In the 60s, I was working for a management consultant. I was his only employee. I kept his books, edited his pathetic syntax, prepared course materials for his seminars that I then shipped to the location and took ballet classes because he was always on the road.

His wife was always hovering, so I would type up his itineraries and send them to her. I would talk with her in the morning and get a sense of her day. Then I would leave for class at, say, 12:30, leave class at 2:30, get back by 3, jump into a hot tub to ease aching muscles (it was an apartment in the “22 House” connected to the Plaza Hotel), and then take a nap (I was always drained). I would then work till 8 or so to catch up.

In class, about a 10 minute walk from the office on Central Park South, I would take the barre, wait until the teacher, Matt Mattox (he was one of the dancers in "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers"), chose the groups and I knew where I would be standing. Then I would throw my raincoat on over ballet tights, run down to the diner, and use their phone booth to call the answering service. Reassured that no crises were imminent, I would dash back up the stairs and tear into the classroom. As I reappeared one day, Matt looked up, and followed me with pointed finger to my position. "Sorry, Matt," I sighed, "I'm leading a double life." He was kind enough to let it go.

Once I had a dream that Dick, my boss, had died in a plane crash. My first thought was, “Oh, good, I can take class.” (In my defense, I will say that Dick was authoritarian and manipulative and thought he was smarter than anybody else. I stayed because he was rarely there.)

Class was so important that nothing stood in the way -- bad
weather, social commitments. Jay and I would be meeting friends for dinner. I would show up at the restaurant, after class, with a translucent skin, hollow eyes, bandaged toes. It was not altogether an uninteresting look. I used it to advantage.

Ballet laundry was always a problem. If I had been too tired to wash things out the night before, I would dump tights, leotard and socks into a soapy bucket, rinse them out, throw them in a plastic bag, and hang everything in a closet at the office. Sometimes I would forget to hang things up, and then I would wear wet clothes in class. At least they dry faster when you are wearing them.

Later, when I worked in a regular office, either at Harper & Row, or at Times Books, or at the NYT Syndicate after that, some co-worker might say, if there was a forbidding weather forecast, “I guess you’ll have to miss your class.” And I would say, “Miss my class? What, are you NUTS?”

I did ballet exercises when I did scut work – such as waiting for a long job on the Xerox machine. I would stretch, or practice pirouettes. I tried to time it so that I was alone but occasionally someone would walk in on me. I had a reputation as an eccentric. I didn’t worry about it.

Sometimes I wish I could do it all again --
balancing work and class and being eccentric.

xx, Teal