How could I begin to describe my friend Jodi? “With child,” at the moment. But her current state is just one particularly beautiful movement in a long, ascending staircase of creativity, one that always veers off onto unpredictable but fascinating paths.

When I first met Jodi, it was on a polished hardwood floor on a hot August day, in a dance studio where the air felt like a wet cotton ball. We were both starting seventh grade, though we went to separate schools. In our age group, several tap and jazz classes had been merged so that the graceful wheat (Jodi types) could be separated from the uncoordinated chaff (me types).

I remember feeling very self-conscious about my hair at the time, which I’d worn down to my waist since childhood but now seemed terribly out of fashion. As I stood in the corner, shy, gangly, and generally out of place, I watched Jodi’s reflection in the mirror and thought, “That girl has long hair, but it actually looks cool. She’s cool.”

Indeed, her bleached mane was half down, half tied up with chopsticks and pens, her ears punctured by a row of safety pins. Every class she proudly wore some combination of layered leotards and tank tops, fashioned in ways I didn’t know leotards could be worn.

It wasn’t just about her look, of course– it was the attitude that both fascinated and irritated me. She had great posture and a boisterous confidence. When she spoke with the cluster of good dancers she would throw back her head in a triumphant, full-mouthed laugh and then pause to pick at her face in the mirror.

When she danced she moved effortlessly, as if regular walking was just a pause between Pas de Bourrees. She was pure elegance. Of course, there was also a rumor that she had put rat poison in someone’s tuna at school.

It wasn’t until junior year at the Academy that we actually became friends and realized we were from neighboring planets. We had both been cast as jurors in 12 Angry Women—she as the complex, short-fused dictator and I as the humble but perceptive Russian. As we highlighted our playbooks and went over lines together after school, we developed an appreciation for each other’s bizarreness. She and I read the same books and liked similar music. We both had a warped sense of humor and treasured the little things others didn’t notice. She was the type of friend who gave an artistic vision to life I didn’t even know I was lacking.

After high school we attended the same university, gifted with a newfound liberty on a big campus. I took up photography as a hobby and she became my favorite (and only) model. I often underwent a religious experience when we skipped out of World Civ early, got high in her car and then drove around the back woods of North Tonawanda, or set up a photo shoot in some rundown apartment with an old mattress and easel. I even remember one time walking into her apartment, noticing a pungent smell and finding a dead crow boiling on the stove, whose bones Jodi said she would use for an art project. It was wonderful just to be out of class, doing what we felt gave life meaning. As time continued however, our vices took over, and the free range lifestyle turned into a cage.

Really, life in the early twenties was all about experimentation, which could end beautifully or tragically. Jodi and I struggled to be decent adults but usually succumbed to our worst selves. She worked full-time as a barista and student, but when we drove around she would often be in the throes of some wild and unpredictable substance. (It took her a while to graduate.) I worked forty hours a week as managing editor on the student newspaper, but would often skip my real classes to get in a drunken fight with my then-girlfriend, who was an actual drunk (I tried being a lez for a couple years). Jodi and I always had a penchant for the offbeat and had finally been given freedom to be ourselves, and it was so scary that we didn’t know how to handle it.

Now that we are older, I would like to say we are both “normal,” or at least “adults.” I have a full-time job with benefits, bay windows and a cat, so I’m not doing too bad. Jodi’s working on a new family member and a Ph.D. in American studies, so she has streamlined her goals as well. Yet, she has never lost that je ne sais quoi. (Coincidentally, in 2009 we made a French art video about her giving birth to a cat, which can be seen here.)

When Jodi and I got together for this photo shoot after significant time apart, it was like we remembered all the good, creative things we like about each other, without all the sludge. We are both more comfortable with who we are now, and even though we don’t have everything figured out, we at least know how to use our imaginations for good. As she and I approach 30, I am glad to have that crazy ballerina as a muse and a friend. She’s the kind of person who makes a writer want to write.