Transitions In Life
December 2, 2003

What follows is my "A Fail To Suck Day" posting for 2003.  For those of you not familiar with this "tradition", it was originally started by SaiBaba on ASSC, but Saxbeat decided to spread it to this website.

As per usual, I didn't prepare for AFTSD and wasn't going to post anything. However, after seeing all the great posts this year, I felt compelled to contribute, or at least try.

2003 was a transitional year for the dancers in my life.

My dancer friend who was the “feature” of a couple of clubs retired from dancing at 30, as she had said she would do for many years. She was one of the best dancers I knew and was formerly a ballerina with the Boston Ballet. She is currently a waitress in Santa Monica and apparently very happy. I’ll have to check back with her to see if she misses the attention she used to get on stage. I know she’ll miss the money.

Another friend of mine was a dancer when I met her about 17 years ago. She was 15 and basically a runaway. A few years ago, she retired from dancing and became a bartender at a strip club. This year, she quit and worked for her dad whom she had been estranged from for many years. Then, her grandmother died and left her part of a commercial building, which is being sold and is currently in escrow. When she gets that money, she says she’s going to get as far from LA as possible. I guess she’s tired of the rat race. I hope she stays in the U.S. I’ll miss her terribly.

One of my very close dancer friends also went through a transition. Her 2 year old daughter became ill and was hospitalized. She was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect, which was ironic to me because John Ritter had recently died of a similar problem. Her daughter had been in the hospital before for other problems before, but this time, the doctors were not optimistic. She and her other daughter slept in the hospital room for a week. Other family members visited to see the baby one last time. Even though she and the father of the child had been estranged, she thought he would visit the baby one last time. However, the father of the child never visited. The final realization that the father that did not pay once dime for child support was indeed so uncaring that he would not even visit the hospital was almost as upsetting to her as her baby’s sickness.

In the end, her daughter passed away, and the father didn’t attend the funeral either. He didn’t even leave a message on the answering machine. I know the father of the child, and I always stayed neutral in the situation between the dancer and the father of the child, because there are always two sides to every story. However, I had to change my position when he didn’t show up to the funeral. In my mind, even if one is bitter enemies with the mother of the child, and her family, it would be disrespectful not to attend the funeral. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me.

Needless to say, my dancer friend, the mother of the child, is still hurting emotionally. She says sometimes she can still hear her daughter’s voice at night and keeps her toys around the house. She has her bad days and her good days. Christmas is certainly going to be tough for her and her family this year.