Character Exercise 2

Who's There?

A professional dancer:
Gracefully she twirled, her four-and-a-half inch stilettos clicking on the wood flooring of the stage. She sat down, bending her neck backwards and arching her back, pointing her toe as she raised it into the air. Like a swan. Her elbow dug into the floor as she flipped herself onto her knees, crawling entrancingly in the low lights. The skirt she wore was short and white, barely covering the top quarter of thigh. She stood up, posing as a man’s hand stuck a five dollar bill in her thigh-high fishnet tights, caressing her leg as it retreated. She turned her back to him and strode away, tauntingly.
The cool metal of the pole welcomed her hands as they slid up and down, up and down. Reaching up, she took her hair out of its tight bun and let it loose. She shook her head, her hair falling in front of her face naughtily, hiding the sparkling makeup over her eyes. She spun around, her hair flying behind her with the movement, then continuing to whip around her shoulder when she stopped.
She had always wanted to be a ballerina. She used to watch the rich girls dance in the studio a few streets over, just to go home and practice the moves herself. Plié, pirouette, croisé, assemblé, avant. Those came in handy every once in a while. No matter how many people were disgusted at her for the ‘degradation’ she imposed on herself and her body, in her mind she was always a professional. She could make more men fall to their knees for her than any ballerina ever could, and she was proud of that. She was a dancer.

A clerk at an X-rated movie theater:
The ship was sinking. The ship was sinking, and Lois Lane was inside. She was shouting and shouting for her savior, Superman, but he was nowhere to be seen, or heard for that matter. The scene switches. Lex Luthor had just exposed Superman to a chunk of Kryptonite when a man toting a skimpily dressed hooker came in wanting a ticket.
“One ticket please,” he said.
“That’ll be five-fifty, sir,” Arthur replied, “Is she coming in with you?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’ll have to buy two. That’ll be eleven dollars, sir,” he informed the man.
“You mean I have to pay for her too?” he asked. He seemed to be getting angry. When Arthur nodded in reply, he shouted, “You mean to say, I have to pay five dollars and fifty cents for her on top of the one hundred fifty she’s getting for the night?”
“I’m sorry sir, but that’s the way it goes. Everyone pays five fifty, and your one hundred and fifty is really none of my business,” he said politely, even though he was getting impatient. He wanted to see what happens to Lois Lane. Personally, he didn’t like the bitch. She was whiny, and always got into trouble. It would almost be a good thing if she croaked, because then Superman wouldn’t have to worry about saving her ass every other day. He could save more people in the city. The man handed him a crisp twenty dollar bill, and stormed into the theatre. Plus, Clark Kent was always trying to get her attention, but only as Superman was he noticed by her. Pathetic.
He settled into his seat and continued reading.

A street child:
Anyone walking by on the busy sidewalk on any given morning would have seen him; a small, delicate figure sitting on the grey brick wall outside the bookstore. He wore dirt-covered jeans with gaping holes in the knees it was a wonder he kept warm at all. His grubby plaid button up cut off at the sleeves imitated that of his ‘father figure’, one of his mother’s friends, for he never really knew his real father.
Sometimes he sat on that wall on the busy street hoping that the father of his dreams would come. A man wearing a nice suit, shiny black shoes driving a new silver car, like the ones he saw coming out of the business office next door. In his dreams, his father would see him sitting there, and have pity, not knowing that he was his son. He would take him out to eat lunch, hot dogs from the stand across the street- his favorite. Upon telling the man that he had no father, the man would realize that he was his long lost son. They would embrace, and return home together to live happily ever after. They would go fishing, and his father might even buy him a dog for his 10th birthday.
Every day he waited, and every night he returned to the two-room apartment he and his mother lived in to fall asleep on the couch. Sometimes she’d remember to make him dinner, sometimes she’d be too caught up with the man she brought home that night to even realize he was in the same room. On those nights, he would pick up his blanket and walk into the bathroom, creating a warm nest of the cold, porcelain bathtub. He would turn on the faucet in the sink in hopes of drowning out the giggles and moans seeping under the door, and fall asleep to the sound of his stomach growling.