TITLE: Requiem AUTHOR: Kasey RATING: PG-13, EJF(A) SUMMARY: “He’s been my best friend a lot of years, and he knows a lot of things about me that are, well, code-word classified…But he still doesn’t know the whole story.” SPOILERS: Just one for something which hasn’t happened yet ((yes, Jeremy, I realize I can’t get film!)): According to jedbartlet.com, we learn Josh wanted to be a ballerina when he was 4.  That’s the extent of the spoiler.  Oh…and things we find out about in Crackpots and These Women DISCLAIMERS: Not mine. Donna fell off her chair laughing when Sam said it. He didn’t mean anything by it, and I could tell from his look he didn’t mean anything by it.  He doesn’t do things to be mean, he’s not that kind of person.  He just doesn’t always think about who else is hearing the conversation before he says something. So then there’s a thing hangin’ out there. Which, inevitably, when Donna is done laughing at, she will spread along to Cathy and Margaret and Bonnie and Ginger and Nancy.  Then Margaret will start an e-mail chain to a bunch of her friends and end up disabling all e-mail in the White House and OEOB.  I mean, I can see why Donna would be laughing – I’m regarded as one of the high men on the political totem pole, and the idea of me in tights prancing around on-stage to classical symphonies...well, it’s mildly amusing. Okay, so it’s really amusing. I wish Sam hadn’t said anything. He’s popped his head in here about seven times to say he’s sorry.  And I’ve accepted his apology each and every time because he really didn’t do it to be mean.  But until then he was the only living soul other than Mom and maybe Leo to know about it. He’s been my best friend a lot of years, and he knows a lot of things about me that are, well, code-word classified. But he still doesn’t know the whole story. He knows that I started ballet at the ripe-old age of three and that I used to put on little shows in my neighbourhood and the older kids would come play trombones and flutes and squeaky clarinets they took lessons on at school and the younger kids would come tell stupid jokes and Joanie would sing and I would dance.  He knows I was pretty good at it, he’s seen video (I was on local television once with the group I was in and the studio gave me a copy of the tape) and we laughed and pointed and drank beer and ate chips and laughed some more at “little Josh in tights”. But he still doesn’t know when I quit.  Especially not why. No one does. I didn’t grow out of it like most kids grow out of the lessons they take when they’re very young.  I didn’t get sick of it because I did it for so long.  I didn’t have to quit because we moved away or because we didn’t have enough money or anything.  And I didn’t quit because my friends teased me. Truth be told, my buddies thought it was sorta cool.  There were a lot of cute girls in that ballet class. Mallory always thought it was cool, too, because she took ballet when she was seven – I’m thoroughly convinced that EVERY girl takes ballet between the ages of six and nine – and I would always watch her, every time I was in Boston or she was in Hartford.  Leo had set up a little studio in their basement and I would go watch her and applaud and give her pointers and I went to every recital because I was a nice teenager by then – I had mostly grown out of my obnoxious stage (Donna would argue that I still haven’t) and I was more like a protective older brother. She needed an older sibling. I think everyone does.  Either biologically or surrogate.  Someone to teach them cool things their parents won’t teach them and to joke around with and someone who realizes how old they actually ARE.  I mean, after all, kids always think they’re too old to be treated like babies, but parents never stop thinking of their children that way.  So everyone needs an older brother or sister to make sure they’re being treated either how old they are or how old they act – and that number, I’ve found, can range by a good ten, fifteen years in some cases. Joanie never acted her age, she was always ten years older.  She wasn’t a gawky ten year old, she was 20 and happy and healthy and an amazing musician.  She wasn’t a pain-in-the-ass thirteen-year-old, she had this sense of what she wanted to do and was going after it with the ferocity of someone twice her age. She was never, ever, fifteen years old. Music was a big thing in our family.  Mom had met Dad through the high school choir – he had been at a concert where she was singing – and she had a beautiful voice.  Dad didn’t want us to be in the cut-throat area of law, he wanted us to be wonderful musicians like Mom was before Joanie and I were born. I think there’s gotta be a name for that kind of syndrome, because I’ve noticed it with the President as well.  He wants all his girls to be doctors like Abby. But whether it’s a syndrome or just the way those two were (which I wouldn’t put past them, they were always frighteningly similar.  Maybe that’s why Leo was best friends with both of them), Dad wanted us to love music. And we did. Joanie was more fanatical than I by far, but she was also older and had a much better appreciation – a five-year-old boy doesn’t care much for Schubert, or so I’ve found.  I mean, I would dance to it because it’s what Joanie would play, but I liked my Dad’s rock-and-roll albums a lot better just to listen to. It’s funny, because now I have exactly seven classical CDs.  And nine times out of ten, at least one of them will be in my 5-disc CD player at home. The first routine I remember doing was from the Nutcracker – I never could keep all the names of the songs straight, not even when I was in it – and I think that’s usually something kids start out with.  I’m hardly an expert, I just know that it would make sense, it’s a story that’s exciting and has rodents with swords, I mean, what’s not to love there? Aside from the fact that there’s no words. I took ballet for six and a half years at the same studio, I was in one ballet every year except for my last two in which I was in three, all of those for the studio.  And I was in the state-wide production of the Nutcracker starting when I was 7, first as a mouse, then as a mouse again, then as one of the people in the China scene. I was supposed to be a young soul in The Night On Bald Mountain but stopped dancing before I got to. The very day I got the part, Joanie raced down to the music store two blocks away where the manager liked us because we were always very intrigued by what he had to say and we always treated things carefully.  She asked him to order the score for her, and it came in a week later.  I went to rehearsal every day and learned my dances while Joanie went to rehearsal every day with her violin teacher and learned the music.  And when we had both learned the whole show, she and I went into the soundproof basement that our parents had created especially for our musical endeavors. And we did every scene I was in.  We did everything we both knew how to do with that show. I stopped dancing when my sister stopped playing accompaniment for me.  It just was wrong to continue.