It’s a glaring autumn day and I am pleasantly mellow from a
new sleeping pill I tried last night.
I was in bed, hazing and fluttering to the wind and creaking
house, and felt as though I was back in the era of coming down from a night of hard
dancing and partying.
I recalled a wild time. I had been with the usual crowd of
about fifteen friends and it was a surprisingly small club and a winter gig.
The DJs were from Detroit and the crowd worshipped their mix of dropping in
Motown to high NRG beats. I left
everyone in a moment of clarity and certainty that I wanted to observe and
absorb the undulating crowd of arms in the air.
Upstairs I prowled the mezzanine then bumped into an old
friend that I had dropped for his ruthless wildness. He was still elfin, delicate looking,
shave-headed, his homosexuality projecting from him like a prowling beam. We fell into each other’s arms and grinned
ecstatically. “I want to hang out with you.” “ Yes, let’s go NUTS.”
He offered me cocaine, e, speed…patting his cargo-pants pockets and
beaming. But even with the gleeful
daemons wanting to play I had a ‘one elixir' rule and my choice was drink…”NO,
let’s do shots!”
We sank shots and then champagne from the mezzanine bar then
drifted down to the floor, soon in the middle, riding high on the wave of sound
and people-pleasure, dancing like gleeful imps and air punching. I forgot the
old ruthlessness he could show and swam with him instead in the moments of
being beautiful and glorious.
He was my age, and at over thirty we were older than many in the
crowd, so we busted out tricky moves from the early eighties house-music days
and soon had a circle of dancing ‘fans.’
We danced for hours, leaving only for more champagne and
toilet breaks; him coming into the ladies and using the make-up of many passing
girls…
At dawn I still liked him, a lovely thing, and we parted to
go to separate recovery-days, mine at a small club where the flavour was trance
and jazz and fusion, him off to an outdoors day-rave.
It was years until I saw him again; he was skipping lightly
arm in arm with beautiful young queers through a park I was in with my
son. He beamed at me and nodded at my
boy. I smiled and clasped my child’s
hand. A flicking moment where we
acknowledged a passionate past friendship and respected the gulf between our
now-lives. We had forgiven each other; me for his diamond-hard- core, him for my
casting him adrift when he broke one too many times. Forgiven each other through a communion of wild
dance. Would I want him in my life again? No.
But how I love that memory of our dancing.
Another jewel in my
box of pretty things.
