I sat in my car watching the minutes tick by, singing along to my radio, and pretending that I wasn’t nervous.  It’s difficult to say exactly where my nerves were coming from:  either the natural anxiety that comes from stepping out of your comfort zone or the personal disquiet in knowing that I was about to walk in to a dance studio full of preteen ballerinas.  “Just smile and act confident,” I coached myself as I stepped from the sanctuary of my Grand Prix.  “You confirmed the time of the class four times in the last hour.  You have just as much right to be here as anyone else.”

I walked down the back hall leading to the studio, holding tight to the straps of my book bag just to give my hands something to do.  To my great unease, the office to the studio was overcrowded and the mothers had spilled over into the hallway, so they were able to eye me the whole way.  I just nodded and gave a closed eyed smile, communicating that I was well aware of how out of place I seemed and felt the according sense of discomfort.

I walked into the office, already flushed with the embarrassment of having two dozen eyes fixed on me, most scanning my features with mild curiosity, while the more paranoid among them betrayed the obvious judgment flitting around behind their eyes.

“Oh, you must be Andrew!”  I looked up to see a younger woman with shoulder length black hair extending her hand toward me. I took her hand with a sheepish smile, taken aback by the fact that she knew my name at first glance.  I had only exchanged a handful of emails with someone named Nicole to narrow down the details of class registration.  How could she possibly be able to spot me without talking to me?

“This is the hip-hop instructor, Alicia,” the woman went on, presenting a girl no older than me, who was seized by a look of genuine excitement.  It was as this girl was shaking my already extended hand that the pieces fell together.

“Oh shit,” I thought.  “I’m the only–

“I was so excited when I saw that I would finally have a boy in class this year!” Alicia piped, finishing my thought.  “A lot of our styles are geared towards girls, but I’ll work with you to make them more–”  And instead of finishing the sentence, she puffed out her chest, furrowed her brow, and flexed; which I assumed was a charade for the word ‘masculine.’

“Can’t wait,” I said forcing a smile.

Sure enough, as the class got under way, out of twenty students, I proved to be the only with a y-chromosome.  A little more than a dozen of them were girls ranging from 12 to 18, who took turns staring at me like I was a unicorn.  Three were women somewhere between 30 and 45, eyeing me like I was a guy with mustache at a playground.  Then there was the redhead: petite with tattoos and fierce green eyes that settled on me like a cheetah scouting its prey.

This should be fun.