When The Curtains Fall

There is a dangerous assumption we make about talented people: that because someone is exceptional at what they do, they must also be exceptional in who they are. I know this because I made that assumption myself.

I’ve been thinking about this experience for a while, and I think the reason it has stayed with me is because it wasn’t one of those situations where I met somebody and immediately knew something was off. It was actually the opposite. There was a genuine connection, a lot of good moments, a lot of growth, a lot of work, and a lot of trust before anything ever really started to fall apart. That’s what makes stories like this complicated. Sometimes the person who ultimately teaches you a hard lesson is also somebody who gave you some really beautiful experiences along the way.

I’m not writing this to expose anybody, which is why I’m not naming names. This is really about my experience and what I learned from it. Because when you get close enough to somebody to see the person behind the résumé, behind the stage, behind the accomplishments, you sometimes learn that the person you thought you knew and the person they actually are aren’t always the same thing.

Act I: The Ascent

I met him years ago when I was training at Brickhouse NYC and was also a part of Generation X. He came in for a guest session and the freestyle portion, and right away, I noticed that we had a connection. We talked easily, there was chemistry in the conversation, and there was just something about his confidence that made me want to learn more about him [I had no idea of what he’d accomplished at this point]. We stayed in contact after that, although we only really hung out once before the pandemic in a group setting.

Then 2020 happened, and everything changed.

That summer, I organized a major protest, and he and his brother played a significant role in helping me bring it to life. They helped with the sound and the setup, and he was one of the only people from the community with his level of visibility who actually showed up to support what I was trying to do. And for me, that mattered because he wasn’t showing up for me; he was showing up for the message. At a time when I was watching a lot of people in the community stay on the sidelines, his willingness to be there stood out.

From there, our bond really started to develop. We talked more, spent more time together, worked on things together, and eventually became very close. Majority of our conversations were about life and growth and who we wanted to become, and he would tell me about his own experience of coming into the industry so young. He had gone on the road professionally almost immediately after high school, and he would often tell me that because of that, he didn’t get some of the same opportunities to figure himself out that I had gotten by going to college and experiencing that transition into adulthood in a different way. I didn’t think I was saving him, and I didn’t think it was my responsibility to make him into anything, but I genuinely believed that our connection was bringing out something different in both of us.

There was a gray area between us, but I want to be really clear about something because I think this is an important part of the story: I was never unclear about where I stood. I’m an openly gay man, and there were certain conversations and certain behaviors between us that felt much more intimate than what I would consider a typical platonic friendship. I told him that. I told him more than once. I was very intentional about making it clear that I was not looking for a romance or sex with him, because I didn’t want to create expectations or have him believe I was sitting around waiting for our bond to develop into something else.

So while there was a gray area, I wasn’t trying to create it. I was actually trying to make the boundaries clear. The problem was that his words and his actions didn’t always seem to exist in the same place. He would say one thing about how he viewed our bond, but then there would be conversations, behaviors, and questionable moments that made me question why the relationship felt so much complicated than it needed to be.

Still, there was so much good shit happening at the same time that it was easy to stay focused on that. We became a solid team - I was helping him with business and creative projects, we were coming up with ideas, and we were actually getting shit done. The cherry on top [for me] was that we were also generating income - one of my personal driving forces.

Then my mother passed away in July of 2020, and that changed the depth of the bond even more. I was grieving in New York without my family around me, and he was one of the people who tried to be there for me. That support meant something because I was in a very vulnerable place, and naturally, when someone shows up for you during a period like that, it can create a bond that feels almost impossible to separate from the grief itself.

Eventually, though, we fell out. There was a situation around my birthday, I was still very much in the middle of grieving, and plans that I thought were going to be one thing suddenly became something else. I wasn’t in the emotional space for it, him, or anyone really - and the conversation escalated. I said some things I probably wouldn’t say today, and we stopped talking.

Years later, I saw him dancing at the Super Bowl, and I remember thinking, You know what? I need to reach out. Not because I was expecting anything from him, but because I wanted to apologize for my part in how things ended. I also wanted to let him know he did his biggest one on National TV! My mother had just died, I wasn’t in the best headspace, and even though our bond had become complicated, he had still tried to show up for me. I also knew I needed to work on myself, go to therapy — become a better person, who wasn’t so emotionally reactive & mean in moments of conflict.

So I reached out, he received it well, and we started talking again. And honestly, it felt like something was being reopened. By then, enough time had passed that I felt like there had been growth on both sides. His communication seemed different. He seemed more direct, more emotionally aware, and I thought maybe the time apart had actually done something for him. We decided to leave the past where it was and reconnect, and this time the bond became even deeper.

That was the ascent. I thought I was watching somebody grow into himself. I didn’t realize I was also getting closer to the version of him I would eventually have to get far away from.

Act II: The Cracks

The cracks didn’t come in some dramatic, obvious way. They came through little things that, at the time, were easy to explain away. I started noticing that when I was around certain people in his life, the energy was always weird. I’m an introvert, and I’ve always been very clear about the fact that just because somebody I’m close to is friends with someone doesn’t mean I’m automatically friends with that person - I need to get to know people for myself. He was much more of a person who wanted all of his worlds to merge, and I could tell that my approach was different from his.

But over time, I started feeling like there were conversations happening about me that I wasn’t a part of. Nobody was necessarily saying anything directly, but the body language, the energy, the way certain people interacted with me—it just felt like I was walking into a room where some weird shit was being discussed. And that was strange because I hadn’t really done anything to these people. Most of them didn’t know me personally. But what was also VERY interesting was that I would always ask him why he never invited me to settings where I could get to actually know them — and there were always different reasons.

I remember eventually giving him a written list of examples of the things he did that I felt created mixed signals because I didn’t want to just make some blanket statement and accuse him of confusing me. I wanted to be specific. I wanted him to understand exactly what I was talking about. He could understand some of it, and other parts he didn’t necessarily agree with, but even then, I pushed forward - with the business in mind. And I think that’s important because when people hear stories like this, they sometimes assume the person must have ignored some giant red flag from day one. That’s not what happened. The difficult part was that the red flags were mixed in with a lot of genuinely good experiences. There was real friendship there. There was real motion. There was real business. There was real history. And when something is good in some areas and unhealthy in others, it becomes much harder to decide what you’re actually looking at.

One of the moments that really started shifting things for me happened after one of my productions, when we went out afterward and I began noticing just how strange the energy was between him, some of the people around him, and me. There was another woman who had been woven in and out of this entire story, and I could feel that there was something happening beneath the surface that I didn’t fully understand. I didn’t know it yet, but that dynamic was going to become a very important part of the story.

Around this same time, our business relationship had become very real. We were working on an industry-style intensive, and eventually we decided to take what we had built in New York and bring it to Atlanta. To me, this was a business trip. We were going to teach, create content, promote the classes, build relationships, make money and try to bridge the gap between the Atlanta and New York dance communities.

And then almost immediately, everything started going downhill.

A class was canceled because there weren’t enough sign-ups. The other classes weren’t doing well. The intensive wasn’t filling up. I immediately started looking at the situation through my producer brain, thinking about the money, the logistics, the promotion, and how we could salvage what was happening. But at the same time, I was dealing with things internally that I hadn’t really talked about. Being back in Atlanta brought up some very personal memories for me, because I’ve experienced a brief period of homelessness there before. So being back in that environment, exhausted and spending hours driving around before we could even get settled, was triggering things in me that I wasn’t prepared to deal with while I was simultaneously trying to hold together a business venture.

But I kept pushing. Because that’s what I do.

And even before we got to Atlanta, there had been a lot of conversation about the Airbnb we were staying in because it had a jacuzzi. Now, I know somebody reading this might immediately hear “jacuzzi” and assume there was something sexual about the situation, but that honestly wasn’t where my mind was at all.

I had actually never been in a jacuzzi before.

I know that probably sounds crazy to some people, but I’m from a very small town in NC. There are a lot of things that people who grew up in bigger cities or different environments might consider completely normal that I simply didn’t grow up around. And I had actually been excited about the jacuzzi for the most innocent reason: I had been to Costa Rica for my birthday, and the villa we stayed in had a hot tub that wasn’t even working. So when I heard that this Airbnb had one, I was genuinely excited to finally experience it.

To me, the jacuzzi was about relaxing after a failed day. We had been traveling, I had been the only person driving, I was exhausted, the classes were a flop, and I had already been dealing with my own personal triggers. I thought we were going to get in, have some drank, smoke, decompress, and just let the day go. That’s exactly what I thought was happening.

So we got in, started talking, and eventually the conversation became emotional. He told me how much he appreciated everything I had done for him, and then he brought up a personal experience he’d told me about before and explained how he felt like being on this trip with me was helping him work through something connected to that experience.

And that was the moment everything clicked.

Because I realized that what I thought this trip was about and what it seemed to mean to him were two completely different things.

I thought we were there to build something & make money And suddenly, I realized that I may have been participating in somebody else’s personal journey without ever actually agreeing to be part of it. There was a strong internal shift that I’ll honestly never forget.

That realization hit me hard because there was no part of my mind that had entered that jacuzzi thinking, Oh, this is some kind of sexual or romantic moment. That simply wasn’t where I was. I was thinking about taking a break after a long day and enjoying a jacuzzi for the first time in my life country ass life! I was 100% prepared to get in that bitch by myself, even if it were only for 5 minutes!

But by the time that conversation ended, I knew I needed to get out. We weren’t even there for about 15 minutes before things took a sharp turn

Something in me knew our business relationship [and maybe even friendship] was about to be over.

The next day, the intensive happened, and essentially nobody showed up. At that point, there was no more pretending that the trip had gone the way we planned. But more than that, I couldn’t unsee what I had realized the night before. I was over it, disappointed, and pretty disgusted & ready to go back to NYC.

The trip was the crack that finally became a break.

Act III: The Drop

The flight back to New York was silent. We sat next to each other, but we didn’t speak. When we landed, his mother picked us up, and she could tell something was wrong, but I wasn’t ready to talk . I just wanted to get home and get some distance. I always have tremendous respect for his mother, and didn’t want to disrespect her in anyway bringing drama in her car.

But the story didn’t end in Atlanta.

It got worse afterward.

When we eventually sat down to talk about the trip, I learned that the story he had allowed other people to hear about our disagreements was not the story I knew to be true. He told me that people had come to him asking how the trip went, and he had allowed them to believe that I had gone to Atlanta with romantic intentions and that our disagreements had something to do with those intentions not being reciprocated.

And I remember thinking [and then eventually saying]

Wait. Time out, WTF? I

Because he knew that wasn’t true. It was the furthest thing from truth.

I had been extremely intentional with him from the beginning about where I stood. I had told him I wasn’t looking or interested in going there with him . I had also told him when his actions were questionable, and lastly he knew exactly why we were arguing in Atlanta.

For me, the problem wasn’t even just that somebody had misunderstood the situation. The problem was that he knew the story wasn’t true and chose not to correct it. He knew EXACTLY how that narrative could/would change people’s perspective of me, yet basically said “oh well”.

And when you work in the same industry, that’s not a small thing. A story can become a reputation very quickly, especially in a community where everybody knows everybody. He offered to go back and “clear it up”, but by then I felt like the damage had already been done. The story had already been told, people had already formed their opinions, and I wasn’t interested in trying to manage the aftermath of some shit I never created. The betrayal was thick, and I couldn’t shake the deep rooted disgust I felt.

I eventually had a conversation with the woman who had been part of this story from the beginning because I wanted to hear her experience for myself. And that conversation was probably the final piece of the puzzle. She told me that she had always been confused about me. She noticed how private he was whenever I called. She noticed that he kept our relationship separate from certain parts of his life. She had questioned him about it, and he had always explained me away as someone who was simply helping him with his business and his endeavors.

Meanwhile, I had been hearing a completely different story about her. I had been told about their relationship was in a-lot of ways holding him back and sitting there listening to her tell me her experience, it became very clear that there were different versions of the truth being presented to different people.

That was the moment I knew I had to walk away.

Not because I now hated him. Not because I wanted revenge. And honestly, not even because I suddenly believed that everything we had experienced/created was all of a sudden “fake”.

I just knew this was not a safe person to have around me - spiritually. And that trumps everything in my world.

He has danced for some of the biggest artists in the world. He’s been on major stages and done things that a lot of dancers dream about doing. And I think that was part of my own lesson: I had confused someone’s greatness as a performer with their greatness as a person [particularly their character, and morals & values]

We do this all the time.

We see somebody with the big résumé, the big stages, the big names, and we automatically assume that the person behind all of that must be equally impressive.

But talent and character are two different things

Someone can be extraordinary at their craft and still be emotionally stunted. Someone can command a stage and still not know who they are when the stage disappears. Someone can be celebrated professionally and still have a lot of work to do privately.

And I think that’s where I eventually found some empathy for him. Because underneath all of the manipulation, the mixed messages, and the different stories, I do believe there was a person who was genuinely struggling to understand himself. He was constantly looking for deeper answers ; through spirituality, sound, crystals, readings, psychedelics, all kinds of shit / and I think a part of him really wanted to understand who he was, on a deeper level.

But you can’t find yourself by constantly performing different versions of yourself for different people. At some point, you have to be honest with yourself first.

And that was a lesson I had to learn too.

Looking back, Atlanta wasn’t really the beginning of the end. It was the moment I couldn’t ignore everything that had been building underneath the surface. The trip was the sharp drop, but the roller coaster had been climbing for years. There was the first meeting, the protest, the friendship, my mother’s death, the falling out, the reconnection, the business partnership, the intimacy, the mixed signals, the strange energy, the questions I couldn’t answer, and all the moments where something didn’t feel right but I kept finding reasons to explain it away.

And maybe that’s the part of this story that matters most to me now.

I don’t think the lesson is simply, “Don’t trust people.”

That’s too easy.

The lesson is to trust yourself sooner.

Don’t confuse someone’s potential with their character. Don’t confuse a résumé with integrity. Don’t assume that because someone has accomplished extraordinary things, they are automatically extraordinary behind closed doors.

And when something feels off, you don’t always need a smoking gun before you’re allowed to acknowledge it.

Sometimes you know.

Sometimes your body knows before your brain has the language for it.

Sometimes the energy in a room tells you something that the person standing in front of you never will.

And sometimes you have to accept that you can genuinely care about someone, believe in them, admire their talent, and still decide that they no longer belong in your life.

I walked away from that experience with less certainty about him, but a lot more certainty about myself.

I learned that I can believe in somebody without making their growth my responsibility. I can admire talent without worshipping it. I can care about somebody without needing to save them. And I can walk away without turning somebody into a villain just because they disappointed me.

Because at the end of the day, this story isn’t really about a dancer who disappointed me.

It’s about the moment I stopped confusing the person I hoped someone would become with the person they were actually showing me.

The curtain eventually falls on every performance. And when it does, the résumé doesn’t matter. The applause doesn’t matter. The stage doesn’t matter.

What matters is who you are when nobody is watching.