Congratulations on Teaching Those Boys Ballet!

Sometimes when you embezzle a shitload of money from a Japanese super-corporation you have to spend the rest of your life running from them, hiding in places they’d never look. Sometimes those places are in Wisconsin. And sometimes the only job that an unqualified, effete half-Asian man can get in these places is teaching a group of young boys ballet.

At first you only knew what your Harvard Business School education taught you about ballet: that is, the formalistic and stylistic basics of classic ballet and how to appropriately reference it in conversation with other businesspeople. But as time went on you had to learn more and more. Those young men just loved dancing so much, and they asked so many questions, far more questions than a businessman should ever be expected to answer.

So you learned. And learned to teach. And eventually your ballet boys became the best damn ballet boys in the state. So good that they got your fake name in the paper, right next to a picture of your face.

It’s not enough for the Yakuza to actually find you with, but you’re such a coward you won’t even think that the Yakuza doesn’t read papers the Madison, Wisconsin papers. You’ll just worry about losing all your skin because some old dickhead doesn’t like it when people steal from him. So you’ll immediately, starting this morning when you see your face in the paper, prepare to flee.

Since it’s the big night of the statewide dance finals, your boys will be expecting you to show up at their competitive ballet event (it’s a real thing, look it up). You’ll want to call them, but your fear will be so gripping, so complete, that you won’t even be able to pick up the phone and muster the courage to tell them you’re bailing. You’ll just load up your silver Toyota Camry and print out some Mapquest directions to the next most isolated place you can think of: anywhere in Iowa.

But as you start to pull out of your driveway, something special will happen to you. You’ll feel, for literally the first time in your life, bad about what you’re doing. You’ll kinda cry a little. And this bad feeling will drive you to, for the third time in your life, do the right thing. You’ll pop that car into drive and haul ass to that super gay contest so that you can watch those boys dance their hearts out.

You’ll arrive just as Samuel, whose father teases him relentlessly, steps out on to the dance contest decision space. He’ll be looking at the ground, but the moment you walk in the door his eyes will lift off the floor, cut through the crowd and lock on you. His frown will twist into a smile and he’ll begin his routine, dancing more beautifully than you’ve ever seen anyone dance before.

The crowd will be amazed and you, for your part, will be reduced to tears. As you clap through them you’ll wish that the Yakuza could just kill you then so that you could die happy, and also so you could avoid the ensuing embarrassment from weeping openly at a children’s dance competition. But you’ll continue to live, and live with your shame, for a while longer yet.

Congratulations on Teaching Those Boys Ballet!