were running around in perky uniforms, grinning like madpeople, shouting cheers as they flipped their way across a mat and threw one another thirty feet in the air and caught one another on the way down. It was like
Bring It On,
only real.
I was instantly filled with self-loathing. During the activities fair in the first week of college, years before, I had stopped at the cheerleading table, but by the time they called to let me know about the informational meeting I had already scheduled a conflicting choir audition, so I decided not to become a cheerleader. (I also decided not to become a fencer or an appreciator of modern dance, and though I did go to a meeting of the Theosophical Society because I had a crush on one of its members, in the end the fact that nothing anybody said there made any sense proved stronger than my attraction to Jason’s cheekbones, and I didn’t go back.) But now, watching these children, practically children, flying into the air as if adulthood weren’t waiting on the ground to pounce once they came down, I was overwhelmed with regret that I had squandered my youth in serious pursuits. Choir, indeed. I should have been a cheerleader, and now it was just too fucking late.
But after half an hour or so of vicious self-excoriation, I stopped short.
Wait a second,
I thought.
I’m a twentysomething gay man living in Manhattan. There’s
got
to be a cheerleading squad I can join.
And, as if it had read my mind, Google took me posthaste to the website for Cheer New York. More alive with joy than I had been since seeing my first opera at age six (
The Marriage of Figaro
), I left a giddy voice mail saying I was interested in joining the squad; on the way to dinner I made Debbie hold my keys and wallet and change while I executed a front handspring, the most complicated move I remembered from the gymnastics I’d done at Jewish Community Center summer camp when I was six. I landed precariously—I’d forgotten most of what they taught me in camp about equilibrium—but in the end I kept my balance. “I’m going to be a cheerleader!” I said, and when we got to the restaurant I was so inspired by my new life as a cheerleader-elect that I almost ordered a salad for Thanksgiving dinner. Then I saw the pie the waiter was bringing to somebody else’s table and I figured I could just as easily start my life as a cheerleader-elect the next day. During our meal I could barely concentrate on the conversation, so enthralled was I by fantasies of doing flips and getting thrown in the air and being caught on the way down by a fellow cheerleader who would fall in love with me and get me a dog named Spiffy and make me happy forever.
Unfortunately, when I visited the Cheer New York website again after dinner, I realized that joining the squad wasn’t going to be quite as easy as I’d expected, because, according to the bios on the “About Us” page, every single member was either a gymnast, a professional dancer, or a former college cheerleader. The rudimentary front handspring I had performed for Debbie and my brother on the sidewalk was the most difficult gymnastic feat of which I was capable. I had taken some dance classes the summer after I finished college, from a woman named LaToya who kept a studio behind her hair salon. I would show up on Tuesdays and Thursdays at noon and spend an hour and a half attempting to plié and pas de chat and pirouette. The only other student in the class was twelve, and she was better than me. After class one day I asked LaToya if I could get a haircut; I may have been the first white person whose hair she had ever styled, but she did an excellent job. After brushing the stray hairs off my neck, she told me she was putting the dance classes on hold for the rest of the summer. I suspect she simply didn’t have the heart to tell me that I was not cut out for a life of kicks and chaînés.
And so now it was with a heavy heart that I shut my computer down, made three
Bring It On,
only real.
I was instantly filled with self-loathing. During the activities fair in the first week of college, years before, I had stopped at the cheerleading table, but by the time they called to let me know about the informational meeting I had already scheduled a conflicting choir audition, so I decided not to become a cheerleader. (I also decided not to become a fencer or an appreciator of modern dance, and though I did go to a meeting of the Theosophical Society because I had a crush on one of its members, in the end the fact that nothing anybody said there made any sense proved stronger than my attraction to Jason’s cheekbones, and I didn’t go back.) But now, watching these children, practically children, flying into the air as if adulthood weren’t waiting on the ground to pounce once they came down, I was overwhelmed with regret that I had squandered my youth in serious pursuits. Choir, indeed. I should have been a cheerleader, and now it was just too fucking late.
But after half an hour or so of vicious self-excoriation, I stopped short.
Wait a second,
I thought.
I’m a twentysomething gay man living in Manhattan. There’s
got
to be a cheerleading squad I can join.
And, as if it had read my mind, Google took me posthaste to the website for Cheer New York. More alive with joy than I had been since seeing my first opera at age six (
The Marriage of Figaro
), I left a giddy voice mail saying I was interested in joining the squad; on the way to dinner I made Debbie hold my keys and wallet and change while I executed a front handspring, the most complicated move I remembered from the gymnastics I’d done at Jewish Community Center summer camp when I was six. I landed precariously—I’d forgotten most of what they taught me in camp about equilibrium—but in the end I kept my balance. “I’m going to be a cheerleader!” I said, and when we got to the restaurant I was so inspired by my new life as a cheerleader-elect that I almost ordered a salad for Thanksgiving dinner. Then I saw the pie the waiter was bringing to somebody else’s table and I figured I could just as easily start my life as a cheerleader-elect the next day. During our meal I could barely concentrate on the conversation, so enthralled was I by fantasies of doing flips and getting thrown in the air and being caught on the way down by a fellow cheerleader who would fall in love with me and get me a dog named Spiffy and make me happy forever.
Unfortunately, when I visited the Cheer New York website again after dinner, I realized that joining the squad wasn’t going to be quite as easy as I’d expected, because, according to the bios on the “About Us” page, every single member was either a gymnast, a professional dancer, or a former college cheerleader. The rudimentary front handspring I had performed for Debbie and my brother on the sidewalk was the most difficult gymnastic feat of which I was capable. I had taken some dance classes the summer after I finished college, from a woman named LaToya who kept a studio behind her hair salon. I would show up on Tuesdays and Thursdays at noon and spend an hour and a half attempting to plié and pas de chat and pirouette. The only other student in the class was twelve, and she was better than me. After class one day I asked LaToya if I could get a haircut; I may have been the first white person whose hair she had ever styled, but she did an excellent job. After brushing the stray hairs off my neck, she told me she was putting the dance classes on hold for the rest of the summer. I suspect she simply didn’t have the heart to tell me that I was not cut out for a life of kicks and chaînés.
And so now it was with a heavy heart that I shut my computer down, made three
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