It was dark. And the fluorescent lights on the ceiling were not on. Instead the lights that found its way into her eyes came from children dancing in hologram shadows to musical dance beats. As she moved to the computer generated rhythms, her dress, the one with the lace ribbons on it, flirted out among the crowd. It was made of spandex, velvet and lace and hung limply from the tips of her breasts, creating generous folds around her thighs that caressed them in ways only cloth knows.
The spotlight, however, was not on this girl in the purple velvet dress. It was on the drag queen in suspenders with the tallest cat-in-the-hat hat that all eyes were drawn to. His swinging arms and legs reminded her of dancing trees from Alice in Wonderland. The thought made her think that she could be a lost girl in a musical enchantment. The wonderland of musical ecstasy and flinging the body's muscles to the point of exhaustion and then beyond. The colors of the lights flashing and swinging in palpitating rhythm with the must. They were globules lollipops of color and sound.
Suspenders, wide swinging dresses, not those that Scarlet O'Hara wore, but ripped torn shredded remnants of Victoria hospitality throbbed with dangling braids and spiked hair, some of which was blue, orange and burgundy. White t-shirts hung limply on young boys' chests as they swayed to the music coiling and winding around itself like a wounded snake.
Some delighted in ingesting drugs of choice to get a full effect of the driving force of the music. Drugs that open the mind for some and close it for others. But she needed no outside influence to see the musical colors and hear their meanings. It was the total freedom, an abandonment of everything she was, everything she could be and living as an organism, not as an intellect or tool of society or religion. Her hips swinging, flinging her elbows into the unknown. Feeling the ache in her gut, screaming to stop the mad gyration, but the continuous frisk of her life force mingling into one with the beat of the music and blazing lights.
Face burning she ran outside into the snow and felt the cold in a new way, not with her standard predisposed dislike, but the cooling effect. Feeling the cold and yet, not feeling the cold. Outside the warehouse the air was so cold, so still. The sky was bare and offered no comfort, unlike the summer sky with its moist breath. She felt her skin tingle, the cells in her body reacting to the outside air, yet she felt no bitterness. It was refreshing and the silent night was contrasted with the savage activities in the building. It was the hot steamy voice of summer, reds, yellows and oranges of summer sun and the glimmering unknown of the ocean full of brightly colored fish.
Back inside the spinning rhythms of the music she felt unsatisfied. She felt the cold, or lack of coldness and the lights felt strange to her. She no longer felt the blood life of the beating music in her heart. The cold had penetrated her and she could not escape it.
The dark corners of the room provided no retreat from the hot sultry rhythms and her hair sent slow beads of sweat trickling down her neck, sending shivers up her back. She felt alone, alien and hostile. How could the short time outside change her entire being? She did not long to go back outside, she easily felt the cold on her skin and wet snow in her zippered combat boots. Even the place at the door, standing on the thin line separating the cold outside from the hot inside did not appeal to her. She wanted to leave, but the comfort of her car or the drive home gave no consolation. So she stayed where she was, malcontent, but without motivation to move, watching the shadows the tall cat-in-the-hat hat made in the moving lights and circling rhythms.
- myself circa 1996
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