The Fancy Dancer

heard a lot about masses with liturgical dance, mostly from Father Vance, who thought they were a scandal. But I’d never seen one.
    “Okay,” I said.
    Vidal shut the bedroom door, stripped off his dusty clothes and went in the bathroom.
    The cup of coffee sat steaming gently on the bedside table. Feeling like a convalescent, I sat up in bed and drank it. Outside the window, the evening sunlight slanted gently through the blue spruces. The suburban neighborhood was quiet, and I could hear an occasional car purr by. Some children were screaming with laughter up the street. A woman was calling, “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty!” All that peace and order around me only raised the noise level inside my own head.
    Vidal and I both put on clean jeans and T-shirts. He wore his motorcycle jacket, and I pulled on a brown goathide jacket my parents had given me years ago. I wanted to look unpriestlike, just an ordinary leather-jacket kind of gay man. It was strange to think that no one would threaten us in that room, and that we could actually opt to stay there instead of going out.
    a a a
    Ironically, the hall where the dance mass was being celebrated belonged to the St. James Episcopal Church. No Catholic church in the city would lend its facilities for this shocking affair, so it found a home with the Episcopalians, whose current attitude toward gay people was a little more relaxed.
    Still dulled by the Valium, I found myself jerking with a kind of slow-motion nervousness. There was no butterfly mask on my face here. People could see me, maybe recognize me later, somewhere else.
    The large hall was empty of furniture except for the altar. It stood halfway down—just a long table draped in white. Panels of red and black cloth hung from ceiling to floor, and there were cathedral-size white wooden candelabra along them, already flaming. The setting had an almost medieval splendor.
    A crowd of people was milling quietly in the back of the hall, talking in whispers. They were mostly young, both sexes. Through a doorway, in a little side room, I could see a priest putting on his vestments.
    We drifted gently into the crowd. A couple of young women in their late twenties came up to Doric, and he chatted with them for a few minutes. When they left, he said to me:
    “Those girls are two of the charter members of the Denver chapter. They were Benedictine sisters and in the same community. Now they’re lovers.”
    The dancers were standing in a group, relaxed but 170
    silent. They were six men and six women, all wearing white leotards. For a minute I was a little shocked at the idea of these muscular young bodies being part of the Mass.
    One of the male dancers stood out. He was a little taller, and his straight silver-blond hair hung to his shoulder blades. His face had the beauty of an angel, lit from inside by some softly flickering light. An insensitive person might have called him “effeminate,” though there was surely nothing female about his hard-muscled body.
    Even in my dulled state, I could react to his attractiveness. The reaction told me all over again that I was gay as a goose.
    “Look at that blond number,” said Vidal softly.
    Doric laughed. “You stay away from him,” he said.
    Vidal laughed too—now we both knew that the blond was Doric’s lover.
    Suddenly an electrifying sound ripped through the hall. It was a wooden clapper, being shaken by a kid standing near the doorway. The sound was harsh, rattling, like the dance of death. The whispering crowd fell silent.
    ‘There’s no music to this Mass,” Doric whispered in my ear.
    The priest came out of the side room, carrying the sacred vessels, his vestments flaring. Behind him was his acolyte. He went to the altar and set his things down. With a hushed shuffling of feet, everyone crowded up behind him and kneeled on the bare wooden floor. The idea, I thought, was to get the congregation as close to the priest as possible. On the other side of the altar, half the hall was left bare for the dancers.
    Pressed between Doric and Vidal, I craned my neck to watch, so curious and nervous that I didn’t have the proper prayerful attitude.
    The clapper kept rattling now with a martial beat. The dancers came striding, two by two, in heterosexual pairs. They moved stiffly like wind-up soldiers. While the priest prepared the altar, they circled all around us. Finally they lined up on the other side of the altar, still in wooden straight pairs.
    The clapper stopped