4/17/2023 mindfff-bread
I once conceived, staged, and performed in a concert dance-art piece in which I sat in a chair and ate my dinner, which consisted of nothing more than a chunk of bread, whilst other dancers in the same show danced around me having been instructed to take their improvisational movement inspiration from little scraps of paper, randomly torn, by me, from a notebook I had been writing in for some time. Mind you, I was instructing them as I was tearing the paper scraps out of the book, and they had only volunteered when I asked them maybe 3 or 5 minutes prior. The instructions were basically: "take your movement inspiration from whatever you see on this scrap of paper, and feel free to vocalize in any way you see fit by stage-whispering to me as you dance around me. Meanwhile, I'm going to sit on a chair in the middle eating this bread." The whole thing was very last-minute, impromptu.
The overarching show was the last show a certain choreographer was presenting in Columbus, OH before he moved to New York City, and I was performing in it. This dinner incident was in a little showcase immediately preceding the performance on one of the nights that the show ran. The artistic director (who was also the show's choreographer) had invited us to present work in this little showcase. Ever the opportunist and full of wacky ideas that just might work, I went, "okay." with a casual shrug in my head. And so it was that I came to be eating bread that I had baked, probably that day or the night before, onstage in Columbus, OH one evening. The thing about the bread in this art-piece is that it was simply a point of pragmatism: it was only ever about satiating my hunger. I didn't have any ideas or anything "in the works" when the original offer to present something in the little showcase was made, but like i said, I was an opportunist, and generally speaking, I thrive and feel my most competent when I am forced to improvise, especially if my improvised idea works out to my liking. Still speaking generally, I'm sure that's how it is with everybody and that I'm not unique in this. When it came showtime, I guess the whole idea developed around and because of the bread. Otherwise, the piece may have, and in all likelihood would have, been different were Adam and I not starving. We were about 20 pounds each less muscular and bone-dense as we are now, now that we eat pretty much every day, sometimes too much. I had been dancing after college, and those were the days of the $0.53/hour gig that dragged on well past very nearly every last millimeter of my epidermis had been exposed in public, on a stage, in a bar, with or without great security, hair and all. I remember one morning during those days when I barfed from having drunk a certain quantity of whiskey the night before. I've never had whiskey (nor bourbon, if you please) since. That's beside the point.
I was able to eat the bread onstage because I had saved up my fifty-three-cents-an-hour checks and the occasional $35.00 babysitting cash to buy enough ingredients that I could get away with shoplifting the rest. Then I made the bread, and boy was it good. By then, it was time to leave the house to go to the theater, and I was hungry from saving all those fifty-three-cents-an-hour checks and living with someone who regularly had several hundred dollars to spare every month yet who audaciously demanded $20.00 and a bottle of vodka every week or so as payment for our sleeping in a tent in his sewage-flooded basement. So I ran out the door to catch the bus, half a loaf, and some other stuff for the show with me, and I ate as much bread as I could on the way to the theater, and this wasn't much as, at that time in my life, I was often walking 30 minutes to a bus stop for a 2.5 hour bus-ride with a transfer in the middle. I couldn't eat and also walk briskly in the cold for half an hour, and you're not supposed to eat on the bus. Fortunately this bus trip was much shorter and not in the cold which just about made up for the vodka and money demands, though those rendered me and Adam underfed. I probably sneaked bites of bread on the bus anyway. But still, by the time I'd gotten to the theater, I was running on just a couple bites of bread and coffee from the morning. There was probably stolen powdered creamer in the coffee, so that offers a few more calories and nutrients, but not really anything to speak of.
As I changed into dance clothes and put on makeup, I ate as much of the bread as I could, and soon enough, it was time to go on for the showcase. I was still hungry, still had half my lunch/dinner/dessert (the bread) left. You may be realizing by now that our diet mainly consisted of plain bread and instant coffee. Occasionally we were able to sneak a few corn chips each after our alcoholic overlord passed out for the night. There was the one time he made meatloaf for everyone, but he was always drunk, so he inadvertently (or maybe purposely, who can say?) didn't remove that absorbent paper with which meat is packed, and everyone who at the meatloaf got sick. The chef was the only one who didn't eat the meatloaf, and was therefore, the only one who didn't get sick. Anyway, steering back to my experience of eating my only food onstage: so we all did the thing, my acquaintances dancing around me while I finished my lunch and dinner onstage amongst their shifting bodies and occasionally whispering voices. One of them was like, "I want summa that bread!" She broke off a bit right out of my hands and fed herself onstage as well which I thought was actually quite interesting from a metaphoric and artistic standpoint.
Incidentally, about 2 months earlier, I had shown up on her doorstep after dark and asked if I could stay the night there. Only, I didn't just ask her plain and simple. I was somewhat maintaining composure, although my father and I had both just screamed at each other in turns on the car-ride over. He had repeatedly tried to convince me to come to Indiana with him with complete disregard for the fact that Adam was still in the jail from whence my father had retrieved me that very evening. I insisted that I would like to stay and directed him to her house.
So when I say I was maintaining composure, you could say it was composed only relative to the yelling I had just done. My voice broke into small wails, partly from fear, right when I began to speak the words. A few tears leaked out as I spoke, but I was able to get my message across clearly. She said it was fine with her but that she wasn't the only one who lived there and that I'd have to ask her mom. I'm pretty sure that's code for: "no, but I know it's taboo to say no, so I'll go get my mom to see if she'll say no for me." It is interesting to note that she didn't need her mom's second opinion to let me spend the night 3 or 4 months prior to this encounter when I stayed there after a late performance (with a different dance company) that we were in together. So her mom was brought to the door, and I repeated my request. It was granted, and I ate well and slept well for a few days and nights and was warm, and I was able to throw some money at the situation and retrieve Adam from the jail. We had been arrested and each charged with two misdemeanors of the lowest possible level at a sit-in demonstrating, among other things, our rights to exist and have shelter. We took a $35 taxi ride at 03:00a.m. from the jail to the house of my friend, the bread-chunk partaker to be, and her family. Wouldn't you know it, the whole ordeal took place over a period of days where I didn't have any rehearsals for the show, so that actually worked out great on that front. Couldn't have asked for better timing. And so began a year of sleeping on couches and in a basement. I've often wondered how much of her taking that chunk of bread derived from feelings of desire for "restitution" for the favor she did me versus how much of it was from the simple lust for freshly baked bread. I wasn't mad or upset, but I was planning to eat that bread. She had plentiful quantities of food, and I did not. Once, during the months leading up to the other dance performance I mentioned, she brought me some leftovers of her dinner from the night before so that Adam and I might be able to eat that night. It was very kind of her, and to my memory, no one else has done that for us, so I find it very curious that she stole my dinner onstage that night. Perhaps she, too, hungered. In a different way. Comments are closed.
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