No touching

I wasn't going to go. Friday's are for dancing and Saturdays are for wild oats. But, they called. I made every excuse, but a fitting one, and then jumped in the shower and threw on a pair of jeans. If you skip Friday, they come lookin' for you on Saturday....


The Saturday faces are different. Piranhas and barracudas. Nothing like the manatees, tattooed and grey, comfortable in the warm blue waters of Friday nights...I wasn't at home, but I wasn't far from it....


In the murky, jerky waters.... I tipped my Michelob to the mirror and the faces lined up watching me watching them..... the elbows on the counter, stray dollar bills in "I fold" concession, laugh lines and frown lines sagging like a Salvadore Dali painting. And I ached for them. These strangers on the other side of the bar.


The band played everything except Rolling Stones and I sat out the set. Fidgeted. Smoked. Told stories.Twirled my love beads. Friday's are for hippies. This wasn't feelin' like a Friday.

"Do you wanna dance?" he said, inching closer, breathing canned beer on me, three lines into the slow song. "No touching" I whispered and he vanished, poof! and he was gone....until the next one. "No touching" I whispered and he laughed, took a hand from the crowd and disappeared.

"Now?" my friend asked, nodding to the dance floor, questoning, comfortable, but not sure, and I threw my head back and said "yes, but no touching".....

"I don't know how" faded into the lyrics, the music, the rhythm, the rhyme, the move me, the this way, the that way, the "I've never done this before"....and I "mmmmmmmm,hhhmmmmmed" him as we danced eyes closed, around the couples, between them, into the music.....close, but never touching. Driftwood in the waves

"She won't let you touch her?" beer~breath bellowed over the band, into our peace. I never opened my eyes. Moving. Swirling. Psychelic circles, paisley foot steps. "No, she wont let me" Lucas whispered, barely aware he was talking. "Then take her back where she came from!", BB belched from his four square podium, arms draped around his mortified prize, feet shuffling, rough red cheeks touching hers.....chest puffed out like a plaster rooster on a kitchen wall....

We gave him two fingers and kept dancing.....


Into 1976 at The Saloon. Into Christian's living room, fluorescent light's glowing, mermaid goldish growing in a bathub. Into yesterday. Tomorrow. Down the dirt road to Peace Creek. Through a midnight sand dune. Over a rickity tickity wooden bridge. We just kept dancing, no touching....just feeling. The music.

The guy with the canned breath and canned lines stopped, mid mindless step, and watched.

And then he surrendered.


"Peace......"
was the last thing I heard him mutter as he left the floor.....