Day 853, November 2, 2022

Sweaty Dancer

I was a sweaty dancer. 

In the middle school cafeteria, 

with the lights turned down low, 

maybe there was a disco ball, 

I danced with an unparalleled lack of reserve. 

I was a frenzy of transformed energy, 

the wavelengths of sound pulled off the turntables 

and electrified in the amplifiers, 

and swelling into the room through the speakers. 

On slow songs, 

I left a sweaty imprint of myself on a girl’s shoulder, 

I loved that feeling of closeness, 

bodies pressed as if we could imagine there was nothing between us, 

as if we were the only ones moving in a near dream state. 

There is something transcendent about dance, 

like the dancing disease that passed through communities in the dark ages, 

something that taps underneath the fabrications of self 

and touches one’s inner being. 

I do not think I have been truer 

than I have ever been on the dance floor 

on a hot night after a slow song. 

I think of nakedness, 

how sweat pools in crevices, 

I think of the warmth of bodies letting go, 

releasing possession until nobody is leading, 

there is only the swaying to the music, 

the closeness, 

the pleasure of touch.

It is a wonder that we ever stop those things. 

Like how we stop play, 

stop imagination, 

stop making skid marks on the street on your bicycle. 

Perhaps when you are a child, 

there is still enough innocence 

that it is playing with intimacy, 

it is pretending to fall in love. 

A few years ago, 

I took up dancing again for a short while. 

It was a weekly thing. 

I found I still retained the joy of movement, 

but my body had become clumsy, 

ankles twisted, 

shins ached, 

and mostly bodies stayed politely apart. 

Oh to be thirteen again, 

as the last song of the evening ends 

and drowsily pull yourself away from your partner, 

the lights come on in a slow extended flicker, 

and it is as if an entire lifetime is floating up and out of one’s self. 

That is a special kind of yearning.