330am to 350am
I am awash in the pink and purple..punk and pimple zigzags I left behind after dancing for 4 hours. The zigzags..like skid marks. Donuts on the road of air between me, my sweat (not much), and the music. Just above and around my podium. I make donuts like a hoodlum in a fast car. Walking home from Go Go dancing takes 20 minutes. I have my fringe bikini on under a pair of denim overalls and polyester shirt. Singles in my bag are Crumpled. Happy. Drunk. Some guilty. Mascara has run a bit. Hair itchy under my wig. A scar beginning to form from the cut of my rogue sequin. I pass you. I pass you all the time. Sometimes you are tripping over. Sometimes you are looking at me shouting whispering gesturing. STUMBLING. Sometimes you stare like I am the cab someone just stole from you. Sometimes you are a MAN coming at me. Yelling LADY GAGA. COME HERE. WHERE'S THE AFTER HOURS? Sometimes you're a man. Sometimes you are garbage. You are just in my way. These are the 20 minutes my soundtrack skips from rock and roll to a Travis Bickle monologue. On repeat. I don't have a mohawk. I most certainly wouldn't take my date to a PORNO. I'm Australian so that whole "you talkin' to me" thing would sound like "excuse me, are you talking to me.. " I know myself. I know my surroundings. And I know you. I know that you don't know me. Like Travis Bickle, I feel alone in this setting. I work at night and I need you to pay my bills. But I wish the rain would wash you all away. You don't make me angry. You don't make me fearful. You don't make me wanna shoot people. You make me sad. Because I see you falling. I see it from my go go podium and I see it from 330am to 350am. I hear you shouting nonsense. It's a giant smelly fart after Ive danced for 4 hours to music I love. It's a shame. I just wanna get through you. I just need to get these sore puppies home. And I wonder why there are people who take the nightlife for what it is. A mystery. An adventure. A place to dance and sing and laugh and cry with a little more moxie. A little more of oneself. And then there's you. You want too much out of it. You don't want to give anything of yourself. You just want the alcohol, the blurriness, the random asshole, the hashtag like, the pain to go away. Do I sharpen it for you? All these WANTS? ...did you tip the bartender after ALL. THESE. WANTS? Tonight you are a girl staring at me on NYE. At first I thought you were staring at me like I was Ebola. Not something you were afraid of. But annoyed by. Everyone was giving me attention. Ebola Ebola Ebola! Girl dancing around in a gold bikini. EBOLA. FUCK OFF. I smile at you. But I'm also not. You dont know this. But I do. Because your face, I've seen since I pinned a picture of a banana on myself, and danced in front of my 6th grade class in a yellow leotard and called myself "Anna Banana". I wasn't aware how ridiculous it was...I just wanted to do it. But i got the face. You know...Your face NOW. I got it because it was school. It was school in the 80s. No distractions back then to just hate on someone. I was striped by the light between the fence posts of my old backyard and my neighbors. I stared through them every day. At my lofty neighbour. My Estella. Could I be more? Could I dance more? On a trampoline with my dog barking. But honey, it isn't school anymore. Is it? I don't even think you've read Dickens? Did you? Sorry to be a dick about Dick...ens. The thing is..I'm just a girl who loves to dance. I'm Sarah JP in Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. I'm Patrick Swayze in...every film he's in..even Roadhouse. Partly when he rips the throat out of the guy but mostly...you know... when he said "Be nice!" You're probably too young to know what I'm talking about. The Swayze part AND the "be nice" part. Because the thing is...I'm judging you just as you judge me. But I have manners about it. Your stankface gives you away. All I am doing is a little shimmy shimmy sashay. I get disappointed in the judging. And the posturing. And the milleni(hell)s who are tied to their phones instead of each other on the dance floor. Maybe it's just passion. Maybe it freaks me out when you don't get it. How can you not chase joy, enlightenment, romance like you chase the smooth straightened hair on your head, the right instagram filter, money, that idiot in the corner? Sorry I guess Im judging you again...But you're making me a soldier in a BAR. A soldier under the moonlight. I'll take the Tinker Tailor Spy part. But...solider? On my podium I see you break up, make up, make out, fake out, go to the bathroom...for a LONG time. I see you look lonely, look sad, look at me, look away. I see you and I feel you. But I'm there to make you feel good. Not bad. You're missing the point. It's my job to be the extra bounce in that song. And I want to be! I want to be the bounce that trips you up into a flex, a laugh, a spin, a whisper in an ear. Its as simple as an 80s Madonna song. It's as simple as an 80s Billy Idol song...not the one with "gigolo pool" in the lyrics because that's weird and there's a face without eyes... If I had the chance, I'd ask the world to dance. Do you see? Sorry...hear? Sorry...ehhh. The world? Togetherness? Humanity? My initial typo? HumanTitty? Why can't my boobs bring us all together? Can they? So...I think about you as I walk home. Dodging the 100s of other yous holding on for dear life. About to make mistakes. About to feel nothing, and worse than nothing. I haven't lost my phone, my wallet, my coat. It's all here. My brain cells. And my marbles too. I saw shapes and colors like you would not believe when I danced. They permeate. They dance with me still. A force field. A detente with Travis Bickle. A waltz with Travis Bickle. I don't WANT to be negative. So maybe I DO resent you a little for this. But my rock and roll returns . Of course it does. Because I'd rather wear what Jodie Foster wears in that movie ANYWAY. Because even when I see everybody grappling with each other, I throw myself into the song. The dust of the song. The promise of the song. Like one of those fools in a velcro jumpsuit on a wall...you know...that thing you can do at carnivals? I manipulate the air with my body. With my joy. I ignore your questions. How old am I? DO I really LIKE this? What's my bra size? IS this my real hair? Your stomach is like my dogs balls. Not a question but apparently a "complimeeeeent". I dance. That's all. That's my answer. To all questions. It's just a little delight. It's my release, my love affair, my exercise, my TURN. And the thing is...you look at me with so much hurt when all i want is for you to feel the way that I do. It's funny. It's funny to me. So I laugh. Then I walk. I walk from 330am to 350am home. You are the awkward brunch hanging in the air between 2 drunk strangers. You are the person who doesn't like the old New York. I wish you would dance instead of text. I really do. I don't mean to come off like an old man. I just...wonder about you. Then I get home and eat 100 things and watch some show set in a small town where people are NICE. In the end. Don't you wish people were a little bit nicer? Do you see and feel the poetry in your life? Even in a 4 minute frolic on the dance floor? Coleridge follows and I can't stop the music. I have to dance, I have to cry with the sight of a new Coleridge, a new Xanadu being passed, being passed to you. And I embrace it, this NEW. Maybe I'm a wanker for walking through poems and believing we are all CONNECTED...but I'm just going to say... Olivia Newton-John. Look her up. She can dance on roller skates and kiss strangers for dreams. Dreams in life. I wish this for you. And love. And poetry. I do. Recognize the muse. But only if you wipe that stank off your face.
Otherwise I guess you belong to the gutters we stomp through. And the questions/wars/turkeys we rage against. In the end, Xanadu does overtake the Travis Bickle trial and tribulation. In the end, I have twirled, leaped, made eyes at you..and not fallen over.
