Twenty minutes at MJQ

[jack_babalon]

Word!
August 20th, 2006
~Rob M.

It was one in the morning last night when the Jagermeister shots kicked in and the DJ played "Janie Jones". One of my unwritten rules to life is that whenever one has a chance to dance to The Clash one absolutely must! So I left Teddy Bear & Magpie at the bar to watch my drink and made my way up to the floor. It was packed shoulder to shoulder. I had to squirm through the outer ring of 'shufflers' to get a decent spot. 'Shufflers' are people who can't or won't dance but insist on being out on the floor anyway. They stand there around the perimeter, doing the meat market two step: That's one foot to the left, then (with no apparent regard to the beat or the rhythm), they lift one foot back to the right, swaying their upper torsos listlessly as they desperately press their drinks into their chests. Hence 'shufflers'. Though here in Atlanta it's also known as Buckhead Ballroom Dancing.

Luckily I found an opening by two toxic blondes. They dance cute. They know the song. They're in love with rock'n'roll... woaahh! They're in love with gettin' stoned... woaahh! They're in love with Janie Jones! But they don't like they're job, noooo...oah! I let Strummer & Jones take me over LOA style. I ride the machine gun fire of the drums. I explode with the guitar bursts smooth. I move with the grace and the fire. I sing out the words loud:"But the boss at the firm always thinks he shirks/But he's just like everyone, he's got a ford cortina/That just won't run without fuellll... FILL 'er up, Jacko!".

The DJ reads the floor right. He reads the vibe and the mood crystal clear. He roles the beat right into Billy Idol's 'Dancing with myself'. The floor lets up a quick drunken cheer. More Shufflers stagger up to the ring from the bar. We get mass spillage. The Toxic Blondes are shimmying. Their expensive bangs swing wild in their faces. Their eyes flash revealed, veiled, revealed. Some cat with a fauxhawk is clapping along to the song. His woman is shaking that ass stupid. Three Frats are doing some hip-hop stomp they must've seen in a video somewhere. Check out the skinny chick with the Frank Sinatra hat going ballistic. I catch a quick flash of her naked in my imagination, she's bent over a few lines of quality and still wearing that hat. Look at the little asian guy in the Reservoir Dog suit go. Look at him shimmy through the mob like they're not there. Little Asian Guy slips on a wet spot on the floor. He goes down. He catches recovers with a flat palm down and pops back up immediately like it was just one more move in his repertoire. Little Asian Guy is my new hero!

The DJ truncates the Idol and beat matches the drum wave straight into A-Ha's 'Take on me'. More whooping, hootering and hollering. I can feel the burn in my chest now. I got a coffee heart and nicotine lungs. I got a black sweater on and i'm surrounded by people generating raw body heat. More Shufflers straggle in closer. Not much room now. I'm dancing all asses and elbows. I don't care. The adrenalins kicked the alcohol into overtime. I feel good. In fact, in a sure sign that i'm fairly trashed, I feel confident. I smile at the toxic blondes. One ignores me and the other rolls their eyes in exhausted exasperation. I quickly remember why i'm not confident and I jettison my thoughts into the music to escape my prospects. I close my eyes and sing the words: "So needless to say/I'm odds and ends/But that's me stumbling away/Slowly learning that life is OK/Say after me ... It's no better to be safe than sorry"

Finally the 80's spree is broken. The DJ hits us with something new, well new to me, but I dance the way most guys get laid: I bluff! The rhythms simple. Most of the new stuff vibes cleaned up Joy Division to me so I can ride it on instinct alone. Still the floor clears a little. Most of the shufflers are now just blatantly standing on the floor just kinda bopping their heads all half assed. I have a theory. I believe that dancing is a vertical representation of a horizontal desire. I believe people fuck the way they dance. I look at the shufflers and shudder at the thought of the cold zombie sex they must go home to.

Luckily mystery song is a short song. The DJ groks the lack of action on the floor and quick switches back into the Reagan Years. The opening cords of Peter Murphy's 'Cut's you up' begin to swell over us. The cellos(?) kick in. Mr.Bauhaus begins to croon. The crowd 180's. Midnight women swoop in off the branches of the bar and are quickly followed by the guys who hope to bed them. It's a flash flood. It's a flesh wave rolling out of the darkness. Couples press up. The Human Haircuts peacock strut. The Midnight Women get down all nasty noir ( and hey... why doesn't their kabuki make up ever run?). I'm back on familiar territory. I remember now...

"C'monnnn" she says to me, her blue-gray eyes sparkling at me through the darkness.

"No way!!!" I snort. I'm at the old Kitchen Club in So-Fl, sitting on one of the red couches that lined the walls. I've got a devil lock because i've just discovered the Misfits and a leather jacket on despite the 80 degree night. I'm 16. I'm hardcore and i'll be happy to tell you if you'd just ask.

"Why?" She says to me, looking at me like i'm an odd creature she's discovered in her closet.

"I don't dance to this shit..."

She nods. She lifts up her eyes and thinks it through. She looks back at me.
"Yeah... but why?"

"That's pussy shit." I snort. I'm 16. I'm hardcore. I'm so hardcore i'm suffocating in a leather jacket in a city with 200 and ten percent humidity!

"You think it's gay, huh?"

"Yeahhhh!" I say cautiously. I mean it's grade school 'gay'. Not William Burroughs 'gay'. But she's smarter than me and can twist my words easy. I'm 16. I'm hardcore. I'm young, dumb and full of cum.

"Welllll... what's gayer you suppose." She fires up that smile and maaaannnn I know i'm in trouble, "Dancing with a beautiful woman to some 'pussy shit' or stripping down half naked at a show then slamming around in a 'pit' full of sweaty men with shaved heads?"

I say nothing. She stretches out her hand. I accept and step up with her. I've stage dived off the Cameo for Uniform Choice into a mob of rabid straight edgers. I've been boot checked into submission at the Sick of it All show when they opened for D.R.I. I've dodged the cops from the parking lot of the 7 Seconds/ Circle Jerks fiasco and I survived a potential lynching because of the color of my laces. None of it compares with trying to dance to Peter Murphy while your friends snicker at you from the bar.

I come back.

I know the way. It throws about. Takes me in and spits me out. When I desire.

Against my eyelids the light system flickers and strobes strange beautiful blobs of color.

I'll leave myself here then, because that's something a writer can do. I'll leave myself on the floor, looped in those wonderful 20 minutes at MJQ. Close your eyes. That's me over there: Dancing with myself. In love with Rock n' Roll. Slowly learning that life is OK.

Comments

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

I've stage dived off the Cameo for Uniform Choice into a mob of rabid straight edgers. I've been boot checked into submission at the Sick of it All show when they opened for D.R.I. I've dodged the cops from the parking lot of the 7 Seconds/ Circle Jerks fiasco and I survived a potential lynching because of the color of my laces.

Fucking A. Those were days. Inquiring minds do want to know what color your laces were, though, since you're the only person I know who still remembers that this mattered...

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

That'd be black. Which represented S.H.A.R.P. (SkinHeads Against Racial Prejudice - if you ever had them where you lived). Keep in mind that I was a painfully P.C. kid back in the day. I ran into some nazis in the pisser at a local show at Churchills. I was without back up. I got out of it by reminding them that they were in the heart of Little Havanna and the locals here don't dig on the whole white power thing. I got off with a punch to the guts and a warning.

In time I came to see S.H.A.R.P.'s as racist free facisim when a bunch of them jumped a kid at a show for having long hair and by then I was kinda becoming rapidly disenchanted.

[animeoni.livejournal.com]

Let me know when you go to MJQ next. I hate the crowds but love the music and dancing. Would love to throw down with you darling.