She was dancing right in front of me. Her eyes tightly
closed, her arms raised high. Her dark hair whirling about
and a look of bliss upon her face. She was oblivious to
me, to her friends, to the bodies around her. She felt only
the thundering bass and the abrasive hihat that formed
the heartbeat of the dancefloor; a heart beating 125 times per minute.
Green laser beams pierced the smoke high above our
heads. Strobes lit the club, and everyone was floating in
mid-air. The bodies dancing yet not. Feet in one position,
then another without moving through the space between.
Burned into retinas the image of others' hair floating at
improbable angles, as if the rules of gravity were ignored
in the discrete time of the strobe.
Snare drum suddenly coming at eighth-beat intervals.
Getting louder and louder, intensity building. The girl
with a smile on her face. A smile of pleasure yet also of
longing, an almost sexual need for the snares to peak,
for the climax of the song. A single bead of sweat on her
forehead. Mouth open slightly, almost in surprise.
With a cymbal crash, it comes. All the dancers jump a
foot in the air and gyrate wildly. The DJ looks down on the
crowd that he controls. The lights flash; green, red and
yellow. The climax holds for 30 seconds. She dances
faster.
The song slows and fades into the next one. She opens
her eyes. She's still smiling. We go back to the table to
sit and talk.