The sky is velvet and dark as your eyes, pupils dilated with desire. I stop at the light, red like blood, like the “no, stop” you won’t make me hear tonight, and I stare at the expanse of my Christ above me. My helmet comes off before I can think. The night is cold. Hair tumbles out; I feel it hit the back of my jacket. I can already hear the music. Bass line. Guitar riff taking me there. Baby... take me there.
Green light.
Hm. The last few streets, one more left (always seems to be a left to reach you, lover) and I’m rocking her into her stand, checking my helmet and jacket at the door.
“Hey, Ron...”
“Hey, Angel.”
“Crowd?”
“Sweet.”
Past the tables. I’m watching the new velvet of darkness. No stars here. Oh wait. Maybe there are, but shh, baby, that’s our little secret, isn’t it? Strobes are red purple blue green, slow and languid, then spastic with synch. I think of college and NYC and the clubs where I first really danced. I think of Boston, fake IDs, wanting to move like Amalia Ramos, the older sister of my boxing buddy, with her two kids and no husband, and two jobs and no car. Watching her lose everything except the beat-beat-thump of the music shaking the speakers, vibrating through my bones. The time she caught me watching, said, “Come here, Angel...” back before it was my name, and, fingertips on the small of my back, our hips locked together like two Lego bricks (hers women’s hips, mine narrower than her Bantamweight brother’s), I was unable to look at anything other than the hollow between her collar bones where the little gold cross hung. Until the third song when I closed my eyes.
I am thinking of you now. It’s raining where you are. The sky is heavy and low. I imagine driving those backroads, laying my bike low on slick roads. Enjoying the shake of risk. That tremble of the machine I love. Or it is the trembling in my body?
Ten years later. Ten years after dancing with Amalia, watching her turn on every boy in the club and knowing she was doing it. Hey, look, two chicks... it was unexpected a decade ago in a straight club in Boston. No trouble. Not with Amalia. She’d pick one lucky, brown-eyed stallion to take her home. I’d be the one left dancing, content with my new abandon.
“That’s a good girl, Angel...” she whispered, but her eyes were on someone else which is why mine were closed.
A decade after learning to dance, to move among strangers like water, like something warm, molten. To feel muscle and bone and blood and worries and life and culture, become simple beats, no more than verses in a continuing song, unable to wear me down, unable to bend or break me. Because, baby, I can dance all night then blink up at dawn, drive home still humming with this frequency of desire.
“Hiya, Angel.”
*eyes closed*
“Can I get you a Coke’n?”
“Dancing now, Carl.”
“Right. Yeah. So—”
“Dancing, Carl. Not listening.”
And this is my Neutral Hour, ’cept I’ve scored myself some Celestial contraband biotech and slipped the timestream to stretch this hour into four, five... six and eight. Carl smells like nutmeg and coconut because his mama makes these awesome cookies that he consumes in great quantities to keep up his 6’2” ultra whipcord frame. His favorites have raisins, too. His mama is proud to have a son whose a programmer. Carl is proud that he taught himself to dance. I’m proud to call Carl my friend.
The song changes, blends into another. Hard back bone, loud drums, incoherent vocals with reverbing techno bouncing off the walls back at me. I think about binary. I think about jokes about binary. I laugh out loud to myself and then grab Carl’s arm. He leans down, his dreads falling forward as he offers me his ear. I shout to be heard, “There are only 1 0 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't.”
Carl laughs. Carl always laughs at my jokes. “I have that shirt. It’s green.”
And we dance.
I don’t think Carl would understand how I think about you. I don’t think Carl has ever thought about a woman the way I think about you. To Carl, his mama is the only woman he’ll ever need. I consider, while raising my arms, rolling my hips, that if I could break you down into binary, Carl would nod sagely and we’d understand one another perfectly. If I broke it down, took you down, along graph paper lines, outlined the politics of desire, the theorems of chaos that carried me to this place... if I showed my work... if I made a pie chart or a bar graph or did an indepth contrast/compare of the sound of you losing your voice to my suggestion of hands on hips, on fly of jeans, to the whisper of prayers in the midnight hour that enfolds and embraces every heartbeat until dawn breaks over us like the rapture... then Carl might get it.
Carl said once: “I read your blog, Angel. I liked the one about God Particles. But I don’t really get the religion ones.” And beneath his Caribbean complexion, Carl blushed deep then sipped his Coke’n’Cream, confused by his own reaction.
We dance. When some *** snaps a picture, Carl growls and snatches the camera even before Ron grabs the noob by the collar and throws him out onto the street. The crunch of a $200 camera beneath Carl’s black engineer boot with the silver binary scrawl is so satisfying. Parts go skittering off the dance floor. I’d kiss him but he wouldn’t get it. Instead I laugh, free and clean and alive, and grab his hands, guiding us deeper into the mix. We dance – and Carl is a great dancer, always 1.7 inches away from every part of my body – my fingers hooked into his belt loops. Our smiles are identical. We might be twins.
A familiar song comes on, remixed on the fly with a harder bottom line. Carl cocks his head, “Blog song.” He says, perfect memory for facts and figures and what cookies taste best. I nod. “Yeah, blog song.” Because all my friends – across three continents – call them that.
We sip our Coke’ns. I sit, my Converse propped on the rung of the table, my rings clicking out rhythms on the table top. Carl stands. His head bobs. He looks at me, not quite directly. Which is cool and familiar to me.
“You chart out your blogs? Like an outline.”
I shake my head no.
“You just have a blank screen, page?”
I nod yes.
Carl makes a sound of interest, like your “hmm” but a little bit different. He looks at me, suddenly startled with his own thought. “You could just write something right now?”
I look at the table top. I think of Bri so far away. Her writing me a message just to tell me I rocked. I asked her why. She tapped out, “Cuz you write her a story every night!” I trace a circle on the condensation of my Coke’n. The deep brown mixing with the white cream isn’t the best visual for platonic thoughts. I grin.
“There is this black velvet night, buttoned up with stars. Every time I blink, I see you there. A constellation legend, a map of my journey home. The geography of moonlight casting your body like stardust and benedictions across my skin. There is a warm weight in the palm of my hands and I can’t stop shaking. I taste you sweet like wild strawberries. Salty with happy tears. Warm like new sunshine in the pit of my stomach. Hot summer blush across my chest. Your spring rain falls gentle, G-rated admissions, casual submissions to my desire, your compromise a shrug, standing on a foundation of prayer.”
I look up from my glass. Carl is smiling.
“You’re so random, Angel.”
And, laughing, we move back to the dance floor.
EJ
