It always seems to work in the movies. The flashing lights, the pounding music, the sticky floor. The company of friends and the crush of dancing bodies. It’s a classic recipe for a good night out. It should be stimulating enough, exciting enough to get your mind off things. It’s supposed to lift your spirits–it’s supposed to help. In the movies, it always seems to help. But it’s becoming clear to me that the movies have lied.
We are a group of four, leaning in over a round high-top as we converse with each other through the roar of the music. Half the group is my regular two, the only people I ever see anymore. But we’re joined by a newbie–a normie, draped all in black to blend in with the rest of us. The people around the venue are also clad mostly in black, their clothes showing flashes of leather and lace, their faces painted in strange, unappealing patterns heavy with eyeliner or dark lipstick. There’s a lot of big hair bouncing around and the music on the speakers isn’t anything you would hear in a normal club on a Saturday night. But this isn’t a normal club, or a normal Saturday night.
I pull a fake purple flower out of the glass bowl on the table and turn it in my hand, staring into its petals like a distant landscape. I’m maintaining my usual observational silence among the group as two of them talk enthusiastically about something I don’t understand and have already tuned out. The newbie next to me watches them, also locked out of the conversation. I suppose I should try to reach out to him, find a way to pull him in. But the weight on my chest is immense and I have no thoughts to share, no questions to ask. He glances at me for a moment, studying my face like he also thinks he should say something. But when I don’t look up, he turns back to the others. I just spin the flower and gaze into it, hoping the dramatic makeup will disguise some of the pain in my eyes.
Later on, we’re all exchanging words like germs, and I feel six eyes on me as I speak. They’ve given me the spotlight with their headlight stares, so I perform. I make some clever joke and move from pose to pose, from mask to mask. I feel myself begin to slip back into my body and move naturally. But the moment I do, I recognize the tilt of my head, the expression on my face, the movement of my shoulders–and suddenly grief hits me like a truck. It’s a gesture that I usually see from the outside–one I picked up from proximity, from months of watching it in adoration. The pain knocks the air right out of me and my face crumples as my voice dies. The friend to my left pulls his eyebrows together and asks me for an explanation, but I don’t answer. Each face around the circle is turned toward me in puzzlement and my silence hangs in the air like balloons. Eventually, the well-mannered newbie breaks the fog and says it’s time to dance.
On the dance floor, there is just enough room to squeeze in, barely enough to bounce from side to side. I don’t mind just yet because I’m still working on a late-night redbull. The four of us cluster into a lopsided circle, finding our rhythm to the unfamiliar beats. Maybe one or two songs in, the can is empty and we creep farther into the center of the crowd.
The lights pour down on our skin, strobing erratically and casting bizarre shadows across our features. We dance, we jerk about. We twist, we roll, we spin. All the while, the music punches through the air with a thumping, reverb-heavy beat. We carve out a space near the wall with enough room to actually move and I fall into the haze. Faces and bodies around me blur together and the sound crawls down my throat to take my body as its own.
I am nothing but a conduit. I lurch, shake, and spin. I flail, jerk, and jolt. I spasm. I convulse. I step and I jump and I bounce and I roll and I stumble and I twist all around. The minutes tick on and on; the songs flick by like cars on a busy street. I vanish into my own muscles, just another body in the scene. My hands curl through the air, my hips swing, my feet slam down over and over to the beat and I feel myself start to disappear. Each measure, each verse, each note pushes me further and further away, deeper into my anatomy until I’m near-mindless. Amidst the hive of freaks and ghouls, I can almost, almost begin to forget.
Method of Mancy 