Phoebe asked me last week if I would like to go to the ballet this season.

I said, “Yes.” I have many times admitted my attraction to the ballet.

A few years back, just before Phoebe and I began dating and before I started smoking again, I went out to one of my favourite haunts with a friend. Once there I saw three people come out of the shadows: a young man; a girl, small in frame; and a tall thin woman wearing a tutu.

I had liked ballerinas as a child, music boxes especially; the sweetness coming from a box I had opened, and the anticipation of finding a treasure was exhilarating, but I began to discover adult treasures.

I dismissed my thoughts and the ballerina as the nine year old I thought her to be, with very irresponsible parents.

“Why the hell are they out?” I said to my friend. “It’s like twelve.” “Are they going to try and go in there? The bartender will send them right back out.” And of course, the alcohol volume was on high so they heard every word.

Granted, I was drunk, but the idiocy of the situation came from me more than the booze.

About half an hour later when I got back to my seat I saw the ballerina at the table behind me and she struck me for a few seconds – the child was in fact a woman very close to my own age.

The smiles and possibilities of conversation had been completely loped off like an unnecessary foot because of my dismal comments. I was quick to judge and so the girl in the tutu outside grew into a remarkably attractive woman on the inside without ever growing older than a half an hour!

I did then what any jackass would do when a woman wearing a tutu who is ‘on the radar’ won’t have anything to do with you – I kept drinking, the whole while wishing it was as simple as a music box.

When Phoebe started listing the shows she wanted to see and then turned, “Do you think I’m too old to wear a tutu?”

I was hearing my youth and the music of the box, “No,” I told her, and I imagined the woman, not the one on the outside the one within. “I like tutus.”

~ JB