The dance

Chances of staring at the walls are great. But the fear of being a wallflower is enough to stiffen my spine. I'll go out. I'm not backing down, sensibly cowering in my apartment though I'm longing to dance. Fuck them. I've done it before. The worst that can happen is I feel stupid, with a drink. Courage needs to be practiced - the fact that I'm afraid makes me more likely to do it. 

"I like your energy," they say in the beginning. Ah, yes. My energy. My fearlessness. The part they will mistake later for anger, for snobbery, for disdain -- a judgement of them and an affront to their dominance -- but which in the newness of time reels them in, seems exciting & fun. At once the creator and the destroyer of my happiness...my energy, which propels me forth into situations I fear, feminine charms blazing, lashes lowered, shoulders thrown back, hips swinging. Why I will always laugh at the things they say in the beginning, because I know, I know this very thing that captures your imagination and pulls you across the room is that which you will learn to hate in me.
My energy. A smokescreen to fool them into thinking I'm not afraid. Not beating, counting the minutes until I can run, under the forced prescriptions of a ruler of my ego which demands I not shrink, not hide, not cower. I will let the screams of the drunken man on the street wash over, a wind blowing reeds, safe in my music cocoon. No angry rejoinder from me. I am water. Hard as you hit, I simply absorb, disperse. My energy is the oil in my amphora, carefully carried into the loud and crowded bar, where I know no one, where everyone is younger than me, where my heart will not reach out to me, but another impossible charm boy will dance with me. Dance with me. Dance and tell me the parts of my face in Spanish. Dance and charm. Tell me you like my energy. My energy, the smokescreen.