Hejira

Hejira.

It wasn't the most promising of beginnings. A party, in one of those
mute and anonymous houses in one of those mute and anonymous streets. I
had arrived late, having been at work in the off-licence until half
past ten. The rain had been and gone, leaving a shine of early summer
rain on the path to the front door. Entering to find a wholly
self-entertaining clique of postgraduate students in fancy dress that
nobody else wore. The tiny rooms bearing superficial insight into
student preoccupations; tantric sex videos;frisbees; another bloody
pulp fiction poster.

In the kitchen the usual mulch of food, brown rice whatdgerees,
shrivelled quiche and chicken legs. Wandering in semi-pathos, from room
to room, making with small talk when accosted, finding a wall to prop
me up whilst I wasted the next hour, drinking can after can, turning
down joints, trying not to have a good time, to let the evening alight
on me from some other angle, some obscure departure point.

The next hour, which I had dedicated to suffocating reality's
chilblains under beer and cigarettes, saw me fielding off wielded
breasts, requests for script readings, hugely pointless student bonding
routines involving inane insults of just about everybody and the steady
tugging of exhaustion. My inspiration for coming to this party was
utterly quenched, that there just might be an event in place for me
here, that there might might might be a song in this night, or at least
a poem.

The point, an eclipse of myself, arrived duly, and I lurched towards
the door, without farewells or hugs, without hindrance, I left the
party.

The street lengthened under my glue-eyed tiredness, and avoiding the
puddles on the pavement was handy entertainment as I walked through
this suburban drawl. A hundred yards of serpentine padding and I heard,
from the house of the party, a shout.

" Yeah, cheers for saying goodnight, see you then ".

I stopped and turned. In the doorway of the party house she stood, and
with tiredness held barely aloft in my arms I gesticulated in passive
protest.

"I'm tired, it's late...I need sleep "

She turned and went back into the house. I slumped, listened to an
instant replay of my petulant and wimpish voice, decided I might have
compromised my social valour a little. And walked back to the
house.

By she, the one who called and who then turned and went back inside the
house, I mean Melanie.

I don't remember walking back to the house. I do remember the twenty
seconds that I stood there on the street, after Melanie had gone back
into the house, swaying under my own faltering conviction that I was
tired. But the second that I stepped back into that house it was as
though the night had been diverted into nonsense. Beautiful, charged,
inspired nonsense.

Where the house had felt just small before , now I now felt cumbersome
in my volition through it, emphasising the claustrophobic proximity of
walls. Stepping into the main party room, darkened, music chundering, I
wasn't sure why I wasn't able to stop what was about to happen.

Melanie stood looking at me with a sequence of dismissive and ironic
challenges all held in one quiet expression. I stepped up to her and
took her hand. My mind was really not hanging around for this, as we
started to dance.

I had never danced with Melanie before, never danced to this South
American salsa music, never taken her hands in mine, nor rested a hand
on her hip. Somehow we were taken in, included in the convoluted
sashaying rhythms of the music, and we danced. I had no experience of
this music but let it's invitation to perform overwhelm me. I watched
Melanie, her eyes fixed on mine, felt her body fall into shapes that
adhered to the drums and bass, I followed. Then led, feeling myself
pull her towards me, to delicately line our bodies up in accordance
with the celebration and rigour of the music. We circled each other,
and touched thighs, we came together and released each other, the room
hit cliche level number ten by conveniently disappearing from our
perceptions. An hour of dancing, after so my earlier psychological
exhaustion, and I was still immersed in this sensual dervishing,
without regress. Finally, at the end of a capricious tune, where in
ironic celebration we stamped our heels with matadorian aplomb, I
pulled her to me and kissed her incredible lips in one certain moment.
We parted. Melanie looked at me as if I were a stranger, which I had
become at that moment even to myself.

to be continued....