Lesson 4: What Does Not Kill Me...

When Tuesday rolls around, my attitude has changed from "What do we have to do tonight?" to "What do we get to do tonight!" This attitude reeks to high heaven of positivity and mental health, so it feels totally alien. I decide to go with it, just to see what this "can do" stuff is good for.

In my eagerness to recapture more of last week's magic, I show up twenty minutes early for class. Let's party!

But when I enter the dance studio lobby, the room feels funereal. Amber and Vicky sit on the thin indoor-outdoor carpet, whispering while Vickie hand-stitches repairs to a pink ballet slipper. Valerie and Joan huddle over Bembebe's wedding pictures, oohing and aahing over page after page of dark smiling faces, and asking him quietly, "Is this your brother? Who's this? Is this your bride's father? What's his name?"

Why is everyone so hushed? Then I see the reason. The yoga teacher has taped laser-printed signs outside her room. "QUIET!" they command, in 60-point Times Roman Bold. "Yoga class in session!" This strikes me as too funny to subdue my anticipation.

I sit in the changing area to put on my tap shoes. From here, I can see that the yoga teacher has turned out all the lights in her room again. She says something like, "Now move into Dropping Dog pose." Ambient light from the lobby illuminates only the closest yoga student in the dark, just enough for me to see a ghost on all fours straighten her legs, sticking a sizable, sweat-panted butt in the air. No wonder they like the lights off. But, it occurs to me, I am merely the lard calling the butter fat.

A few more tap students arrive, but not as many as last week. Everyone converses using careful Indoor Voices.

Promptly at 6:59, the yoga teacher emerges from the dark. She is a chubby blonde, older than I. She looks surprised at how many people are waiting in the lobby, then pleased that we had been so quiet. She thanks us quite sincerely, and I feel a twinge of guilt for laughing at her signs. The issue is obviously important to her.

Class begins with our usual warm-up, "Hard-hearted Hannah," and I still can't balance on my right foot while doing eight clean Shuffles with my left. But I'm pleased with my progress; I'm getting closer. In a rush of revelation, I discover that sometimes -- sometimes -- when I tell my body to do something, it might do it! I try different things to maintain my balance: bending my weight-bearing knee slightly. Leaning forward just a skosh -- ow, not that far. Turning my foot out a little more -- ow, not that much. I swear I will get it.

Annette wears one red tap shoe and one black one, making it easy to tell her left from her right when she demos steps for us. After our Shuffles, she looks concerned. "I want you to hear your own feet," she says. We're lined up at the barre, and she has each of us do a few Shuffles with each foot, one person at a time, without music. It's incredibly revealing. Everyone has looked like they can tap dance, but when singled out of the noisy crowd, each of us, to a person, has a retarded left foot. You might not think it possible to stab your left toe at the ground and miss, but we do just that. Repeatedly.

Annette explains more on the proper form of a Shuffle. "If you're missing on the back stroke," she says, "imagine that there is an invisible golf ball on the floor, and you're trying to kick it backwards as far as you can. To do that, you'll have to give it a good snap." She gives us a moment to experiment. I look along the barre. Each person is staring down as if the end of his or her leg just sprouted an alien pseudopod. We are pawing at the floor repeatedly and with great concentration. We resemble a herd of very smart horses learning to count.

Annette starts us on another exercise, then puts on Santana's "Smooth." Even though the song got saturation airplay when it was a hit, I've always liked it. But I never knew how to move with it. Now I do. As I work through the exercise, it carries me forward to the hated full-length mirrors. I suddenly realize, during this entire class I have forgotten to control Face. My eyes dart to the mirror. The guy looking back at me is smiling. This shocks me right out of the exercise, and I lose the count.

Annette introduces more very simple steps, Truck (where you actually walk like Mr. Natural, the Keep On Truckin' guy) and Pivot. She plays a cut from Nicola Conte, whom you think you've never heard, but you have if you've seen the commercial of an extremely happy black guy dancing in his boxers. Like him, I am having a great time. So is Bembebe. He loves Truck, and performs it in styles that make me laugh. I can practically see his top hat and cane.

Next Annette plays something that sounds like George Clinton, but it turns out to be a funky cut from Outkast's Speakerboxx disc. To this song, we Step-Ball-Change, Step-Ball-Change, and she tells us to use only our toes, no heels. Staying up on the balls of my feet does something to my posture. My stomach pulls in, my shoulders roll back, and my chest fills out. I don't know what to do with my arms yet, so they just hang. As I rapidly Step-Ball-Change on my toes with my arms straight down, my back tall and erect, pivoting in formation with everyone else, recognition clicks. I've seen this before! I am Lord of the Dance Michael Flatley doing a Riverdance step, set to down-'n'-dirty funk! Seeming like him even the least little bit exhilarates me, not because he's an awesome dancer, but because he has hair.

So naturally, once Tap Dance charms me into dropping my guard, she pulls one of her fiendish tricks.

"Please go to the barre now. Our next step is a very important one," Annette declares. "You'll use it in all sorts of combinations." She demonstrates, standing on one leg and popping briefly into the air. "It's the Hop. Let's do several of them."

Red alert! In my head, a brass horn section blares menacingly, dut - dut - dunnnn. The Hop is my nemesis. The Hop was the other reason I left Annette's tap class years ago. You don't understand what Hop means to a fat man. I can barely balance my bulk at all. And now she wants us to leave the ground. On one leg.

While all this crosses my mind, Face is quietly freaking out. omg… omfg…

Face!

trauma… stupefaction…

Face, respond! Face!

resignation… gloom…

I borrow a mental font from the yoga teacher's sign: FACE!

neutral.

That's better. Come on, let's just give this a try. I follow the class: Shuf-fle-Step-Hop!, Shuffle.Step.Shuffle.Step.

Everyone else pops up in the air on the Hop. The first time, I pop up, too, amazed one leg was able to launch my girth into the air. The problem is the landing. Douglas Adams described the Vogon space ships by saying they "hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't." I hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks do. I land like a boulder with a side of extra gravity.

Here it comes again, Shuf-fle-Step-Hop! I am no longer the happy black guy in boxers. I am no longer Michael Flatley. Straight out of Fantasia, I am the hippo in a tutu. When I land, the wooden floor bows so deeply, the classmates on my left and my right catapult into the air and change sides.

We do the combination a third time. Hop! Something in my shin hurts as I land. This time I hit the floorboards like a cartoon anvil, tearing through the wood and the foundation and the ground and plummeting all the way to the earth's core, where I land with a clang! on the head of a little red guy holding a pitch fork, who instantly grows an egg-shaped lump on his head.

I clutch the barre grimly as we turn to the other side. I turn stoic. I must think exactly like Nietzsche: What does not kill me, makes me a tap dancer. But I am tiring. Some of the hops on this side look more like I'm briefly standing on tip-toe.

Everyone seems to do fine except me. They're smiling and complimenting one another, while I stare down a darkening tunnel of betrayal. Tap Dance seduced me. She charmed me. She stole my heart. I committed to her. And now, now that I'm involved, now that I want to prove we're good for each other, that rhythmic bitch has decided to make an issue of my weight. Well, Miss Dance, why don't you go Hop this. ##