Every Step You Take by Jock Soto Page B

We’re getting the fuck out!”
    Pop meant what he said, and he did what he meant. Within days he and Mom and Kiko had packed up and moved out of our apartment in Queens. I know that leaving me alone in New York must have been difficult for my mother—she said as much many times in later years. But she too had tired of the hardships of the city, and her instincts as a dutiful wife told her she should stick with my father. I remember Mom and Pop and Kiko all drove me to my ballet classes on the morning of the day they were leaving. I stood outside the Juilliard School and waved good-bye. I was fourteen, and totally on my own in New York City. I had $250 a month to live on and no place to live yet, but I had launched my ballet dream. I was in heaven.
    My introduction to the glamorous life in the big city began not long after my parents’ departure with a classic New York experience: eviction. My fellow SAB student Jefferson Baum and I considered ourselves complete geniuses when we landed a cheap place to live in the upper nineties—but only a few days after moving in we found ourselves back on the street. Evidently we had a sublet of a sublet. Discouraged and with nowhere to go, we threw ourselves at the mercy of two fellow dancers, Einar Thordarson and Afshin Mofid, who had rented an apartment on the top floor of a Sixty-ninth Street brownstone. We begged them to let us squat with them for just a few days while we figured things out, and as we were all in that “the more the merrier” stage of life, of course they said yes. Somehow a few days bled into a few more days, and a short visit became a technically illegal overoccupancy. I remember one day all four of us boys were practicing our double air tours over and over in the apartment, when suddenly there was a knock on our door. When we opened it, there stood the owner and landlord—Edward Villella. The man whose gravity-defying leaps had first impassioned me for ballet when I was only four years old was their landlord, and he lived downstairs. Apparently his chandelier had been swinging back and forth so wildly as a result of our double air tours he was afraid it was going to fall. He asked us to please stop—and then he took a second, more studied look at Jefferson and me. We were busted.
    Afshin and Einar immediately jumped to our defense, explaining that we had nowhere else to live, and begged him to let us stay. After a long silence, Mr. Villella gave us another long look—and nodded. Jefferson and I could stay, provided we each paid $175 a month in extra rent. We didn’t have a dedicated bedroom—Jefferson and I just set up our beds in the living room—but we had a home. We were thrilled.
    My tenure in Mr. Villella’s house was the beginning of a long and happy period for me. My roommates and I danced and trained together at SAB all day every day, and generally took care of one another in our life outside the school. After paying my rent I had only $75 left every month to buy groceries and eat, but my teenage roommates seemed to be in more or less the same spot, and we all worked together to keep one another going. I was probably the most experienced cook in the group—Kiko and I had run a fried-dough concession as boys, after all, and we had often cooked ourselves simple meals when we were home alone after school, waiting for our parents to get back from work. Whenever my SAB roommates and I went grocery shopping we would buy things like Hamburger Helper and ground meat, canned vegetables, pasta, and bottled Ragu sauce. Tuna casserole with Ruffles crumbled on top was a particular house favorite. Humble as these dishes may sound, a few simple tricks made them pretty delicious, and because they were easy to make in bulk no one had to hold back on seconds and thirds.
    Our apartment had a little terrace with a hibachi grill, and in good weather we would barbecue a megaload of hot dogs and invite some friends over to