There is something about... oh, finish that sentence however, in a hundred million ways, baby, and you’ll be fine. You’ll get what I’m saying. But today, right *now* I’m talking about music, dancing, dancers, and memories like neon blue strobes, cool, cold, chilling me beneath the fine, clean, sweat that covered my body that night and now.
She’s across the room. Four dozen dancers away. “Bring Me to Life” plays loud, pushing the sound system to its limits. Someone shouts in time to the music, lost, melding, with the electric riffs, hard drums and raw vocals. Remixing an already good song into something somewhere South of the border hard... which makes sense because that’s where I am, secretly, with friends... shhh... don’t tell. Work thinks we’re... working... which we are. Trust me. I have never worked this hard.
In loose black leather pants that fall, smooth with ripples and fine stitches in red thread, she is dancing with a clique but she is dancing alone. Black tank is simple, not covering her black bra. Her nutmeg brown shoulders are ropey with muscle. The tat on the right one says Mama.
Oh, mama... *whew*
There is cool vapor rolling through the room. Smells a little like violets. The lights slow strobe red, blue, purple. I watch Bobbi buy a drink for the dj. Coke maybe. He’s eyeing her and she doesn’t correct him. She’s slipping him MP3s, motioning with her body toward me, sitting at a tiny corner table, leaning back against the wall on my high stool, still breathing hard, eyes on the dancers... typing with my thumbs.
“Wanna get her on the floor, man?”
“Yeah... please.”
“This is what you gotta play, baby. She don’t dance for hip hop.”
“Yeah... let’s play.”
Yeah. Let’s play. And I’m up again, while Mr. DJ (Digital Jockey) spins my own music for me. Remixing on the fly with skillz that will gain him enough attention to break away from here and maybe hit the other, bigger clubs in the city. He knows what to do. His eyes are on his panels as much as one his warriors. How do his hands need to move? He judges by their response. Hm. Good man.
Mama looks up. About five inches up because she’s little, compact, tough like the word “mother,” soft like the word “woman.” She smiles at me and doesn’t look away. Her hair cut is asymmetrical, black and silky like anime feathers. She has thick lashes and eyebrows. No make up. Full mouth. She smiles and doesn’t look away. We dance in time. Hips and thighs. Rolling shoulders and when she puts her fingertips on the back of my neck, I take it low, leaning back, bending my knees, bouncing down to her height, my hands above my head, my eyes closed as my spine keeps beat.
“You have pictures?”
“¿Qué?”
I smile at her, friendly, side by side at the bar, a few songs after I first arrived. She is waiting for club soda. I’m waiting for a Coke and you-know-what. I glance down at her tat. “¿Tiene usted fotografías de su niños con usted?”
Her smile is a slow, careful reward, followed by a bold, smooth appraisal of this gamer grrl. My Spanish is far from perfect, but she seems okay with the rest. “Sí...”
And they are beautiful children. Four. Big bronze eyes like their Mama.
I am thinking, which means I’m all danced out. I’m in afterglow now. That space where everything is done... and so my mind clicks back on. Tension is gone. My body is my own, reclaimed from the world. Requirements have all been met. I’m thinking about the personal responsibility of the strong. The responsibility to set an example. Should the strong shun the weak and grow their ranks, so that, eventually, the human race is all like them? Strong of body, mind and spirit? Hm. Not spirit.
Therein lies the catch, doesn’t it? If you are willing to focus on natural selection, than you are animal, not man. (Please. Spare me the emails about the soul in all animals and plants. I believe more than you think and none of it is relevant to this conversation.) The song says, “Climb on a back that’s strong.” Let me carry you because I can. I’ll let you be the woman you need if you let me be the man that I am. It isn’t about gender fluidity, it’s about gender roles switching it up so become a fully realized human being. If my man cries for me and I fix his car, are we less of a couple? Don’t split hairs. Of course not.
Among the dancers on the floor it seems apparent which ones could carry a conversation about politics, nonlinear time or the nature of the soul. Which ones could riff with me about mathematics or religion or theoretical physics. They are the one’s who move with a confidence that has nothing to do with physical prowess or sexual experience. The ones who close their eyes as often as they meet my gaze.
They are not meek, but they will inherit the Earth.
Because they are the Earth. They understand. They look out and in. They come to these clubs, underground in more ways than one, loud, dark, free. They are here to reset, recharge, recenter. Before they climb the narrow stairs to the surface, to the bright, hot sun of late summer, to reenter the world as mothers, mechanics, teachers, tutors, warriors.
When I grow up... these are the ranks I want to join.
EJ
