Congratulations Cowboy Dancer!

The final move, as always, will involve your hat.  This time you'll send it spinning across the room to land on a mannequin.  The mannequin's face will be featureless, but its head will have a single word written on it: "Me."

The symbolism, while heavy handed, will be just right for the slow fucks who still go interpretive dance performances.  The ones who aren't incapacitated by a sudden outburst of tears will stand up in their seats applauding.  You'll bow at them and give a quick wink to your ex-wife, who will be standing in the front row, rolling her eyes at you.

After the show, she'll come up to you to talk.

"You've got to start paying the alimony," she'll say, handing you a past-due notice.

"Face it honey, you just love the way I move," you'll punctuate the sentence with a quick tip of your hat.

"Seen all the steps before," she'll respond, spitting on the floor at the end of her sentence.  She always did wear the pants in the relationship, which is part of why you always felt so secure as a dancer with her in the wings: she made you feel free to embrace any kind of passion, interest, or pursuit, regardless of how society might see it.  Her righteous disregard for feminine grace made you feel free of masculine bond.  She made you free to be you.

And yet you've paid her back by denying her the basic monetary compensation she needs to take care of herself in the wake of the criminal amounts of credit card debt you've racked up under her name.  She's working two jobs and barely making ends meet while you live with your parents, cashing disability checks and dancing your heart out twice a month to sparse crowds in high school gymnasiums.

So when you look at her and say "Well, all right then," it'll be the first time you've ever actually accepted her responsibility.  And while she won't come back to you, it'll be the only time that night, maybe the only time in the history of your relationship, that she'll ever have seen you as a man.  She won't believe that you'll pay, but she'll feel like you finally had a moment where you realized you need to, where you realized what your love for decorative figurines and mail order methamphetamines have done to her.  So she'll respond by nodding at you, a gesture of polite respect, and leaving you to your adoring collective of elderly people and simpletons.

Tomorrow is another day, and tomorrow you might sit down and start working to find a job or you might say fuck it and get on the road to somewhere else, somewhere new where you'll live without thinking about her as best you can.  But today, at least, you realized you did wrong, and one day that'll imbue your dance with the one thing all of your training and skill couldn't give it: heart.

Congratulations Cowboy Dancer!