oblivion.

Originally written August 31, 2003

There were many people at the Cabaret that did not belong there. I should know, I was one of them. But no one succeeded in not belonging so well as David. He so completely did not fit in that he didn't even realize it.

David was a very nice man. A very strange and nice man. He talked to me about my life plan in very loud tones since it was hard to hear over the Cher remixes. I still don't really understand what he said, more because it made no actual sense than because of the music. But I smiled and nodded and laughed where I thought appropriate and he seemed satisfied that I was a very nice girl.

David was there with his girlfriend, who was there to see her son. Her son is a drag queen, a friend of Casey's and mine. We were all there to watch him shimmy in a pink fringe dress while he did lip sync. I wondered how I would feel about coming to see my son shimmy in a pink dress while he did lip sync. Not too well, I decided.

When the drag queens weren't shimmying, the masses were. Actually, the masses gyrated more than shimmied. I gyrated up there with them a little bit. A very little bit. I've determined that being able to succeed at dancing in a club is all a matter of confidence. I don't have that confidence, so I merely manage to succeed looking kinda goofy and out of place on the dance floor.

David liked to dance. His girlfriend told him he probably shouldn't dance, and we all found out the reason for that soon enough. Despite the warnings, David took to the floor, a middle-aged straight man moving erratically on the edge of the dance floor at the gay club.

Erratically is the right word here. David may have been dancing to music, but it wasn't music that was playing that night or even music that I had ever heard. His limbs were all dancing individually to something different. His right hand not only didn't know what the left was doing, it wasn't even too sure of its own movements.

Casey and I watched from the safe sidelines of our table like onlookers of a car wreck. Then Casey suggested that I go dance with David, saying that David had almost asked me to dance earlier. I think it was because I was the only female he knew who was willing to throw herself into the dark and strange pit that is the dance floor.

With a sigh, a deep deep sigh, I got up and headed back to the dance floor to dance with David, the very nice and strange man that did not dance well. Luckily, dancing with someone at a club basically means that you dance in that person's general vicinity, facing them. This I could handle. And I had to admit that I must have looked like the very image of excellent and confident club dancing next to him.

He was having such a good time. Maybe he knew he looked a little silly and maybe he didn't. He didn't seem to care either way. We danced that way for several songs (those stupid remixes go on for next to forever) before I pleaded fatigue and we sat back down. He thanked me, twice, for dancing with him.

I flatter myself by thinking that I made him happy, that he felt pretty good about having a young girl dancing with him. And I had a good time, too, just following his lead and letting myself have a good time without worrying about the confidence I wasn't exuding.

Maybe dancing isn't always about confidence. There are people with confidence who are still bad dancers, at which point confidence crosses into obnoxious arrogance for those of us watching on the sidelines. Sometimes, it's about oblivion.

And having a good partner.