Three Minutes as a Woman

When I moved to my current rustic, foothill town for work back in June, I had no friends and no family, so I did what any sensible twentysomething would do and joined a social dance group.  West Coast Swing on Wednesdays became my scene, and until my job started in August, it was the only thing that connected me with others in an otherwise bleak social environment.

I started as a timid, apologetic beginner, but as I danced more and more, I developed a certain confidence in my dancing ability that bled into other aspects of my life.  I felt better about my interactions with others, more physically present in the world, and more self-assured that, since as a dancer I might be worth something, so too as a person might I also have worth.  I began walking with my chest out instead of collapsed, my shoulders rolled back instead of trying to hide within myself, and I was no longer ashamed of my presence.  Dance posture, one could say.

I felt like a better man.  A quality man.

Then one of my dance friends, a strong woman and conscientious follow, an excellent physical communicator who never breaks a solid sense of connection while dancing, asked if I wanted to follow for once.  She was working on her lead, and I had never followed before, so why not?

For those of you who know little about social or ballroom dance, there is usually a lead (who is male) and a follow (who is female).  The lead leads the follow through the dance with the use of tension and body language, and the follow reacts and responds to the lead’s cues.  Leads don’t have to be men, and follows don’t have to be women, but traditionally this is how it is.

And so, for three minutes, I assumed a woman’s traditional role on the dance floor.

It was horrifying.

I’m not saying my friend was a bad lead.  For all I know, she was excellent.  But I do know I was a terrible follow.  My experiences as a woman for those three minutes on the dance floor were disturbing to say the least.  Any sense of self-assurance I felt that I was doing something right in this world was threatened.

For three minutes, I was being whipped around, pushed and tugged according to somebody else’s plan, trying my best to make it enjoyable for my partner, and yet completely clueless as to how to behave in such a way as to make it a fulfilling experience for anyone involved.  As far as my partner knew, she was leading me through an intuitive and pleasurable dance, and yet I was completely failing at my end of the bargain to respond in such a way that worked for either of us.  I was awful.

This is not only about my level of skill and experience.  Relinquishing any sense of control over the situation and putting myself at the mercy of others made me feel pathetic and emasculated.  I felt powerless.

And for a brief moment, I felt like I knew a little better what it is like to be a woman living in a society where they are often objectified, at the mercy of men who think they know better, a society whose rules are written by those oblivious to the challenges faced by a population trying desperately to secure a voice.  There I was: being pushed and pulled by someone else’s design with little else to do but smile and pretend to enjoy it lest I break down and embarrass myself or others.  Social dance is a microcosm of society.

Make no mistake: It wasn’t just the experience of being forced into submission.  It wasn’t just the psychological challenges of relinquishing control.  I can’t suddenly claim to understand what women go through in life using three minutes of dance.  My empathy, though well-intentioned, is foolish…

…It was that I had suddenly understood my own leading, my own traditionally masculine role, from a different and more honest perspective.  For months, I had been leading under the assumption that I knew what I was doing, and that my follows were enjoying it.  And now, from the other side, I knew this likely to be untrue.

I was going through the motions, smiling and laughing, all while secretly hoping for it all to end.  This is no longer just about dance.

I, as a lead, am a reckless buffoon.  I, as a follow, am a deceitful manipulator.  I, as an observer, see myself as two people dancing, enjoying each other’s company, none the wiser.

How could I then go back to the role of a lead and be secure in knowing that what I’m doing is good for the follow, when as a follow, I now know that I might be terrible?

I stepped away from the dance with my confidence shaken, full of self-doubt, with just a hint of paranoia.  I couldn’t figure out why anyone has ever agreed to dance with me.  In fact, I couldn’t figure out why anybody dances at all, ever, especially women, if they are to be subjected to the misguided whimsies of strange men like myself.

If you go through life overcoming that unwelcome shred of doubt about your interactions with people, knowing consciously that they probably do enjoy your company as much as you do theirs, and yet carrying with you a suspicion that they are just placating you, pacifying you, tolerating you, but secretly wanting to get away from you, and then you find out through three minutes of a role reversal that your suspicions might be right?  That all of your intimate moments might have been a lie?  That every passionate moment of your life might have been a dance wherein the follow is patiently waiting to leave quietly lest they break your heart?  How do you rebuild the pathetic shambles of your once proud self?

I couldn’t dance for the rest of the night and went home early.  I still have a hard time going back.

Teacher Gibberish

I underestimated how bizarre of a profession teaching would be.

Prior to this year, even though teaching was a consideration of mine since I was in high school, I was always mildly annoyed by how much teachers lamented being teachers, complaining of low pay or being under-appreciated or having to deal with terrible students and terrible parents while simultaneously proclaiming themselves to be the saviors and martyrs of society, lest we raise a generation of idiots.

Now that I am a teacher, I don’t know what to say, because I know if I start talking about teaching, if someone starts me down that meandering path, then I won’t be able to stop blabbering about it, often in terms of nonsense, because when the whole job is stirred up and spat out before me, it looks a little like gibberish.  Perhaps it’s best for my company if I just stay silent, but I am often unable to help myself.

So here is my gibberish:

We teachers are here because society decided we are not just valuable, but indispensable. Every child in the nation is required to have an education of some sort.  That’s what childhood is: a period in life where one can do little else but be forced to learn in state-mandated educational captivity.  This notion is fairly recent in the history of civilization and rather unprecedented, and yet today we take it with a grain of salt. Of course schools are necessary. Of course children need to be in schools. Of course we need teachers to teach them. Has it ever been any other way?

Whether the original rationale for public education be nation-building, economic prosperity, or public safety, who knows what it is anymore if none or all of the above? English-learning makes sense; we want people to communicate. Science makes sense, we want people to bail us out of our foolish mistakes with new discoveries or build new ways to make our lives lazier. But somehow I, as a music teacher, have to prove to the world that it is worth it to the taxpayer that my students can subdivide eighth notes or read a scale. Of course I know this is valuable, but what does Sacramento care? What does Washington care?

Music is often justified by how it enhances performances in other subjects, as if my best clarinet player is going to become a biologist because of Holst’s First Suite. Every time I hear about how math and music are conflated, I just about burst a blood vessel. Math and everything are conflated. That’s what math is. Counting in 6/8 doesn’t get you any closer to mastering Calculus.

Music is important because of the things that don’t make it math: expressivity, emotion, understanding teamwork, building friendships, and establishing human connection. If I got to rename my classes, I’d call Orchestra “Showing Up and Being Accountable.” I’d call Choir “Courage.” I’d call Band “Applied Emotions.” To me, music is little more than a vessel to bring out a broadened spectrum of emotion expression.  Through it, one learns responsibility, inner peace, the value of hard work, how to have fun, and so on and so forth. When I teach music, I teach catharsis.

And yet, being a teacher, especially at an underprivileged school, is really about none of that. Many of my students are from group homes, or foster care, or have fathers in prison or mothers chasing men in far away states. Some come from situations of abuse, or from parents who had them as teens themselves, who, unable to care for them, dropped them off with a reluctant aunt or grandparent. One of my students found out his estranged father died in the middle of my class. Another has a neighbor who raises my hackles because I’m legitimately afraid he’ll harm her if given the chance. Some cut. Some abuse drugs. Some just cry in the middle of class, for no reason to which I’m privy, but for perhaps all of the weight of existence on their shoulders.

Of course there are more.  The stories are endless.  They are all in good company.

I am not just a teacher. Perhaps being a teacher is the least important of my duties. I am a stable adult.  I am a role model.  If this dysfunction is how you come into this world, if this is what you see when you open your eyes to the light of existence, then you assume it’s normal.  It’s just how things are. It’s my job to say: “What you know of as normal doesn’t have to be.  You don’t have to be the vicious cycle.  You have the power to define what normal is for yourself, and it doesn’t have to be destructive.”

But I’m not just a role model either. I am also a confidant. I occupy a vague and ambiguous space between father figure and bureaucrat, between authority and friend, between avatar of the state and a fellow human being just trying to make it in this world.  And these roles are by no deed of my own, but are merely because society declared that I should exist, and so I do.

Yet, I am neither father nor friend.  At 3:00, I wave goodbye.  I go home to my apartment, cook myself a meal, check Facebook, and await the next day when I can fulfill key learning objectives based on California State Standard 2.4 and counsel someone through their breakup, or their crumbling home life, or a death in the family, or whatever else decides to get thrown at them that day. Music is a tool, life is the learning objective, and teaching life is more about listening and empathy than anything.

And quite frankly, I need my students just as much as my students may need me.  Perhaps even more so, for when they are outside of my classroom, they have other classrooms and other teachers, or they have their friends, or some sort of family life.  I, as a new teacher, am struggling to figure out how to navigate this day to day existence, still without any idea as to how someone working as a teacher could also raise a family, or spend time with friends, or date, or even have hobbies.  At this point, my students are my social life, although they can’t truly be so, for they are first and foremost my students, my professional associates, and my interactions with them can only remain within that context.  At the end of each weekday, I can ignore this social disconnect as I unwind from exhaustion and enjoy the relative silence of my apartment, feeling good about whatever impact I have and whatever my students might have achieved that day.  But on Saturday afternoons, the specter of loneliness begins to rear its ugly head once again.

Anyway, I imagine, like most forms of social work, or any career I suppose, you can talk about it all you want, but nobody is truly going to understand it unless they’ve been there. So why bother?

So when someone asks how teaching is going, I often say, “It’s exhausting, but I enjoy it,” or “It’s a mixed-bag,” or “I’m still getting used to it.” But those are just empty mouth noises, a replacement for a loss of words, or at least a whole lot of gibberish.