Dancing Feet

It starts with the feet.
I've never a noticed dancer's feet before. I was always comfortably fenced off a few yards from them, in a theater seat or bleachers- just close enough to admire the way their bodies swam through the air but never close enough to see their feet.
We were all sitting on the floor in a huddle at the start of my first Jazz Dance class. The instructor was taking role, and the gymasium was quietly humming with the nervous chatter of girls in their tights, and sweat pants.
A few of us sat with our feet hidden beneath our normally-proportioned thighs, others let them lay limp in front, using their wrists to support their back; our limp ankles leaving our bare feet to flicker with whatever tune passed through our head.
Other girls though, had brought real dance shoes with them. I had never seen dancing shoes up close. They are not beautiful. They hug the toe like latex, add unnatural padding to the bottoms of your feet and add at least and inch to the height of your arch. Your philanges, nails and veins turn into one smooth glob, like an animals's foot.
I looked at my feet. Speckled with the scars of this summer's moiskitos, faintly red around the ankle where I shaved to hard, I want to console them, and apoligize for not taking care of them more. My left big toenail- white fat and stubbly from an infection I got in 5th grade at Disney World- is particurly sullen. My teacher sits up straight and talking, with her legs twisted around her like thick dozing snakes. Her feet are pointed, sharp, hungry. She fingers them like a hunter fingers his gun, an artist his brush, a lion trainer his cats. She and her legs; the two are unconnected.
Then comes the lesson; "On your feet, everybody."
Pirouette, plie, pas jete, glisse, ligne, the vocabulary doesn't come as fast as the steps, as the basics. Spin to other side of the room, don't loose sight of the wall, go faster, else the others will run into you, now leap, but skip, do a split midair, don't bend your knees, faster now, faster.
Any Questions?
It's just me and the fat girl in the back of the class.
After school they come plying with their pity. Sweet swans in their simpering leotards.
The front girl, the one whose many runs in her "tard" number the amount of hours, weeks and years spent propelling her to the front, comes to "teach" you. "You'll get it eventually. I've been doing it since I was eight, but I'm out of shape now since I havn't danced since Nationals, Have you ever danced before?"
And I, trying not to hate her, change the topic.
School. "I'm double majoring in Psych and History, and Minoring in Language. Took so many AP courses I was only 4 credits away from a History major anyway.
Ok, lets try hobbies..
Hobbies? Not much. I'm the sorta girl who does her homework and the splits at the same time,.."
and we're back to dance again...
"You should really wear something better than jeans next time, I'll lend you some of my old dancing shoes."
Her long gold hair waives goodbye to me at the door of my domatory, and I know that I will hate her less after the extra practise lessons with my instructor. I look down.
My feet don't appear any better, red on the side of my big toe where I was spinning, and pumped full with lactic acid that extends to my hips. But wait,- look again.
Yes, they don't look much different, except that, they've already become a "them," a tool, a paint brush, that, however clumsily, will take me anywhere.