David always knew. He was my teacher. He always knew. How can I describe it? It was like this: the moment before I would even think to go left-left, or to turn, or curtsy, David would lead me there. I know it sounds crazy, but he was inside my own mind. I’m convinced of it, and I’ll take that to my grave.
The way it started was I was home on leave. Almost a whole summer, and there was no way I’d stay in Miles City, so I went to Wyoming. A horse camp. I never even liked horses but this translator I knew in Kabul, he was fuckin crazy about ‘em. Horse this, stallion that. Fucker made me promise I’d dance with horses. Right before he took his last breath.
I don’t know where you’re from, but where I’m from, if a hajji asks you for a promise with his last breath, well then goddamnit, you do your best to complete the task. If it’s dancing with horses, it’s dancing with horses. What I didn’t expect, though—when I danced with David, I mean—was to feel so emotionally vulnerable.
David, dancing with a horse
First David would do his basic moves with another horse, then he would show me. I would talk to him, first a little and then a lot. I was so embarrassed at how awkward I was that I would just laugh nervously and make small talk. You know, do the shoes hurt when they put them on?, is it offensive everyone thinks you’re all just meant to race for our enjoyment? Etcetera.
David understood what I was going through.
David never got PTSD during wartime like I did, and I doubt he has to count numbers and take three Ambien just so he can sleep, but he’s had a lot of pain—people come and go through the camp, again and again, and every one of those broken connections cuts David like a knife in the belly. It’s like, just when some lady gets a few moves down, bammo, she’s off flying back to Vermont or Alabama while David is left to stand up on his hind legs and sob.
No one understood me the way that David did. Not my staff seargant, not Edgar from basic, not no one.
I still dance, out in my backyard, but it’s not the same.
Me and David at the final recital
