Fast-Dancing
Her and I, we sit at the bar. It’s past midnight already. Previous to now we were at an art show, and low and behold, after weeks of complaining of the complete lack of cute boys around town one appeared like a vision to my friend, far superior a piece of work than those that hung on the walls.
But here we sit in a booth at the bar, the bar she invited him to, alone, with our heads in our hands, watching the couple across the way with a bit of disdain as he slides his hand up her knee while she bites the straw in her cocktail. We sit, watching the couple on the dance floor. He has her by the waist and they sway back and forth, out of time to the bluegrass band, out of time in general. We sit here, noticing the two in the booth next to us, dressed to the nines, him in his zoot-suit and fedora, her in a rockabilly dress, so in tune with one another they’re beginning to look alike. We sit here, her and I, locked in a friendship we could both potentially call our most serious relationship in years.
And then she gasps. I spin around in time to see him bursting through the front door, the skin of his gentle face and rugged nakedness of his arms transitioning from the harsh pale lamppost light of the outside world to the warm bath of red which creeps into and out of the orifices of this bar. He spots her immediately and pushes his way through the crowd in a direct line from point A to point B. I can tell time has stopped for her. She tries to act unfrozen, but she’s frigid. His hand reaches out for her, and then- not pressed together, though not altogether separate, they’re on the dance floor, having a much better time than the other couple who, now juxtaposed, look award and syrupy. Arms flailing about, he’s what she’d later call a ‘crazy dancer’.
Strange how three minutes can be folded into the span of three hours like a taffy machine on the boardwalk, producing a large gummy goo of what you will later recall as ‘the best night ever’.
