She drove a tiny little black Jetta down Second Ave, taking the traffic circles like they were a spinning ride at Disney World, and I looked down happily at her blue dress that she let me wear. I smoothed the fabric on my legs. “Where are we going?”
“Well, there is a new club that my friend is DJ’ing at and she throws down some Old Wave and Goth sometimes. You ever heard of the song, Harley David, Son of a Bitch?”
“Um, no”
“You’ll love it.”
I thought that was an interesting declaration since she had known me for about 15 minutes. At her house, and after a short grilling session about who I was and who I “belonged to”, and who belonged to me…she was comfortable enough with my answers to disappear into her bedroom and pull on fishnet stockings and a black dress that I wasn’t sure if I should be seen out with her…in. But she looked amazing and I was almost giddy hurrying out with her to her car which was parked on the street. The cool spring air blew through our hair as we slammed the car doors and opened the windows and sunroof.
She pulled up in front of the club and got out to hand her keys to the valet. We could hear the music thudding and lights flashing around in the dark windows. She hurried me to the door and we walked right in as she kissed the door-guys on the cheek in the french “hello” style. I smiled and nodded at them. She was completely at home here and I stumbled after her wide-eyed as Alice in Wonderland.
I hurried behind her through the packed-out club with thudding R&B music, our black boots clicking loudly up a thin, wet staircase and we pushed open a heavy door to come upon a smaller room with a sparsely populated dance floor and a DJ playing what I supposed was “goth” music. It wasn’t exactly what I had imagined for my dance night and I thought about going back downstairs to the more familiar R&B. Up here I wasn’t sure I wanted to be so, er, visible on the dance floor with only about 15 other people on there. But my friend just walked right up and started to dance like an angel, a black angel and as I looked around I noticed the the other dancers were also in black and it looked like the music had lifted them up and they were directing the changes and beats with their own bodies. It could have been comical if it wasn’t so impressive. I watched in awe for a while, then wandered over to the bar and ordered a gin and tonic and sat down to watch from afar. It took about two minutes for a guy to come and sit near me. I looked at him to see if I needed to stealthily get up and move somewhere else. But he looked harmless so I sipped my drink and waited with amusement to see if he would get up the nerve to talk to me. He flickered his eyes over at me and I looked down in my drink. Then I looked up at him again and he was still looking and looked away. I could escape before he tried talking to me, and perhaps just try and navigate the dance floor. I could probably try to dance like the others, it looked pretty fun although I wondered if I was too colorful to be allowed to try to fit in there. I sucked down the last of my drink and looked up at the guy. He had moved now to only one barstool away from me. He looked over at me and smiled. I looked away without smiling back, then felt bad and looked back at him and caught his eye then smiled back. Suddenly there was a girl next to me with vampire teeth and her eyes were lined with thick black makeup. “If you look at him one more time I’m going to rip your blonde hair OUT of your head.”
I got up immediately, as if I hadn’t even heard a word she said and walked off to the dance floor. I closed my eyes out there and tried to dance to the music like I had seen the others do. It was quite easy to just go with the flow. Although the lyrics were angry, the beat was so heavy and methodical it was like it pulsated though my body. I barely had to try to dance I just had to move and the music just took me through the motions. My heart was beating hard from being hissed at by the wanna-be vampire girl, but dancing smoothed out my emotions and I realized with a kind of relief, why it had been so important for me to get out of the beach house and just melt for a while into the night and the music. I was remembering who I was, which sometimes was a just a little more than a wife and a mom. One day I was going to be too old to do this. I opened my eyes to see my friend dancing next to me. She grinned at me and I smiled back happily. Perhaps I wasn’t too blue to fit in here.
Ungrateful Bliss 