Saturday night & the dancefloor is empty, lights pulsing offbeat to a song that hadn't much of one to begin with. It's skank & skeeze, cheap drinks & cheap dates: but we're here on our own beat, our own drum. Half done with two dollars of gin & tonic & we're out -- we're not quite clearing the floor because we've no brooms & nothing else would make a difference, anyway.

So it's dance, dance; dance to the rhythm of your soul, because there's nothing in the song to dance to: it's dance to your own beat, because the cute girl in grey cares nothing for you.

She has the best face on the floor; the best face in the bar, and you'd look lower but her jacket, grey but for red stripes, defies the fashion ala mode & is, indeed, not form-fitting enough to show more than a hint: but through that fog of gin you decide the face is enough. A pitcher or two later or a song or two before last call you commit to a simple compliment.

A 'hey, you have the best smile here tonight, & thank you for that' -- no strings, nothing but sincerity -- but after your friends disappear for piss and people and you disappear for a smoke (because she disappeared for something), she's gone.

And you're left there, dancing with people you've known for years, or for weeks that feel like years. Dancing, like a sad old candle, but dancing still, two hours in. And you can't imagine why, but you feel like dancing: something in the blood, (something in the alcohol in the blood) makes you move, wishing still for that one damn song...