Dance with me

As a writer I have to put myself in places that are sometimes uncomfortable to write about...

That one, the one with the silly face, putting it on for the boys, her blond hair tied up in a bun, raising her eyebrows, aware of me staring at her. Yes, she’s getting uncomfortable, but I’m just another man in the bar attracted to her good looks, nothing wrong with that. Now she’s talking in whispers to her friends, they discreetly look, but I have turned away, act the part of a normal bloke out alone and talking to the barman who refills my glass.

They all laugh, except for her, she knows. She tries to convince her friends to go, but they’re not ready yet and tell her nothing can happen here, but she is not convinced, yet she seems to take heart from their concern and tries to put a brave smile on her face.

A woman comes in, sits on her own at an empty table in a corner, long auburn hair tied back, big silver earrings, bright red lips, white embroidered cardigan and jeans. She sips her drink very self-consciously, glancing up at me every few moments. She seems put-out by my attention and suddenly stands up, picks up her coat from the radiator and with her drink goes to another corner looking at me worriedly as she passes.

I follow her progress and notice that the room has taken on a hush, people in groups, hunched over their beer glasses, slyly glancing at me when they think I am not looking, but I see everything they do. Their petty conversations make me sick. Their false laughs, so loud make me squirm.

They are all looking at me, these ordinary people on their night out, coming to the same pub week in, week out, probably all their lives, and attached to the same jobs, such small lives, such small minds, with their nine to five hearts and their throw away nappy children, plastic cars and cardboard box houses.

I hate them. I detest them all. I’m different, better than the boys they talk to. I could show them something, oh yes, but I run off at the mouth. I know what I am. I know I am better than all these other boys who know nothing. But tonight I will show someone what I can do. Tonight I will show a woman how strong I am, how demanding. I will show her what a man is.

All of a sudden everything is whirling and I feel faint. What is happening? I feel I am beside the seaside. I hear the calls of the children and the seagulls in the sky, and the smell of the sea. The smell of the sea, so long ago, when I was a child and my Gran walked me, holding my hand, onto the beach, the sand hot and soft between my toes; other children squealing at the donkeys, those big, furry long ears, moving, smelly, a bit frightening, but adventurous parts of the once a year day out. My excitement and wonder uncontained in such a world of hugeness, sights and sounds. But that’s all gone now.

I sit here with red eyes, crazy mind.

I have to admit I am crazy. For a moment I become lucid and all becomes clear. I am horrified and I rise to leave this place of my iniquity, but my other self has over-powered me and I have become too small to rise above it. I sink in my desires filling this room with intensity, manic in depressing encompassment.

People leave, muttering something’s not right. I squirm in my outsider displacement and from the corner of my eye, a tear, that nobody put there, rolls down my face.

Tonight it all comes to a head. Tonight I wait to put into action what I have thought of long before now, thoughts come, move me. I am helpless in their power. I have thought how it will be and that is what I will do. They laugh at me. Well let them. I will show them. I will give them something to really laugh at. Then they will not be so loud. Then they will not treat me like some kind of object to be ridiculed, talked down to and a problem nobody knows how to deal with.

So this wheelchair freaks them out. So these gnarled hands and twisted burned face is not their idea of sexy; but give me some more whisky and I’ll show them. I’ll show them. Tonight I will get out of here and crawl to her, whoever she is, and I will ask her, I will say: dance with me.

Image from Pixabay

Join us @steemitbloggers
_{Animation By @zord189}