Life behind the Scene
Nov. 27th, 2007 03:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonI first saw her over at Club Sin a few years back. She was "in Parties" as the song goes, over by the rear bar standing regally in the center of a rough circle made up of her best Gays, Club-Only-Friends and the half dozen or so kilted bald men who were giving her painfully earnest puppy eyes. She was much taller than her entourage, so I caught a good glance at her face floating over them: Short red hair with bangs that hung over a pair of black rimmed glasses, she wore a wicked little smirk that lifted one cheek higher than the other and had this button nose that was pure Samantha from Bewitched.
She registered somewhere between Dominatrix-Librarian and Vampire-FanGrrl.
I was leaning over the counter a few feet away, doing my best not to look at her while the bartender kept me on hold - usually my buddy Amyzonia takes care of me with a strong dose of Jack served with a break your heart smile - but she's not working tonight and apparently my lack of Hot-Topictude has rendered me invisible to the new kid.
There is a burst of laughter suddenly over the shoulder. I turn on instinct. Some one must've said something because it's her - she's the one laughing and its when a woman laughs that she is at her most beautiful. I know for some guys its when they cry or wince or sleep or some such shit... but for me its all in the way they laugh. Those rare moments when the soul crackles with light and burns through the gray miasma of our Game Face Lives.
In fact no ones really ugly when they laugh - with the sole exception of those who never laugh at themselves.
That's when I fuck up.
I let the glance linger into a stare. I almost get away with it when her eyes sweep by from one face to the next without notice but just then they freeze, widen and quick slide back left into a lock on mine. Shit! A few of her cadre turn and follow the look back to me. Gray, gnomish men with soundbite charisma and that uniquely awkward confidence some guys get when they try to substitute their paychecks for their ego. They start eyeballing me hard. Huddle in. Nod at me and sneer.
I shrug ostentatiously, bowing my head in apology and throwing out my arms in a wide sweeping 'You Got Me' gesture towards her.
As for her 'Boys' - fuck 'em - they'll write a blog about how much I suck that i'll never read and that'll be that.
Then the miracle. She excuses herself from her circle and makes her way towards me. I figure she's gonna read me the riot act. I'm not too easy on the eyes (and that's on a good day) so you gotta figure she's probably gonna get in my face over my having lingered for so long on hers.
Instead she catches the new kid's attention and he gets me a drink he clearly does not enjoy serving to me. In return I skip the tip, so not to disappoint his expectations of me.
We make chit-chat. She tells me she's seen me around. I tell her I used to work here, once upon a time in the Scene... other than that i'm nobody really. Just a cat who likes to dance when he's drunk. She drops some names that I catch easy. I risk a joke and she not only laughs but follows it with a better one. She's a little drunk and that has to be the only reason she's still talking to me a full five minutes after first contact. Usually i'm just a messenger boy for better men than me - "Is Ty-Sin dating anyone?", "Can you tell Magpie if you see him that he still hasn't called me back since that night", "Next time you see Teddy Bear tell him he owes me X amount of money" and "Hey is your name DJ OMAC by any chance?".
She orders me a back up round. The scowl the new kid shoots me is sweeter than a Million Dollar Christmas Day. She tells me there's a price though - she wants a dance.
"What with me?"
"You're really not all that bright for such a well spoken guy are you?"
I don't know what to say to that. So I don't. I pick up that DJ Fritz FistFuck or Black-Future or Puss-In-Jackboots or whoever it is this week is playing the National Anthem of the Repulik Ov Cyborgia. Music for space deathsquads and romantic apocalypses ... but it's got a decent beat so what the hell, right?
She leads me into the human waters of the dance floor.
I clear a little space for us between the gamer-boys in their best Goth Club Black Batman t-shirts, the Nu-Metal thrashers, the poorly aged undead and a flock of anthropomorphic bulldog women doing an interpretive dance of the love lives of ghosts.
Her dance is a velvet Salome around my Pit Stomp Ballet.
Through the circle I catch her "Party" watching me with folded arms and hard man masks. The song shifts to something under 140 bpm. It's one of those slow groove electro-Enya numbers that sounds exactly as if an Elf was trying to seduce a computer.
She slither-shimmys inches away from me. Her arms wrap around my neck. I go all Poindexter at the proximity. Stammer nerves as the bourbon bravado drains out of me.
"Has anyone told you how well you dance, Gorgeous" Her lies taste like cigarettes. I don't know what to say. I look good on paper and that's about it. In real life i'm as a eloquent as a drunk sailor with a speech impediment.
"Ummm..." is as close to a word as I get.
She shuts me up with a long, deep kiss. Her body presses into mine. My hands sculpt out her figure blind, nervous cautiously running down the corseted waist and washing over the curves of her long black dress.
Our kiss ends with the song. The lenses of her glasses are lit up in shifting hues of blue, green, yellow and red. I try to say something but I can't. My hearts racing to fast for me to breathe right.
"You don't have to say a word" she smiles sweetly.
"I don't?"
"No... this isn't really happening?" she nods past me. I follow her chin to the bar. I see a familiar looking guy. Bald. Chubby. Hunched over the bar tapping a folded bill impatiently as the bartender wipes the counter off with a gray dish rag.
"Oh" I say embarrassed, "Sorry about that. My brains all... fucked up... inside, y'know?"
"That's okay" she winks, "It was still nice dancing with you"
She leans in and kisses me again. This time a peck on the cheek.
I close my eyes. Someones saying something to me. The new kid behind the bar.
"Whatcha havin'?"
"Oh... ohhh-a Jack & Diet, please"
He snorts unimpressed and turns away to get me my drink in slow motion.
I hear that familiar laugh again.
I try to ignore it, but then give in with a look back over my shoulder and seeing her there again - radiant, regal, alive - I give her a gratefull little smile just between us.
She doesn't even notice.
She registered somewhere between Dominatrix-Librarian and Vampire-FanGrrl.
I was leaning over the counter a few feet away, doing my best not to look at her while the bartender kept me on hold - usually my buddy Amyzonia takes care of me with a strong dose of Jack served with a break your heart smile - but she's not working tonight and apparently my lack of Hot-Topictude has rendered me invisible to the new kid.
There is a burst of laughter suddenly over the shoulder. I turn on instinct. Some one must've said something because it's her - she's the one laughing and its when a woman laughs that she is at her most beautiful. I know for some guys its when they cry or wince or sleep or some such shit... but for me its all in the way they laugh. Those rare moments when the soul crackles with light and burns through the gray miasma of our Game Face Lives.
In fact no ones really ugly when they laugh - with the sole exception of those who never laugh at themselves.
That's when I fuck up.
I let the glance linger into a stare. I almost get away with it when her eyes sweep by from one face to the next without notice but just then they freeze, widen and quick slide back left into a lock on mine. Shit! A few of her cadre turn and follow the look back to me. Gray, gnomish men with soundbite charisma and that uniquely awkward confidence some guys get when they try to substitute their paychecks for their ego. They start eyeballing me hard. Huddle in. Nod at me and sneer.
I shrug ostentatiously, bowing my head in apology and throwing out my arms in a wide sweeping 'You Got Me' gesture towards her.
As for her 'Boys' - fuck 'em - they'll write a blog about how much I suck that i'll never read and that'll be that.
Then the miracle. She excuses herself from her circle and makes her way towards me. I figure she's gonna read me the riot act. I'm not too easy on the eyes (and that's on a good day) so you gotta figure she's probably gonna get in my face over my having lingered for so long on hers.
Instead she catches the new kid's attention and he gets me a drink he clearly does not enjoy serving to me. In return I skip the tip, so not to disappoint his expectations of me.
We make chit-chat. She tells me she's seen me around. I tell her I used to work here, once upon a time in the Scene... other than that i'm nobody really. Just a cat who likes to dance when he's drunk. She drops some names that I catch easy. I risk a joke and she not only laughs but follows it with a better one. She's a little drunk and that has to be the only reason she's still talking to me a full five minutes after first contact. Usually i'm just a messenger boy for better men than me - "Is Ty-Sin dating anyone?", "Can you tell Magpie if you see him that he still hasn't called me back since that night", "Next time you see Teddy Bear tell him he owes me X amount of money" and "Hey is your name DJ OMAC by any chance?".
She orders me a back up round. The scowl the new kid shoots me is sweeter than a Million Dollar Christmas Day. She tells me there's a price though - she wants a dance.
"What with me?"
"You're really not all that bright for such a well spoken guy are you?"
I don't know what to say to that. So I don't. I pick up that DJ Fritz FistFuck or Black-Future or Puss-In-Jackboots or whoever it is this week is playing the National Anthem of the Repulik Ov Cyborgia. Music for space deathsquads and romantic apocalypses ... but it's got a decent beat so what the hell, right?
She leads me into the human waters of the dance floor.
I clear a little space for us between the gamer-boys in their best Goth Club Black Batman t-shirts, the Nu-Metal thrashers, the poorly aged undead and a flock of anthropomorphic bulldog women doing an interpretive dance of the love lives of ghosts.
Her dance is a velvet Salome around my Pit Stomp Ballet.
Through the circle I catch her "Party" watching me with folded arms and hard man masks. The song shifts to something under 140 bpm. It's one of those slow groove electro-Enya numbers that sounds exactly as if an Elf was trying to seduce a computer.
She slither-shimmys inches away from me. Her arms wrap around my neck. I go all Poindexter at the proximity. Stammer nerves as the bourbon bravado drains out of me.
"Has anyone told you how well you dance, Gorgeous" Her lies taste like cigarettes. I don't know what to say. I look good on paper and that's about it. In real life i'm as a eloquent as a drunk sailor with a speech impediment.
"Ummm..." is as close to a word as I get.
She shuts me up with a long, deep kiss. Her body presses into mine. My hands sculpt out her figure blind, nervous cautiously running down the corseted waist and washing over the curves of her long black dress.
Our kiss ends with the song. The lenses of her glasses are lit up in shifting hues of blue, green, yellow and red. I try to say something but I can't. My hearts racing to fast for me to breathe right.
"You don't have to say a word" she smiles sweetly.
"I don't?"
"No... this isn't really happening?" she nods past me. I follow her chin to the bar. I see a familiar looking guy. Bald. Chubby. Hunched over the bar tapping a folded bill impatiently as the bartender wipes the counter off with a gray dish rag.
"Oh" I say embarrassed, "Sorry about that. My brains all... fucked up... inside, y'know?"
"That's okay" she winks, "It was still nice dancing with you"
She leans in and kisses me again. This time a peck on the cheek.
I close my eyes. Someones saying something to me. The new kid behind the bar.
"Whatcha havin'?"
"Oh... ohhh-a Jack & Diet, please"
He snorts unimpressed and turns away to get me my drink in slow motion.
I hear that familiar laugh again.
I try to ignore it, but then give in with a look back over my shoulder and seeing her there again - radiant, regal, alive - I give her a gratefull little smile just between us.
She doesn't even notice.
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no subject
on 2007-11-27 08:49 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2007-11-27 08:58 pm (UTC)I read where you said you weren't having much of a good day. Feeling better I hope?
no subject
on 2007-11-27 11:44 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2007-11-27 09:15 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2007-11-27 09:22 pm (UTC)Thanks for reading :)
no subject
on 2007-11-27 09:36 pm (UTC)never been a club too loud for me to think ;-)
You're lucky. See I usually get a bit of this...
on 2007-11-27 09:45 pm (UTC)...and that's why I only go to clubs when i'm armed.
no subject
on 2007-11-27 09:48 pm (UTC)Sometimes I believe I can see inside your head... does that ever frighten you?
This is a lovely story.
Tell us about The Fountain out the window and show us your pix!
xxx
no subject
on 2007-11-27 10:03 pm (UTC)Thank you.
Maybe when I go back and I would but I can't access my flickr account from the Cube Farm no more.
no subject
on 2007-11-27 11:19 pm (UTC)That's cuz the Cube Farm sux... FUCK THE CUBE FARM!!!
xxx
no subject
on 2007-11-27 09:51 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2007-11-27 10:03 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2007-11-27 09:54 pm (UTC)Absolute dead-on...and I adore you for it.
no subject
on 2007-11-27 10:06 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2007-11-27 10:42 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2007-11-28 07:23 am (UTC)"An Elf was trying to seduce a computer."
Indeed.
no subject
on 2007-11-28 12:58 pm (UTC)I can truly say i've never metaphor I didn't like
Thanks:) I vaguely remembered contemplating going with something like -"Delerium Lite" but found the elf-on-computer visual too fun too resist.
no subject
on 2007-11-28 02:20 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2007-11-28 03:10 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2007-11-28 03:11 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2007-11-28 02:50 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2007-11-28 03:13 pm (UTC)