait to hear his snores through the green paneled wall that separated us, before falling asleep myself.

I’ve never told my father how much that song means to me. In truth, over time, it’s begun to mean more to me individually than as a connecting thread between the two of us. The memories he and I share have deteriorated over time along with our relationship, but my connection to the song has endured nonetheless.

The melody of the song still moves me, but the emotion is distant now – like the aftertaste of an experience that’s long since gone. I don’t beg my Juliet to consider our future together or hold true to a promise past, and while initially our timing had been wrong, our second act has been less a tragedy and more a comedy of errors. Sometimes, before falling asleep I’ll study the curl of Juliet’s eyelashes. No green paneled wall between us, today I wait for the barely-discernible nose whistle which tells me it’s bedtime.

I barely make it to the second verse when the arena door opens. I pause the song, as the assistant clears her throat: “Ladies,” she calls gently but firmly, her voice carrying over the empty concession stands and old concert posters, “it’s time.”

To reach Mercedes directly: mercedes.macalpine@gmail.com

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