outburst over the phone. I know some fighting is inevitable between fathers and sons, and in my case, my emerging homosexuality during adolescence definitely complicated the relationship with my macho pop. And of course, my resentment of my fatherâs infidelities as a husband did not help our relationship. As I look back, I can see that at no time were things tenser between us than in the months when I was first launching my new life as a full-time student at the SAB in New York.
When I called my parents on that summer evening in 1979 with my exciting news, Iâm sure I never, for one instant, paused to think about the havoc I might be causing for the rest of my family. I guess I was already floating through life in that bubble of selfishness that the teenage ego spins for itself, a self-contained and self-reflecting world in which my needs and my desires and my hopes and my fears were all that existed. It was the end of July when I made that call home, and by the end of August Mom and Pop and Kiko had all picked up and moved to New York. Kiko had been offered a role in a PBS television pilot that was being filmed in Boston, and I tried to convince myself that the East Coast seemed like the best option for all of us at the time. But increasingly, as I look back, I am struck by the sacrifices everyone in my family seems to have made for me when I was very youngâand I feel some late-blooming guilt.
My parents and Kiko and I settled into a small apartment in the Rego Park section of Queens, and poor Kiko was enrolled in some local high school (in a recent phone conversation he reminded me that he attended four different high schools over four years). My father and I began what would turn out to be our last session of daily commutes togetherâand our ugliest, both in terms of traffic and clashing personalitiesâdriving back and forth from the apartment in Rego Park to my ballet classes at the Juilliard School in Manhattan.
Fourteen is a notoriously unattractive age for all boys; still, I shudder when I think about the way I treated my parents during those months while we were living together in New York. I was attending ballet classes during the day, and hanging around Lincoln Center between classes and in the evenings as much as I could, sneaking into performances, soaking up anything and everything that I could about ballet. Many of my fellow students were enrolled in the Professional Childrenâs School, which allowed them to squeeze their academic studies in between the intense demands of classes at SAB, but we couldnât afford the $3,000 tuition (itâs an astronomical $35,000 today). Instead, my parents enrolled me in correspondence courses for the eighth grade. I was completely uninterested in these courses, and I remember sitting at dinner one night and announcing to my mother and father that schoolwork was a waste of time and that I wasnât going to bother with it anymore. They looked at each other and then at me, and began to try to argue that this really wasnât a choice, that I had to keep up with my studiesâbut we all knew that I had taken the bit in my teeth and would do as I pleased.
Another source of irritation between my parents and me in those days was the monthly stipend of $250 for living expenses that SAB gave me. The expectation was that I would turn this money over to my father as soon as I got it, and in retrospect I can see that this was completely reasonableâmy entire family had moved to New York to allow me to pursue my ballet career. My parents were both working to support all of us here. But at the time the adolescent monster in me resented having to hand over what I considered to be my money. After a couple of months of seething at the unfairness of all this, I decided to try an experiment. When I received my next check for $250, I didnât mention it to my parents but went to the bank and cashed the check myself. Giddy with my greenbacks, I went
When I called my parents on that summer evening in 1979 with my exciting news, Iâm sure I never, for one instant, paused to think about the havoc I might be causing for the rest of my family. I guess I was already floating through life in that bubble of selfishness that the teenage ego spins for itself, a self-contained and self-reflecting world in which my needs and my desires and my hopes and my fears were all that existed. It was the end of July when I made that call home, and by the end of August Mom and Pop and Kiko had all picked up and moved to New York. Kiko had been offered a role in a PBS television pilot that was being filmed in Boston, and I tried to convince myself that the East Coast seemed like the best option for all of us at the time. But increasingly, as I look back, I am struck by the sacrifices everyone in my family seems to have made for me when I was very youngâand I feel some late-blooming guilt.
My parents and Kiko and I settled into a small apartment in the Rego Park section of Queens, and poor Kiko was enrolled in some local high school (in a recent phone conversation he reminded me that he attended four different high schools over four years). My father and I began what would turn out to be our last session of daily commutes togetherâand our ugliest, both in terms of traffic and clashing personalitiesâdriving back and forth from the apartment in Rego Park to my ballet classes at the Juilliard School in Manhattan.
Fourteen is a notoriously unattractive age for all boys; still, I shudder when I think about the way I treated my parents during those months while we were living together in New York. I was attending ballet classes during the day, and hanging around Lincoln Center between classes and in the evenings as much as I could, sneaking into performances, soaking up anything and everything that I could about ballet. Many of my fellow students were enrolled in the Professional Childrenâs School, which allowed them to squeeze their academic studies in between the intense demands of classes at SAB, but we couldnât afford the $3,000 tuition (itâs an astronomical $35,000 today). Instead, my parents enrolled me in correspondence courses for the eighth grade. I was completely uninterested in these courses, and I remember sitting at dinner one night and announcing to my mother and father that schoolwork was a waste of time and that I wasnât going to bother with it anymore. They looked at each other and then at me, and began to try to argue that this really wasnât a choice, that I had to keep up with my studiesâbut we all knew that I had taken the bit in my teeth and would do as I pleased.
Another source of irritation between my parents and me in those days was the monthly stipend of $250 for living expenses that SAB gave me. The expectation was that I would turn this money over to my father as soon as I got it, and in retrospect I can see that this was completely reasonableâmy entire family had moved to New York to allow me to pursue my ballet career. My parents were both working to support all of us here. But at the time the adolescent monster in me resented having to hand over what I considered to be my money. After a couple of months of seething at the unfairness of all this, I decided to try an experiment. When I received my next check for $250, I didnât mention it to my parents but went to the bank and cashed the check myself. Giddy with my greenbacks, I went
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