The Real Thing
When I was a child, and could still measure changes in my height and bones, my parents often discussed mortal goings-on with me, and the myriad ways in which our culture was superior to theirs.
One of their favourite themes was that romance is a convoluted story the mortals tell themselves to lessen their shame around sex.
We know better; we waste no energy getting to the serious business of making babies.
Prince Rudolf was a poison-dipped arrow I had to pull out of my chest after every Mayerling rehearsal.
I found a measure of empathy for this other prince, who also suffocated under the weight of a precarious empire.
But I hated who he became on his wedding night with Princess Stephanie.
Saoirse always laughed through my apologies, but I had to give them every time, like a spell, to stop Rudolf’s violent energy from following me out of the Dance Hall.
As for Mary Vetsera – well, that was another side of Trix I had not known was there.
Macabre, unpredictable, a chaotic teenager in a grown woman’s body.
My hair was an owl’s nest after rehearsals, and she left a trail of bobby pins in her wake.
Our characters’ manias fed each other like kindling to fire, pulling us into the four kisses – so different from the single, measured kiss of The Sleeping Beauty that they did not feel like kisses at all.
If Mayerling was meant to convey what so many coaches and other dancers called “real” mortal desires, I would gladly confine my kisses to performances only.
After the first few days of rehearsals, Trix and I said goodnight differently, as if neither of us were sure what had just happened. I could have sworn I saw, in her eyes and her body language, what I felt after having spent hours as Rudolf: a need to stand in the rain until I felt cleansed.
The more “mature” roles Trix danced, the more Stephen liked to remind whoever else was in the male principals’ dressing room that he had “tried it on” with her when they were younger, but that she had “frozen on him”.
‘Don’t worry, I know the rumours aren’t true,’ he told me, after a critic made a joke in their review of La Bayadère about how much my stamina onstage must benefit Trix offstage.
‘There’s always been something wrong with her wiring down there, and she won’t let anyone help.
Hell of an actress, but that’s all it is – an act. ’
He said this as if he were bringing me vital intelligence from across enemy lines.
Had I known then what Trix later told me, I might have responded with more than cautious silence.
There had always been talk of this kind in the dressing rooms, ever since I joined the company.
Even dancers who went on to become my good friends, like Charlie, could not resist exchanging stories of their sexual adventures like currency. I quickly became used to tuning it out.
Not until after the Great Storm did I begin to wonder if I was the only man with whom Trix had shared her bed, in any sense of the phrase.
Her confession to me on the rooftop cast her habit of topping up everyone’s drinks, or idly picking up a magazine, whenever conversations turned to sex, in a new light.
But, outside of religious orders and their vows of celibacy, I had never heard of mortals who did not desire sex.
I had taken my family’s received wisdom as truth: that the romance portrayed in mortal stories was only ever a symbol for something more fundamental.
A superficial means to a necessary end. It felt indulgent to imagine, perhaps even foolish.
And yet… what if the two could be separated out after all? What if the romance was not always the journey, but the destination? What if the symbol was, sometimes, the real thing?