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epitome of incomprehensibility
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At a neighbour's house for supper, the one who had the wedding early in the summer, I filled up on various foods. Cheesy, fattening things, but also fruit and tomatoes. The other "young people" (her husband called them "teenagers" in an absent-minded moment, when most of them are in their late twenties) were outside, but then it was raining, and I migrated with them to the basement.
The son who'd disappeared and had a sort of nervous breakdown was there, and that's what I'd been excited about at the beginning. His return. The picture of him in my mind, the idea that I could pick him and take him, convert some of his paranoid tendencies into creative writing ideas, you know... the predatory fantasies of the short and awkward. But if I had him what would I do with him? I felt like I was a teenager again, having crushes on ideas, less horny but just as self-absorbed. I sang about iPods, defining them as the post-9/11 crutch of the developed world, instead of framing the art I'll be trying to sell at tomorrow's craft show. I was framing the young man instead: a portrait of the chord of semi-sadistic empathy, or some such nonsense.
But in the narrative present, we were downstairs. One of the friends, seeing me spectacled and dressed rather boringly, had singled me out for teasing and pretended to pour a bottle of rum down my throat after I politely refused a taste. His girlfriend with a beautiful name, who'd moved here long ago from Panama, shared observations about places and attitudes about them. She was surprised when she heard Canadians bashing Americans; why did I think they did that? I held up two fingers, glad to have ideas. One, competition (another person added that the places were right next to each other); two, Americans tend to be more extreme politically and Canaduckians more moderate. I don't know if I believed this. Her words seemed more interesting than mine and I was fine being quiet.
After a while I asked for some rum. I'd already had half a glass of sweet pink wine that called itself white zinfandel, so the prospect of more alcohol, especially more sweet alcohol, was a little iffy. The stuff scorched my throat and tingled my lips; I did not, as another person suggested, down the little bit I had in one shot. I went upstairs for fruit and a piece of apple pie, which I ate slowly. I was feeling stomach-sore - not sick, but stuffed - so when three of the female people got up to start dancing I didn't hesitate for long before joining them.
Dance goes well with food and drink. It seems made for such gatherings: activity to facilitate digestion and connect kinetically with other humans and, y'know, just shake what Mother Nature gave you. Mother Nature gave me a sense of rhythm and a functioning dance system, although my movements aren't particularly coordinated. But there you have it: it was fun and I was dancing to somewhat nostalgic hip-hop, plus Latin music I'd never heard. Two of the girls, the nicely-named Panamanian and the pharmacist-caterer, could really dance, but the way they did it! P-C could shimmy, and N-N-P had a distracting habit of running her hand through her long hair. After a bit of observation I saw that the hair was getting in the way, and she was just getting it out of the way.
But, oh bother. Do people with a gender preference find life simpler? Here I was, having seen the runaway son plumper than I remembered him, not thin-faced like the Kafka replica he was, and being superficially less attracted to him (I only conduct problematic rescue-romance with the pretty ones, apparently) and now I was tempted by P-C sexy-dancing with me. Clearly she didn't mean much by it, being straight, but it wasn't how I usually danced. Less shimmy and more arms, more feet if I could manage them, more goofily rock-n-roll. It was N-N-P that had distracted me with her looks, but now I was very aware that P-C could move and had breasts. I'd brushed against one by mistake, and it was making me superficial again.
Now the guys were getting into it and the prodigal (but not really "prodigal"; that means wasteful, not runaway) son's sister who was still recovering from a complicated broken angle joined the dance. It became less of a show and more inclusive. N-N-P danced with her boyfriend and that seemed right. The other girls had clumped together, too, and the one my mind had marked as "the casual black girl" as if being black was something she did casually - I liked her hair, too, but it didn't distractingly attract me - picked up a magazine and started fanning herself with it while dancing. I did the same. There was a casual joy about her actions that invited imitation, whether putting her hands in the air or doing the chicken dance. No worry about being outed for irrelevant crushage; the truly hot boogied at a distance. N-N-P and her boyfriend did a sort of shimmy-grind and we fanned them, too, laughing.
I was thinking about dance parties, about the camp game where one of the actions was dance party and we'd chant "Dance par-TEE, dance par-TEE." Also about my futuristic romance novel in progress, in which a group of neo-agrarian Transcendentalists from New England have moved to the Laurentian hills in Quebec (nearby Montreal suffers from global warming and my narrator can barely stand its summers) and set up their own semi-religion. The young woman who's next in line to be the love goddess ("representing everything from math to sex") is herself a skeptic, but the narrator falls for her charms, even though she's currently pregnant with her second child by the awkward guy that she has an off-and-on relationship with. The main character I did infuse with a gender preference: she's just gay, a concept which the Trancies think is outdated. But she is. She just doesn't like guys. And the two have their nice sexy little romance with irrelevant social commentary! Anyway anyway anyway, I was thinking that their ceremonial autumn dance could feature, why not, trance music, or especially sugary pop, and this should be treated as a throwback to an older time in a rather serious way.
So the music quieted down and I went home, and now I need sleep, and why I'm always trying to read and write multiple things at once I don't know. Maybe I'll never get very far, but at least dancing exists.
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