Today I drove for over three hours in a snowstorm. And my mouth still hurts like a summbitch. So although I dearly want to regale you all with a shining example of my wit and humor, I just don't have it in me, dear audience. So I'm going to leave you with the beginning of a story... A story that could have been me tonight, if I had gone dancing instead of traveling. I will leave it open-ended, so that I can imagine any and all of the tantalizing possibilities that could have come to pass if I had decided upon a different course and a different path (and if I hadn't had all my wisdom teeth yanked out a couple of days ago, but we will conveniently skip over that little detail...).
A Dance For the Night
She perched on the edge of her seat, eyes darting from face to face in the crowd, scanning the floor for a potential partner. The smooth lace of her dress slid against her thighs, delicately fluttering against her skin with each pass of the fan in the corner of the room. She couldn’t ignore the subtle itch at the base of her neck that was the unfortunate side effect that always followed the combination of an excessive amount of hairspray and sweat. Again she reminded herself not to mess with her elaborate, and slightly unfamiliar, up-do that she and her friends had spent a solid two hours tweaking and twirling into the exactly perfect position. Not that she didn’t expect her hair to come undone at some point throughout the night, but she always staved off that moment for as long as possible by personally forbidding herself to pet, caress, fondle, pat, stroke, comb, or otherwise touch her hair in any way.
The slender belt of her dress slid to and fro beneath her ribs as she continued to fidget in her seat, searching for a position that didn’t involve her mostly-bare thighs sticking to the vinyl seat covering. The night had started out hot and muggy, which wasn’t being alleviated by the densely packed dance floor filled with sweating, heaving bodies. If it weren’t for the vintage clothing and the 1930’s big band music, one would think she was at a college rave instead of a community swing dance. Just as well though. As a new college student, she was practically entitled to go out dancing as many nights as she chose. If the type of dancing was less-than-typical, then so be it.
Giving up avoiding the uncomfortably sticky vinyl, she slouched down into her seat, waiting for the current song to end. She had come here with a group of friends, and now found herself the odd one out as they all twirled and spun across the dance floor while she was stuck alone on the sidelines. With a sigh she dropped her chin into her palm, resigning herself to waiting out the song and hoping for better luck the next go around.
Technically, she was fully capable of just going across the room and asking a guy to dance herself; yet every time she gathered her courage in both hands and began to rise and go across the floor to ask someone, a prettier and more outgoing girl swooped in like some kind of scavenging vulture and plucked her potential partner away, leaving her standing awkwardly alone again, with no sense of direction or purpose, which ultimately led to her quietly sitting back down and watching the dancers out on the floor with a wistful air.
These kinds of things always turned out the same way, and at times she wondered why she even bothered. Even as the smooth tones of Louis Armstrong began to wind their way through the muggy atmosphere of the club, crooning of moonlit nights and dances by starlight, she heaved a sigh and quietly sneaked around the edge of the dance floor, searching for some relief in the cool night air. As she lingered on the sidewalk, watching the cars roll by in the night, she looked up at the stars, wondering when exactly life had begun to seem so grey.
With a crash and a curse, a group of young men from the dance came stumbling out the door, laughingly ragging on each other the whole way, as she observed quietly from her street corner...
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