Stand
readtime ~8min
Here you are. You are here because your friends wanted you to be. Pleaded with accusations of you wasting your youth, of growing old and becoming a reflection of your parents. Here everyone is young and careless and bold. They come here to behave this way and forget why they came.
Push through the gates that separate in from out. Join the bodies. Varied shapes and shades and organs and origins. All of them like water. Constant in a state of flux. You join the rhythm, move to sanguine sounds with the other bodies, tightly packed like a serpent’s coil. Your friends like the way you move. The jagged motions, stiff hips and limbs. No natural instincts. It makes them feel more content with themselves.
But you are you. You are not without your merits. You are here because your friends wanted you to be. Your company lifts their spirits. You are pleasant to be around. They enjoy your voice. Your words inspire laughter and love and affection.
Here they serve potions that borrow happiness from tomorrow. It affects your friends in different ways. Makes them laugh or cry, and sometimes both at once. You have been known to drink more than you should and to make impulsive decisions based on previous ones. You have given yourself a limit you know you’ll exceed, and tomorrow when you wake up you will beg your body for forgiveness. Trade plastic for more. Share it with your friends. You’ve been here before. More than you would care to know.
The restroom is a pit stop for all. There are toilets people have suddenly forgotten how to use, and the floor is somehow entirely wet. You will keep a mental checklist of everything you touch with your hands before rinsing them and discovering both the soap and paper dispensers are empty.
Wipe your hands on your jeans. Pass time talking to strangers. Collect details you won’t mind forgetting. Some people smoke when they drink and you are not proud to be among them. There’s a man outside whose posture is slouched and passive. You target him for asking. He gives you one and a light, and you apologize for bothering him. Lie and say that you are a faithful smoker of whatever brand is being offered, and then bond over your fabricated common ground. Command him to have a good night as you slowly disengage.
For you, smoking is not a social activity. It is a time to lean, to collect thoughts and to assess your own sobriety on a numerical scale. If you allow yourself to be honest, you enjoy how you must look.
You are a reflection of your parents. Your parents smoked, and their parents before them. Smoking reminds you of a time before you. An era of the Malboro Men and Joe Camels, Marlon Brando, and Audrey Hepburn poised with a slender cigarette holder resting against seraphic cheekbones, classically beautiful and transcending time. The cigarette in your hand burns down to an ember. Kiss it goodbye and flick it away.
Inside, your friends are being more of themselves. They sit closer than normal, and lean in to speak with loose arms wrapped around each other’s necks and waists. It affects them all differently. For one friend, it robs her of her balance. It turns her limbs into rubber, and encourages her to ascend to new heights on wavering limbs. Another forgets his checking account is measured in numbers and becomes emboldened to bring it closer to zero in an almost competitive way.
Look around you. A boulder-shaped man dressed in all black directs the flow of traffic, determining who is fit to enter. The room is filled nearly to capacity. Glasses filled to the brim. An assortment of colors. And music that compels movement without consent. Everyone knows the words, and competes to sing them the loudest. There’s a reverse-congo line of people, shoulder to shoulder, pressed against a wooden counter.
And women. Women who have prepared themselves to be here with practiced motions of applying powders with brushes. Their skin is smooth as glass, a vaguely creamy complexion, some with wing-tipped lashes and an array of metal rings and jewelry. Tight clothing intended to complement their assets, and heels that add inches to their height, and announce their approach and departure. There’s an elegance in the way they move. Like ribbons in a soft breeze, delicate and intentional.
And men. Spindly men, thick-armed, burly men, boisterous, and effeminate men. So many men. More than you knew existed. They hang on the women like shadows on a planet with five suns. Closer than comfortable, leaning in with inquisitions, and touching them at place near the end of their spine. The men are largely predatory, but the women are not all unresponsive. Some touches are returned. Other men are disregarded entirely. Some women assume the role of the predator themselves. They will not be preyed upon.
All of the people you came with are occupied by friends or acquaintances. Absorb what’s around you, all of the dim possibilities. Your eyes meet the eyes of another. The gaze lingers like a silver wire strained between each of your bodies. The gaze does not stray with fluttering lashes to either side. Alcohol is a double-edged sword when it comes to seduction. Everything is a balance. An Aristotelian mean.
Here you are. It’s time. Time for you to make your move. Now or probably never. Don’t let yourself think about it. Thinking has only provided you with excuses not to do something, and the only things you tend to regret are the things you don’t do. You commit to the act of doing without thinking of what you would like to do. When the time comes to say something, what you say is this:
Hello.
That’s the best you’ve got, but it’s good enough. The stranger extends a hand in an invitation to touch, and become no longer strangers. Get to know one another. Collect details you’ll try not to forget. Tell them about you. The good and the not-so-bad. When girls flirt they touch. When boys flirt they touch. You are now both touching each other.
Past the tangles of people, across the varied shapes, your friends are reunited. You look back and find them nodding their heads, raising chins and single eyebrows. From this distance it’s difficult to say whether or not they are supportive, but you have decided that it does not matter. When the lights turn on they kill the music. People gather belongings and join the migration to the exit in what looks like a marching group of unstable penguins.
Outside you pull this person close to you. You let your hands linger on their body, and suggest you end the night in the same location. That’s when you do it. You pull them closer. You shut your eyes and commit to the action. Your lips touch then spread open to receive the other. Supple tongues twist, swirl and curl together. Your mouths taste like tobacco and tequila. It’s wet, and faintly spongy. The idea of a stranger’s tongue in your mouth offends you, but right now this feels good. It works for you.
Cars are lined up at the curb in an enormous chain of colored light. You stumble over to someone smoking and ask for a smoke. He gives it to you, and you tell your acquaintance that you only do this when you’ve been drinking. Take their hand in yours. Feel it. It’s cold and bony and rests limp in your palm. Doors open and swallow up passengers waiting at the curb. The car pulls free from the chain, escorting them away, and another car replaces the link. This other person uses their phone to order your own.
It’s cold out. Your breath turns to steam when you breath. Use this as an excuse to get closer. Huddle for warmth. How long has it been since you were this close to someone. Contact. This is nice. You consider that this person enjoys touching you as much as you enjoy touching them, and you decide that this is also nice. Your car pulls into the chain and you find yourselves climbing in on either side. The driver speaks to you in an accent neither one of you can identify and chews on neon-green gum. He offers you water and escorts you away from the crowd.
Back at home you lead both of you though the door that separates in from out. Your personal fortress. A chipped wooden table with water stains in the shape of a ring, an abandoned sock only halfway under the couch, and wine glasses in the sink with little pools of burgundy above the stem. No home is always clean. All of this is an expression of you.
Take them past this. Past the living room through the barren halls into your room. Your private quarters. And now they guide you to the bed. You become a victim of your own instincts. Something primal seizes you as you involve yourself. Give yourself to this familiar dance. The poetry of an ancient language in motion. Squeezing skin, fragile fingernails, and flexing hands flailing, tracing outlines and seizing fabric to rip away from nubile bodies.
Here you are.
The altar and the offering. Discovering and devouring each other. This isn’t love, but it is for now. Here you are. You are here because you want to be. The two of you are barely more than strangers, but for now you’re not alone.