<div style="text-align: center"><span style="font-family: 'Georgia'"><span style="font-size: 18px">
<div class="bbImageWrapper lazyload js-lbImage" data-lb-caption-extra-html="" data-lb-sidebar-href="" data-single-image="1" data-src="/proxy.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Ffotos.fotoflexer.com%2F9824708fafab551f38e570aa372aac0c.jpg&amp;hash=32b2c3c5337bd738026d6201d50a3f2c" title="9824708fafab551f38e570aa372aac0c.jpg">
<img alt="9824708fafab551f38e570aa372aac0c.jpg" class="bbImage lazyload" data-src="/proxy.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Ffotos.fotoflexer.com%2F9824708fafab551f38e570aa372aac0c.jpg&amp;hash=32b2c3c5337bd738026d6201d50a3f2c" data-url="http://fotos.fotoflexer.com/9824708fafab551f38e570aa372aac0c.jpg" data-zoom-target="1" height="" src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" style="" title="" width=""/>
<noscript><img alt="9824708fafab551f38e570aa372aac0c.jpg" class="bbImage" data-url="http://fotos.fotoflexer.com/9824708fafab551f38e570aa372aac0c.jpg" data-zoom-target="1" height="" src="/proxy.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Ffotos.fotoflexer.com%2F9824708fafab551f38e570aa372aac0c.jpg&amp;hash=32b2c3c5337bd738026d6201d50a3f2c" style="" title="" width=""/></noscript>
</div>
<br/>
</span></span>​</div><span style="font-family: 'Georgia'"><span style="font-size: 18px"><br/>
<br/>
While growing up in the inner city of Chicago afforded Elai the opportunity to interact with other people having a diverse ethnicity, not every one of his interactions ended up on a positive note. It was difficult to be the only white kid in a sea of black kids, especially in a tough neighborhood like his.  When he was in kindergarten, it was the first time Elai was bullied. <br/>
<br/>
A girl came up to me and out of nowhere just said "<i>You stupid and ugly. You don't even belong at this school, white boy!" </i><br/>
<br/>
At lunch, no one wanted to sit with him. He had no friends. In first grade, a third grader on his school bus hit him and yanked his hair because he claimed that Elai hit him with his umbrella on purpose. The kid picked up the umbrella and started hitting him with it, grabbed a fistful of his hair while the other kids cheered. <br/>
<br/>
They all laughed and jeered when the boy called him a<i> "dumb white honky."</i><br/>
<br/>
That was just one of the many names Elai was called during elementary school. The others were <i>albino, cracker, whitey, clorox, Casper the ghost, mayonnaise, snowman and marshmallow. </i>Elai was bullied, teased, pushed, punched almost relentlessly by a gang of kids. He was afraid to tell anyone about what was happening to him, because he was afraid that it would get worse. Elai knew that others could see that he was being bullied, but they refused to address or correct the students doing it to him. Elai started dreading going to school on Mondays. He didn't want to go to school, and started making up excuses that he was too sick to go. <br/>
<br/>
Elai was just as terrified of walking home from the bus stop by himself as he was arriving in the classroom for the day. By the time the sixth grade rolled around, Elai was in gym class in the intermediate wing of the same school. Unfortunately, the same neighborhood kids that bullied him on the elementary school wing were there with him in middle school. One day, he had to change into his gym clothes and he put his regular clothes in his bag to change into after in order to return to class. After gym was over, Elai entered the locker room and couldn't find his clothes where he left them. Elai asked the other boys if they had seen his clothes. They all said they didn't see anything, but they were laughing about it as they left the locker room for class.<br/>
<br/>
<i> "Good luck findin' your clothes, cracker!"</i> one of the boys yelled.<br/>
<br/>
Shaken and upset as the other boys left the locker room, Elai looked around and eventually found his clothes stuffed in the trash can.  They were soaking wet, but he had no choice but to get dressed in his wet attire and run down to the principal's office to call his Mom at work. His Mom raised hell with school administrators about the bullying when she had to take time off from work and come in for a conference meeting, and Elai admitted to her and the administrators that he was on the receiving end of the other students taunts as well as their fists on a daily basis. By that time, Elai had been taking dance classes which helped keep him focused, disciplined and his confidence elevated despite the constant bullying.<br/>
<br/>
But anger and frustration were two factors that were slowly building up inside the good-natured boy until he became a ticking time bomb. Elai was leaving the lunch line in the cafeteria with a tray full loaded with food, when a boy in the next class flipped his lunch tray onto his clothes and his brand new winter coat. Elai didn't run away from the confrontation this time, he went ballistic. A milling crowd of middle schoolers gathered around to watch the white boy get his ass kicked again, but Elai balled up his fist, ducking under the arm of the other boy and drove it upward in a quick yet infuriated arc. His fist slammed into the boy's chin, breaking his jaw and knocking out two of his teeth in the process.<br/>
<br/>
His bully fell to the ground totally knocked out with the second and third punches, until Elai was yanked off of the boy by one of the teachers assigned to the cafeteria. For fighting, he received an in school suspension of four days. It would have been an out of school suspension had Elai initiated the fight, but since he was provoked by the other child, the school administration was lenient. By the time Elai was in seventh grade, he had become someone that the other kids knew not to fuck with. He had earned some street credibility as well, and for the first time he found some friends in the group of African-Americans that showed him the respect he deserved, and he returned it in kind. <br/>
</span></span><br/><div style="text-align: center"><span style="font-family: 'Georgia'"><span style="font-size: 18px">================================<br/>
</span></span>​</div><span style="font-family: 'Georgia'"><span style="font-size: 18px">All Elai remembered was snapping in the changing room that day once he overheard the insult Asher made about his mother. Seeing red, his rage erupted faster than magma exploding from a volcano and just as destructive. His anger consumed all of the good qualities that encompassed who he was, fragments of emotion so delicate within his carefully ordered world. The next thing Elai knew, was that he threw a punch at Asher's smirking face. Unfortunately, the punch that connected wouldn't be the end of the altercation between the two dancers.</span></span><br/><div style="text-align: center">​</div><span style="font-family: 'Georgia'"><span style="font-size: 18px">When Elai turned to walk away, his shoulder was grabbed so violently, the strap on his leotard reached the point of no return. The seam on the fabric yielded to the force behind Asher's grasp, In a split second, all hell had broken loose in the changing room. His reflexes were quick, having learned to defend himself on the street and Elai instinctively raised his arm to deflect the fist headed towards his face. Receiving a glancing blow from Asher, Elai shook it off and sent his right fist across Asher's face. <br/>
<br/>
For a brief instant, Asher's eyes widened before he managed to use his leverage to knock Elai off balance by ramming into him. Elai tried to tilt his head back and slam it into his cheek but Asher threw him into a sloppy headlock as both men crashed together into the lockers.<br/>
<br/>
<b>"Is that all you got?!" </b>Elai growled, smirking infuriatingly at him as he rose, slipping into a fighter's stance. <br/>
<br/>
Asher seethed in fury and threw himself at Elai, clotheslining him at the last minute. Elai stumbled backward as he toppled over the bench behind him, slamming down to the carpeted floor with Asher on top of him. With a murderous gleam in his eyes, Asher wrapped his hands around his throat and started squeezing. Elai didn't quite know what happened in the few minutes after that, except that he was close to blacking out, with one of the company trainers pulling Asher off of him. <br/>
<br/>
Above him in the changing room stood a sea of worried faces swimming in his blurry vision. For several minutes, Elai struggled to catch his breath. His adrenaline infused blood humming in his veins so hard it sounded like a drum in his ears. There were two persons involved in the fistfight, but only one person that threw the first punch. That was Elai. He also had his turn to sit down and have a chat with the artistic director in his office. He was given a warning about his conduct, and advised to stay away from Asher.<br/>
<br/>
Elai did so without hesitation in order to avoid another angry confrontation from occurring. </span></span><br/><br/><div style="text-align: center"><span style="font-family: 'Georgia'"><span style="font-size: 18px">=========================================</span></span>​</div><span style="font-family: 'Georgia'"><span style="font-size: 18px"><br/>
Elai was relaxing and was involved in a deep conversation between members of the corps de ballet, and helping himself to the spinach dip and some vegetables at the hors d'oeuvres table when Asher left the main reception area with his current arm candy, Vivi, for the balcony outside. Elai didn't notice because he wasn't going to ruin his evening worrying about Asher Tarkova or whether he was still making a drunken ass of himself in front of the patrons and upper echelon of the ballet company.<br/>
<br/>
He was in fact, making certain he stayed far away from Asher, avoiding conversation directly with him basically. Besides, he had much more to think about that mattered. Elai was the danseur etoile tomorrow evening for the premiere of Giselle, and he remained sober and very much aware that he was in the spotlight with his ballerina, Karina, because they were the stars of the show. Elai put off a welcoming aura, that attracted those who enjoyed a positive presence. Not so for Asher Tarkova.<br/>
<br/>
By the time he returned to his group of friends, Asher was there spouting off again. It would have been nicer had his complement been sincere, but then it his comment turned into a velvet covered fisted insult. Elai lingered on the perimeter of the conversation this time, remaining silent for the most part because he was wolfing down spinach dip with the crudites. The comment that Asher made caused eyebrows to raise quizzically, and some of the dancers gave each other sideways glances of disbelief.<br/>
<br/>
Even they could see that the comment was being used to goad, and to bait Elai into knocking his head into the nearest wall. But it wasn't Elai that opened his mouth. It was Carlos, who was a bit of a company comedian, and although wasn't the best of them all as a dancer he was developing into a wonderful danseur. "I don't know about that, Asher. I might be able to snatch that role right out from under you. Better watch out!" he laughed, sipping his glass of champagne.<br/>
<br/>
The others laughed too at the diverted tension in the air. Elai turned and headed back to the table for another refill. <br/>
<br/>
Anger sure made him hungry.</span></span>