Fat Ballet

By T.R Whittier

It’s not easy being Olga Dolovich. Orphaned at a time when she had only just begun to appreciate her parents, tormented by her beautiful-but-bitchy sex goddess of a sister, and doomed to clean the world’s dirtiest bathroom, Olga doesn’t exactly lead a charmed life. But worst of all, at least in her tortured mind, is the fact that she’s fat. Too fat for comfort. Too fat for beauty. And much, much too fat to be a ballerina.

But ballet, unfortunately, is what Olga lives and breathes for. What’s a poor, plump, bathroom cleaner with artistic ambitions to do? Under normal circumstances, she’d have no choice but to watch as her dreams got washed down the drain. But when Harold Pinsky, the eccentric heir to a toilet paper fortune, dances into her life, circumstances become anything but normal. Harold, like Olga, has the right kind of talent, but the wrong kind of body to be a professional ballet dancer. Unlike Olga, however, he’s not about to let some stupid societal convention stand in the way of their happiness.

With the help of a few equally imperfect friends, plus one extremely unexpected supporter, they start The Fat Ballet Company – a dance troupe dedicated to breaking down barriers, crushing conventionalism, and squashing stereotypes. But is the world ready for such an enlightened art form? And is Olga ready to come to terms with her less-than-flawless self? FAT BALLET – Dance Without Discrimination!

*Please note: this novel contains bad language and bawdy humor*

• Language: English
• Publisher: T.R Whittier
• Release date: Jun 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9780989594264

T.R Whittier

T.R Whittier is an Independent Literary Artist, Fictionista, and Everyday Chick who is incapable of living a life less logophillic.

Book preview

FAT BALLET

A Novel

T.R Whittier

Copyright © 2014 by T.R Whittier

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

WhittierSideBooks

USA

www.whittiersidebooks.com

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Book Layout © 2014 BookDesignTemplates.com

Fat Ballet/ T.RWhittier. -- 1st ed.

ISBN 978-0-9895942-5-7

ALSO BY T.R WHITTIER

The Buck Pass

For Harold,

Who Always Kept Us On Our Toes

CONTENTS

ONE

Olga

TWO

Harold

THREE

Harold’s House

FOUR

In Motion

FIVE

Big John

SIX

Xueyi

SEVEN

The Surprise

EIGHT

Katya

NINE

Convening In The Convenience

TEN

Fiona

ELEVEN

The Challenge

TWELVE

Encore de L’Amour

THIRTEEN

Metamorphosis

FOURTEEN

Battle Plans

FIFTEEN

Pre-show Pandemonium

SIXTEEN

The Dance Duel

SEVENTEEN

Pièce de Résistance

FAT BALLET

CHAPTER ONE

Olga

Olga Dolovich had the shittiest job in the world – literally. Every morning at four-thirty, she dragged herself from beneath the blankets of her warm bed, trudged towards the subway station, and tried not to fall down dead asleep while leaning against the walls of the filthy train that would deliver her into the depths of Hell – otherwise known as the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

A dank, dimly lit cesspool of a place, the Port Authority is permanently packed with people. People waiting impatiently for loved ones; people yelling into cell phones; people eagerly anticipating the opportunity to get off the crazy little island that is Manhattan. And those are just the people who actually use the bus terminal for the mundane task of getting on a bus. Unseen by the blind eyes of the authorities in charge of the Port Authority are even more people, a myriad of miscreants who turn the terminal into a place of business. A shelter from the streets. A home.

Leaning casually against the walls of Satan’s Sitting Room, hookers cast their eyes over the crowd, watching for the next potential John to step out of obscurity. Drug dealers smile shyly at their customers, then threaten to stick a knife in their throats if they don’t cough up the dough. Homeless people curl up on benches under the pretense of waiting for a long-delayed relative, but with every intention of settling in for the night. People of all sorts – respectable and deviant, honest and criminal, hard-working and hardly-working-at-all – wander into the Port Authority at all hours of the day and night. And, at some point during their visit, each and every one of them uses the bathroom.

It was Olga’s job to make sure that these bathrooms were clean.

Day after day, she sanitized and scoured, mopped and rinsed, rubbed and wiped. She saturated the sinks with lemon-scented cleanser; she tackled the toilets with a gallon of bleach and the world’s scariest-looking scrub brush. Strands of dark blonde hair escaped from the rubber band that she used as a makeshift ponytail holder, falling into her flushed face; buckets of perspiration poured forth from her bushy brow as she busted her ass trying to banish the bacteria that came out of other people’s asses.

But, sadly, the bathrooms seemed incapable of staying clean. No sooner had Olga wrung the final drops of filthy wastewater from her mop than some guy would rush into the bathroom, desperate to take a nice, long leak after spending four or five hours on a bumpy bus, and miss the urinal by a mile. Or, a woman with a baby would come in and drop a poopy diaper on Olga’s freshly mopped floor. Or, some green-faced teenager would stagger into the toilet stall and upchuck about seven pints worth of some partially-digested alcoholic beverage into the previously pristine bowl. And then, with a sigh, Olga would take up her sponge and start all over again.

But her job, defeating and degrading as it might be, never got Olga down. How could it, when every time she bent her knees to wipe a toilet seat became a chance to practice her grand plié? When the task of reaching up to polish a mirror turned into the perfect opportunity to refine her relevé? For Olga, the burden of cleaning the Bathroom of Fire and Brimstone was a small price to pay for the ability to indulge in her passion without anyone passing judgment. In the bathrooms of the Port Authority there were no critical stares, no exasperated sighs, no eye-rolls of embarrassment, and, best of all, no mention of the F-Word. Day after day, she was ignored, left to practice her passé in peace while wiping up other people’s piss. No one ever questioned why a cleaning lady was dancing the ballet. Either no one noticed, or no one cared. Regardless, no one ever paid her the slightest particle of attention, because – let’s face it – nobody pays attention to the person who scrubs the toilets.

Until one day, when someone did.

Lawd Almighty, girl, whatchoo think you doin’? A voice, clearly hailing from south of the Mason-Dixon line, boomed across the bathroom, causing Olga to freeze in the middle of a perfect pirouette. A large, rotund woman, wearing a lavender pantsuit and a floppy straw hat, stood in the doorway of the bathroom, frowning.

I... I... I’m dancing, Olga stuttered in surprise.

The woman made a loud sniffing noise. "And jest what kind a dancin’ you call that? I ain’t never seen nuthin’ like it in all mah born days."

"It’s...the ballet," Olga whispered reverently.

Ball-ay? You mean, like, when all them skinny women be jumpin’ around wearin’ tutus? Girl, you can’t be doin’ no ball-ay dancin’. You like me. You too damn fat.

And there it was. Yet again. The F-Word.

Take it from me, Honey, the woman said placatingly, patting Olga on the arm as she headed into the toilet stall. Be best to give up the dancin’. Ain’t no good gone come outta a fat woman doin’ ball-ay.

Olga plunged her stringy, gray mop into the bucket of soapy water, then flung it vehemently over the black-and-white tiled linoleum floor in an attempt to wash her hurt away with the dirt. As the sound of urine tinkling into a previously purified toilet bowl resonated throughout the bathroom, she glared at the closed door of the stall, muttering the words that she wished she were brave enough to yell at the top of her lungs:

"That’s what you think."

Later that night, Olga stood in front of the full-length mirror in her darkened bedroom. Her reflection, pale and ghostly in the beams of silver moonlight, stared back at her. No one had ever called her an ugly woman. Not to her face, anyway. Her face – soft and sweet, with full, cheerful cheeks, sky-blue eyes, and a dainty, upturned nose – had never been the problem. It was her body that, for as long as she could remember, had always been a source of strife.

Slowly and strategically, as though it were the first time she had ever embarked upon such an endeavor, Olga began to undress. Cautiously, she pushed down the shabby, secondhand pair of gray sweatpants that stretched across her hips like a girdle, letting them fall in a puddle around her ankles. Lifting one thick, pink, fleshy leg at a time, she stepped out of them. Tentatively, she peeled off the oversized, black cotton t-shirt which managed – barely – to contain her curves, pulling it over her head with one swift, stubborn yank and tossing it into an unseen corner. With fumbling fingers, Olga undid the clasps of her heavy-duty, G-cup bra, then sent her thick, industrial-sized panties crashing to the floor.

And there she stood, in all her jiggly, gelatinous glory.

The mirror, she imagined, shuddered at the sight of her. Thighs as thick as tree stumps, breasts like two lumpy, overfilled sacks of flour, a behind that looked as though it should have been left there, and not one, not two, but three layers of squishy stomach sneered back at her, all screaming the same word: FAT.

Fat.

You’re too fat.

Too damn fat.

FatFatFATfat, too damn FAAAAAAAATTTT!!!

Olga screwed up her face in anguish; she clapped her hands over her ears. And then, instinctively, she started to move. Slowly, she raised her arms above her head, forming a near-perfect circle. Extending her right leg out in front of her, she pointed her thick, sausage-like toes and began tapping them rhythmically in a perky piqué.

Tap, tap, tap went her foot against the rough wooden floor.

"Fat, fat, fat!" cried the voices from the mirror. But they sounded somewhat softer now.

Encouraged, Olga switched positions, leaning heavily on her right leg while bringing the left one out behind her in an arabesque. The old wooden floorboards creaked in protest at the task of supporting her weight.

Fat...fat...

The F-Word was fading, its power drowned out by Olga’s delight in the dance.

Quickly, she launched into one of her old routines, leaping around the bedroom with renewed vigor, her naked body bouncing and undulating with unrestrained glee as the voices slipped back into submission, banished by the ballet.

All the voices, that is, except for one.

"My god, you’re so FAT," someone snorted from the shadows.

With one oversized leg poised in the air, Olga stood stock-still; she turned towards the doorway of her bedroom – and found herself facing the lithe, well- defined figure of her older sister, Katya.

It’s amazing you haven’t made a giant hole in the floor, jumping up and down like that, Katya muttered nastily, casting her shrewd green eyes over the spot where Olga balanced, bare-assed and embarrassed. Scowling, she ran her hand along the wall until she found the light switch; with a quick flick of her fingers, the delicate radiance of moonglow was replaced by the harsh brightness of the lone incandescent light bulb that hung suspended from the ceiling.

Slinking into the bedroom uninvited, Katya closed in on her sister. She stood before Olga, shaking her head from side to side, wearing an expression of utmost disgust – and not much else. Clinging to her phenomenal form was a leopard-print minidress that left little to the imagination; her long, lean legs were made even more lovely by a set of black fishnet stockings and a killer pair of silver sequined, sky-high heels. Her lush blonde hair, which was made even blonder with the help of hair dye, cascaded down her back in luxurious waves, framing a strikingly pretty face. A face that looked very much like Olga’s. Minus the double chin, of course.

If Papa could see you now, he’d roll over in his grave, Katya snickered cattily, her lips parting to reveal a cruel smile.

"If Papa could see me, he wouldn’t be in his grave."

Katya frowned, trying to work that one out, then decided it wasn’t worth wasting valuable insult time on. All that money he spent on ballet things...tutus…toe shoes…all for a fat little pig like you, she continued, shaking her head regretfully. "And when I think of what we could have bought…"

"What, like a couple new strips of fabric for you to make those hooker – whoops, I mean stripper – costumes you strut around in while you’re doing your ‘performances’?"

My title is ‘exotic dancer and escort,’ Katya insisted, sticking her chin out stubbornly.

It was Olga’s turn to shake her head, an action that she accentuated with a disapproving ‘tsk, tsk’ noise. And to think that Papa wasted all that money on ballet things for a pathetic little whore like you.

"At least someone actually wants to sleep with me, Katya retorted harshly. Which is a whole lot more than you could ever say, Fatso. And besides, I won’t have to work at The Honey Pot for too much longer. Not if everything goes according to plan with Jimmy."

Who’s Jimmy? Your new pimp?

Ha, ha, said Katya sarcastically. Poor little piggy, you try so hard to be funny when really, you’re just sad. No, Jimmy doesn’t work at The Honey Pot, even though I did meet him there. In fact, she continued smugly. "Jimmy doesn’t have to work at all. He’s the mayor’s son."

The mayor of Manhattan?

No, the mayor of Montana, Katya replied, rolling her eyes. "Of course, the mayor of Manhattan! And I’m going to be Mrs. Mayor. Well, Mrs. Mayor Junior, anyway."

No, you’re not.

Katya snorted derisively. "That’s how much you know. Jimmy’s totally nuts about me. He takes me everywhere. All the hottest clubs, the most expensive restaurants. It’s like he wants to make sure that the whole city sees us together! I’m definitely going to be Mrs. Mayor Junior."

You can’t be Mrs. Mayor Junior unless Jimmy becomes the mayor while his father still holds the position. Which is impossible.

Well, after his father dies, then. When Jimmy becomes mayor, I’ll be Mrs. Mayor. That’s even better.

Olga didn’t bother to stifle her laughter. "Just because he’s the mayor’s son doesn’t mean that he’ll automatically become the mayor one day. It’s not a hereditary title, like ‘King of England.’ "

Whatever, Katya retorted, waving away her sister’s logic with one heavily-jeweled hand. Costume jewelry, of course. Jimmy may not be a king, but he’s got more than enough money to let me live like a queen.

You’d marry him just for his money? Olga asked, feeling slightly sick.

"Oh no, not just for his money," Katya replied emphatically.

Glad to hear it.

Also his yacht, his antique oil paintings, his private jet... She began counting the assets off on her fingers. ...His duplex on Park Avenue, his mansion in the Hamptons, his Rolls, his Bentley and his Aston Martin...

But what about love? Olga asked.

Nobody marries for love, Katya replied callously. Nobody smart anyway.

Mama did, said Olga softly.

And look where she ended up. Katya pressed her lips together resolutely. "Six feet under. That’s what happens when you marry a man who can’t manage his money, who can barely support himself, no less a wife and two children. That’s not going to happen to me. She turned on her impossibly high heels, heading for the door. I’m going to make something of my life, she called over her artificially-tanned shoulder. Don’t wait up."

I never do! Olga yelled after her. What’s the point of waiting up for someone who never bothers to spend the night at home? I bet you haven’t slept in your own bed since you climbed out of the cradle!

The door slammed shut in reply.

Olga stood in the center of the room, wearing a sour expression. She knew her sister was never going to win any awards for class, but never in a million years would she have thought that Katya would sink so low as to marry for money. Or, to dance naked (and God only knew what else) for a price. Or, to bad-mouth their parents. But since the death of her mother and father, Katya had changed.

Once upon a time, she had been the sweetest, most beautiful girl in Kotatchka – the tiny, rural Russian village where the girls had grown up. Life had been lovely in Kotatchka. The Dolovich family had had a beautiful house on a large plot of land; the girls’ father, Matvey, was a well-respected doctor in the community, and had always been able to provide his wife and daughters with whatever they wanted – including their own ballet academy.

Built as a wedding present for his beautiful bride, Svetlana – who, in her youth, had studied at the famous Vaganova Ballet Academy in St. Petersburg – the Dolovich School of Dance was a beloved beacon of culture in an otherwise isolated community. Svetlana had poured her heart into it, ensuring that each person who passed through the doors of her dance school received the most rigorous instruction imaginable – and her daughters were no exception. At their mother’s insistence, the girls had begun doing demi pliés while still in diapers; their first steps had been taken from first position. They spent so much time at the ballet barre that they had turned into dance drunkards. And, as hour after hour of practice passed, their talents flourished. For Katya, it had been easy. Like the girls’ mother, she was tall, slender, graceful – a natural ballerina. For Olga…not so much. Short, squat, and stocky, Olga took after her father’s side of the family; she wasn’t built for ballet. But, unlike her older sister, she had inherited Svetlana’s passion for pointe work. Whereas Katya simply enjoyed the act of dancing, Olga was in love with it. And, with her mother’s kind words of encouragement, as well as her sister’s support, she blossomed into an accomplished artist. Year after happy year was spent up on her toes, at the top of the world.

And then, the accident happened.

One day, while leading a particularly vigorous dance class, Svetlana collapsed. Shrieks of hysteria filled the air as her students crowded around her, rushing to her assistance. As a group, they lifted her to her feet, attempting to steady her – but it was no use. Her right leg seemed incapable of supporting her; it sagged feebly under the weight of her small, thin body, making her fall to the floor. Her right arm lolled

Reviews for Fat Ballet

[roses7184_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Ballet. Lithe men and women flitting across the stage. Beautiful costumes and music. Everyone stick thin, especially the prima ballerina. There's a stigma that comes with professional ballet, and it's one that haunts our poor protagonist. See, Olga isn't exactly what you'd call thin. For that matter, she's the exact opposite. Olga's world revolves around the dreaded "F-word", and her shame over the way others view her. What do you do when you have a ton of passion and talent for ballet, but aren't given the body to match? According to T.R. Whittier's light-hearted story, you make your own way.

Fat Ballet is definitely best described as light-hearted. It deals with a lot of hot button topics, but it does it in a way that is adorable and funny. Olga is fat. Harold is weak. Fiona is wheel-chair bound. Yet none of these things defines who they are, or what they love. It was nice to see a story that took characters with characteristics that are normally considered taboo to discuss, and put them out there in a situation where they could shine. I loved watching Harold pull Olga out of her shell. Loved seeing her in the spotlight. The word "fat" is always used in such a negative way. I enjoyed the fact that Fat Ballet was trying to embrace that, and change it.

Overall, this story was a quick and rather fun read. I think where it fell short was simply the length. No pun intended. Truly, if there had been more time to dive into Olga's background, and her relationship with her new found friends, it would have been an even better experience. As it stands, this book flies by. This calls for a bit of insta-love, some very quick reconciliations, and a bit of suspended disbelief. Still, if you take it for the ride that it is, this book is a great way to spend an hour or so.

Are you looking for something outside of the norm? Something that embraces passion and talent, despite the outer wrappings of the people it deals with? This is a book for you. Happy reading!