Save the Last Dance For Me (Hong Kong)

Save the Last Dance for Me (Hong Kong) I met with Joey early on a Sunday morning at Starbucks in the IFC. I felt half dead to be up before eight o’clock on a Sunday morning. Even God rested on Sunday. But she was a former choreographer and dance was part of my three chamber heart: writing, dancing, and teaching. So I felt it was important enough to set my alarm and drag myself out of bed.

We were going to meet to discuss a potential dance – audio / visual - collaboration.

And as this was our first meeting, we spent the beginning warming up to one another.

We discussed our checkered pasts, our failures, and our hopes. But for a stranger she trumped me in her transparency about her past. She had just broken off an engagement to a drug addict. She was fighting cancer and had just finished her last round of chemotherapy. And apparently, returning to smoking cigarettes alleviates constipation.

And she was point blank – “Doctor says I only have eight or nine months to live.” And then she adjusted in her seat and pushed her curly black hair back in her bandanna. Then she looked at my face to get my reaction.

“I am sorry,” I said finally.

She smiled. “Don’t worry. Everyone dies.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my wooden chair. “Wow. A collaboration with you has a strict timetable.”

She laughed. “Yeah a little. But I need the work. I want to pay my way out of this city.

I want to leave it behind. I want to start over. I want to return to Malaysia. But a cancer patient doesn’t have a lot of job opportunities. Especially when the cancer is terminal.”

“Yeah, I can imagine.”

She was quiet but then added coldly, “Actually you can’t.”

“I guess maybe I can’t.” I scratched my head. “But what I can do is offer the opportunity for you to tell your story to others. I always tell people to write their story down. Document their lives. And you are a living example of: don’t let a tombstone be the only proof you were alive.”

She was quiet, “Okay, go on. What are you suggesting?”

“Write your life down. Not the mistakes of your past but from this point on. Change your karma.”

“You mean write my death down?” She said with a half sad smile.

“Okay, if that’s how you want to look at it.”

“Look,” she began. “I don’t mean to be rude. But I need help. I am selling everything I have. I just want to get out of here and get closer to my family and my cancer doctor.

And I think writing my story down is a good. I am interested definitely. But how does that make me money? I have no money to eat.”

I was in disbelief. “What about your family? I mean, you have nobody to help you?”

“My family disowned me.”

“I am sorry. But you know I had a situation like this before in Boca Raton, Florida. I had a friend tell me almost the same story. The details were different. But the plight and suffering was the same. But my friend ended up being addicted to crack and they eventually ran off with a lot of my money and stole my car.”

She started putting things in her purse and began to stand, “Look, I am not here to be insulted. I am looking for opportunities. And if you do not want to believe me, you don’t have to. No one cares – and I wouldn’t assume you would either.”

I stood with her and put my hand on her arm. “Look, look. I am not saying that. I am saying – you have to admit – I am a stranger to you. And you have just put it all out there. Isn’t it okay for me to be a little disbelieving?’

“Well, I don’t have a lot of time.”

“Okay, okay. I understand. Let’s work on some collaboration. I can pay for your services as a choreographer. I have a project in mind.”

Joey’s face changed. “Okay, tell me more.” And she sat down.

And we began a discussion about my personal project to lure Ryan Leslie to Hong Kong for a gig at the new club Play.

“That’s very interesting.”

“Yeah, I think so.”

She was quiet for a second. “Okay, I would be interested. But time is short.”

“I know.”

“And again, I am not trying to be so direct. But I need to get paid. And I we need a legal binding contract because I have been screwed before.”

I thought to myself – for a woman dying of cancer – she is preparing for the future.

That’s a good sign of optimism equals remission.

She went on, “And my rate would be my normal rate before I got sick.”

“Okay.” And I gulped.

“I just want to be upfront.”

“I appreciate your honesty.”

She opened up her notebook and wrote down some notes. “I will sms you later with some figures and we need to act quick – again – time is of the essence.”

“Well my schedule is kind of tight.”

“And so is mine.”

There was quiet between us.

“Well, save the last dance for me,” I said to break the tension.

She smiled. “I would be honored.”

And an hour later while walking along Hollywood Road in Sheung Wan, my right foot started bothering me again like it had when I walked two days through New Orleans during Mardi Gras or when I walked the whole perimeter of Central Park in New York City. I also remembered the lump that Sophia had pointed out on our holiday in Thailand. I had a business trip the coming Monday afternoon – but I made a promise to go to the doctor to have it checked out that Monday morning.

Just then my Blackberry vibrated from an sms. It was a message from Joey.

It read: “I am excited. I listened to the music you suggested and I have some ideas and concepts. But I also wrote down some figures. Basic price would be 60,000 Hong Kong

dollars up front and I would also request a per diem for the travel between the locations here in Hong Kong.”

I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and laughed in disbelief. I think I said aloud, “At least the cancer has not affected her ambition!”

I typed back: “Ouch! I think we are going to have to cancel this. It was just a personal project for more lucrative projects later. For a price tag like that, I need time to bring in investors and have a strategy for a return of investment.” I hit send.

A response came quickly, “Well, I don’t have the luxury of time for that.”

“I am sorry, I can’t do it. I apologize for wasting your time.”

A couple of minutes later my phone rang and it was Joey. But I was in no mood to answer it.

So Monday morning, after going by the ticket counter and checking in my two bags, I went upstairs above the Airport Express station, I went to see Dr. Wilson.

The waiting room was halfway empty so he saw me rather quickly.

When I came into his doctor’s office, he seemed surprised to see me because I had been there to get my stitches removed only a couple of weeks ago.

“I won’t take long,” I told him. And I sat down in the chair beside his desk. I immediately started removing my right tennis shoe. “I have found this on the side of my foot.” And I pointed down at the large lump on the side of my foot.

The doctor looked surprised. “And you just found this?”

“Yeah, for some reason, I never noticed it before.”

“How long has it been there?” And he put his fingers on it and mashed on it.

“I have no idea.”

He thought for a minute and moved the mass around. “Does it hurt?”

“Only when I walk excessively.”

He wrote something down on a notepad.

“Well, I hate to tell you this. But its definitely a tumor. It needs to be removed immediately. And you can only hope that it’s not cancerous.”

So minutes later, on the Airport Express train, I thought about the worse case scenarios – of my foot having a malignant tumor – and having muscle, tissue, and bone removed. I imagined not being able to dance for months. And then even worst yet, having my foot physically removed to deal with the cancer.

Then I laughed thinking I was becoming paranoid about my health like my parents in Alabama. Who every time I called them, they complained of some new sickness or ailment they were suffering from.

I instantly flipped back in my mind to the afternoon I took time away to fully turn my neck over and over in the park just outside Piedmont Hospital in downtown Atlanta, before they performed my second neck fusion surgery. My neurosurgeon told me to do it. He forewarned me that I would lose seventy-five percent of mobility after the surgery.

But it was that second surgery that gave me the life I live now. I gave up on my dreams of being a professional American football or baseball player or a sports focused college scholarship. I had to use what I had – and at 15 years old – I had computers. And so that was the path I took.

But still to this day, I remember that day in the park, the sun on my face and the freedom of those last neck turns. I am thankful I was able to cherish it before I lost it. And the life I live now because of that – is richer for it.

So back to reality, I made a promise to myself.

Laughably, if that day ever arrived to have my foot removed, I would choose the person I would have my last dance with – carefully.

Written by GS Jackson, © 2009 LOL Entertainment Group, LLC (USA) Limited (HKG)