How to Keep Dancing When the World Says You Shouldn’t
I dream of dancing. It breaks my heart that I’ve never been very good at it.
“What were you doing? What were you thinking?” she asked.
“Dan… cing?” I pushed wet hair out of my stinging eyes and shook out the cotton skirt of my dress. Even in the dark, I could see that its hem had become stained and sticky, a location-specific blend of ash and off-brand Ribena. I was in the indie room but I had not been executing the approved indie shuffle. Instead, I chose to leap into the air and then hurl myself to the ground every time I heard Damon Albarn’s Tarzan yelp of a “WOOhooooo!”
Though I was soaked in sweat and seven gins in, I immediately felt very cold and very sober. My blood seemed to be separating and my tongue felt too big for my mouth. The sensation was the distinct opposite to what I had been feeling, or rather not feeling, seconds ago, when my body seemed wholly undefined, smooth as soup, its outlines a suggestion, an impressionist painting. I had known seconds of lustrous, profound joy, while listening to pop songs in the basement of a cheap nightclub in York. But Hannah’s frown indicated that it was the wrong kind of joy, or at least that I was expressing it incorrectly. She continued: “Just so you know… those boys are looking at you.”
