Gone Dancin’

Not me, but the char­ac­ters in a short piece I’m work­ing on.

The cab dropped them off at Hol­la’s, the night­club’s name writ­ten in white and blue neon on the build­ing’s side. Before they even got in the door they could hear the thump-thump-thump heart­beat of the music pound­ing through the walls and win­dows. Inside the drinks were two-for-one, and the DJ–a woman with a pate shaved down to downy stub­ble, huge black sun­glass­es, and the red­dest lips Peter had ever seen–played tech­no jams that thud­ded like jun­gle drums, call­ing every­one to the dance floor. The club smelled of per­fume and sweat, pheromones and spilled beer.

The beat got to him, got into him, and he let him­self be dragged by the hand to the black-and-white chess­board dance­floor. Ellen was a lit­tle awk­ward at the start–he won­dered how long it’d been since she’d been out dancing–but as the night wore on she found her groove. She pulled her hair free of her pony­tail and shook her head, hard, in time with the pulse of bass and drums. Her hair became a mane, and she was a wild ani­mal, hips shak­ing, hands in the air like she just did­n’t care.

At one point, Peter remem­bered sit­ting at a table with Ellen and a cou­ple they’d just met, a blond col­lege kid with an unlit smoke hang­ing out of the cor­ner of his mouth and a dark-haired girl with a low-cut top and enor­mous breasts held in check by some com­bi­na­tion of good for­tune, mag­ic, and an archi­tec­tur­al mar­vel of a brassiere. He could feel sweat trick­ling down his ribcage, down the back of his neck. He picked up his bot­tle of Bud­weis­er and pressed it to his fore­head, and sighed at the chill. His mus­cles ached and he could­n’t seem to stop smiling. 

So does it paint a pic­ture? I sure hope so…

On the MP3 play­er: RV by Faith No More…

Would any­body tell me if I was get­tin’ stupider?