She moved fluidly to the music. The transient sounds of Bauhaus cutting through the twisting, and taunting crowd of lost souls in search of something short-lived. Janet’s head was cocked back and the whites of her eyes shook to and from amidst the multitude of disorienting colored strobe lights engulfing the nodding and twitching sea she found herself floating in. Her clothes in tatters as the hands of strangers moved around her torso. She couldn’t make the details of anyone’s face, just amorphous backlit shadow figures reaching for her. She swayed and shimmied across the floor. She gazed up at the go-go dancers swaying from the rafters like angels in affirmation of the choice to mix wine and liquor. For all she knew, the Bouhaus would turn to Talking Heads and all bets would be off. In her lucid trance of desire she found him, nameless and alone on the dance floor. His feet shuffled from side to side in some ancient anxious ghost dance. The crowd was contracting, and the bodies were contorting to the music, as she levitated closer to the man. His eyes were soft and kind, she calculated his glances across the ocean of desire. He floated there alone like a shipwrecked sailor awaiting his siren. Janet approached him, her converses dancing near and maybe even on his toes. Their arms didn’t touch but she felt like she could read his mind, dreaming of his wants, knowing his desires, and feeling his lust. She didn’t know that his partner was across the dance floor fighting with the bartender who claimed that they didn’t have the sour mix for his whiskey, but even if she did she didn’t care, she wanted to feel his lips on hers, she wanted to taste his skin, she wanted to, maybe even dared to dream, that this would be more than a roll in the hay. She moved in step to the music, inching closer. He looked down at her, there was a glimmer in his eye which caused an erratic flutter in her chest. He looked away wantingly, she was certain that he was being coy. Then, with a change in the music and a roar of the crowd, she lunged onto him and pulled his lips to hers, she could taste cherry on his breath. After a moment of fevered euphoria, he pulled away from her in a stagger. He wiped the spit from his lip, the light cutting between them.
“Who told you that was okay?” he said with a crack in his voice. Janet stood there, she could feel the eyes of the shadows watching.
“I’m so sorry,” she said in a near whisper as she observed him disappear into the crowd, a scowling phantom lost in the waves.
