It was such a lark. I wasn't supposed to be there. I should have been sleeping. And you, you probably weren't planning on being there that night, which was not your usual night, but there you found yourself, a little drunk and happy to be dancing with one of the beautiful girls who sometimes worked behind the bar, probably on those nights that is your regular night, and you smiled at her face in the dark while you danced. You were hoping for something more with her, always hoping, and your pain made you feel a hundred pounds heavier, but you still tried because there was something about her, she just seemed so far away and brilliant and being close to her made you feel like you could catch the moon.
And then she left, like an eclipse, and there I was.
And instead of chasing stars and heavenly bodies, you felt like a mountain being blasted through for a tunnel, and I smashed you.
And I didn't even know. I was alone, trying to pretend I wasn't lonely, but even in that room of people all smiles I was in my head, in my own world, completely out of place and something about that appealed to you in a completely different way than the way she did, and you moved towards me, hoping above all else that I wouldn't drift off.
And we danced.
I'll interject here that my legs hurt for days.
You'll smile at me and say, mine did too, darling.
I wouldn't take any of it back though, I'll counter.
Of course not, then we wouldn't be here, you'll say.
So we danced.
And your body became a figure I was aware of, like walking through a room you know better than any, a bedroom, maybe, in which you could wander through it in the dark and you wouldn't fall, because your body could feel the room, remember the steps to take to avoid the furniture; that's what it was like to be next to you. I had no idea what your face looked like because of the dark, but in the dark your limbs and body were well known to me, as a familiar room in the night would be.
And for some reason, as soon as you engaged in dancing with me, the world fell away. I ceased to be part of the eternal flow of observations, thoughts, endless nuancing, excessive questioning and rampant worrying. I simply existed, without strategic manipulations of myself (the constant adjusting of my physical body is a tic of my thoughts). I was the way that I sometimes am when doing the things I love most. And you were still a stranger at that point.
Time flew by. It's a cliche, the best we can employ, for it really did whoosh around. The other day, well before dusk a flock of birds raced over the dome in the sky; they dived crazily and swooped ominously, and I was with a friend and we tried to figure out what sort of birds they might have been, until we got closer and realized they were bats, and those bats swooping around in a circle, that is what it was like to dance with you. Mesmerizing, I think I will say.
You'll laugh at me then, as the people across from us coo with delight, and your heart will swell a little and maybe you'll add your side of the story, that my face was like a carousel and I spun you around.
I'll continue, that finally, sometime after we began dancing, we arrived at the bar with merely a gesture of complete understanding, no difficulties, no issues, no concerns for disregarding something else, we both wanted a moment to size up our dancing partner's intellect and tastes before carrying on with our dancing.
We introduced ourselves and from my friend's point of view, we stood at the bar together, a mix of two long lost friends and also as two forces pushing wildly against each other. The bar felt us, it found us difficult to look away from, we were colliding and they all wanted to see the collision.
A drink was consumed. We were sweaty, thirsty, unapologetic.
I asked you a question, you asked me a question. We liked the answers. Your face twisted in puzzlement and your finger pointed at me, okay, you said, and I'll chuckle when I tell this, like it is the funniest thing anyone has ever said to me, because at the moment, really it was, and you said the word dealbreaker, in such a way that I understood the context of your meaning immediately and answered, yeah? in such a way that you knew I was ready for the challenge of your coda, that I could take any arrow you plunged in my direction and save it from falling into an empty field. You asked, firefly? in a tentative voice, because it really is a dealbreaker for you, no joke. And my face cracked instantly into a smile, which you say blasted another tunnel into your mountain, and I said, I love firefly!
Oh, then, I'll say, and you'll nod, I tried to make you understand that being a giant (relatively speaking) made us so powerful, and to prove it I held your arm out and we blocked the aisle with our arms outstretched and you grinned at me like we were two kindergartners who were having the best time doing nothing.
After that, we danced some more.
There was nothing left to say. We knew each other already, like two old friends, like two pieces of a shoelace pulled together to begin the lacing. We pressed against each other and knew each other. Collision. Not epic, perhaps, that epic one being so deep it still resonates inside me, like a pulse, but a collision nonetheless.
We danced so close that I could not dance and be that close to you, and our limbs tangled and my feet found yours instead of the floor so many times that I got a little self conscious and the spell was almost broken but you somehow managed to reassure me in a tone genuine enough that I ceased worrying and went back to that complete black abyss of nothing and just existing with pleasure.
The couple across the table might get a little nervous then, sensing the dramatic tone in my voice, seeing you lean in, perhaps you'll nuzzle the crook of my neck, it will make them uncomfortable how very close and delighted and able to share ourselves like this with them, so completely, so easily. This is the kind of behavior most couples reserve for their bedroom, they might think nervously, her twisting her napkin around her knuckles under the table top and him squeezing his wife's knee in the hopes that she is paying attention to how to treat him, how all men want to be treated, really how every one wants to be treated.
As if he/they/she/it/them are the center of the universe and nothing else exists.
we pretend this is false and unrealistic and unfair and yet we secretly crave that level of being known so completely that we are the only thing that exists for them, worth hearing every word, seeing every gesture, being in a sixth dimensional correspondence with.
I'll say, remember how we danced?
And you, hanging on my every word, delighted that I still remember, pleased that I smile and not just any smile, but a wicked one, the one where my eyes narrow and my lips pucker slightly, and you'll say, Yes, I remember, with the breath falling out of your mouth on the last syllable.
And somehow, even though it seems impossible, I will also be feeling that I am the only eyes in your universe, that I exist solely to languish in your presence, like a project, like an enjoyable venture, like a cross section of the most fascinating creature ever to be discovered, you will feel relished and enjoyed.
Then my friend broke the spell, he stepped in and time resumed, the clock wound itself backwards then forward to the present, reality reeled itself into focus, the room turned into a solid mass, where everyone had disappeared from, where the only people left were us, my friend, and the people paid to be there, it seemed the party I was part of managed to leave without my noticing. Ten people I'd interacted with that night became ghosts and slithered away while we danced, which is impossible to consider that I did not take any notice of their exit.
The couple will relax a little then, their shoulders will melt, their faces will slacken and a sense of relief will come over their faces, relief they didn't know they were waiting for, the tension over, the panic subsiding. You'll attest to the fact that I think incessantly, even though you try hard to create silence for me and many times have, it is hard, I am a tough case of overworking brain, or as David Caref (who has become an old man already, even though he is just a year older than me and I was shocked, just absolutely surprised to see that he is unrecognizable as the Adonis he once was, when I was in love with him and he was my moon and I was compelled by him and I managed to get him close up and I felt like I had the moon in my hand) said once, but not in the appreciative manner you'll do, "you think too much (which somehow struck through me like a sword even then, when I was sixteen and he was my everything, I knew it was wrong for him to say that, that it was wrong for him to declare that in that tone)."
And then you took my number, and again, it wasn't hard, not the way anything else with a girl has been hard, and that will be the reason it takes you a while, the reason it took me a while, for the ease to sink in, to bubble to the surface as a bubble of air will sometimes do, it mounds the water and takes on the light for a second before it pops into obscurity, with a splatter of the water across its surface and a motion that looks to the eye like the snapping of a twig.
And that, we'll declare, is the story of the night we met.
