Nutcracker Christmas Partying

The sex week hadn’t exhausted me and the tips were great. It had been exhilarating, and I felt I’d put on the best two performances on Friday that I ever had. Gregor Gerinko even patted me on the butt at one point and praised my dancing in the tin soldiers’ scene. Afterward, as I and the other minor male dancers were crowded into a large dressing room, fighting with each other to get our costumes and makeup off and running through the showers so we could dress and get out to the late-closing eateries within walking distance of Lincoln Center, Gerinko came to me. He was holding a bouquet of red and white roses.

“You have an admirer,” he said. “If you don’t make it back to the hotel tonight, I’ll take care of that.”

The heads of all other dancers swarming around in the room snapped around to look at me. It wasn’t unknown, actually, that someone in the audience—male or female—hit on one of the dancers this way, but it didn’t happen often, and not usually with a bouquet this expensive looking. Also, it usually happened when the admirer was known to the dancer.