A tale of two personas
It’s been a good night. A much different night than I’m used to, but still good. Very good, actually, as I write this.
I’m in an odd sharing mood, so I’ll share my thoughts of the evening.
I went to The Dawning tonight, which is the weekly Goth night in Charlottesville, VA. Even though my attitude is very goth-friendly, I’ve never really embraced goth culture to the point where I dressed and acted “goth” all that much, except maybe for those several years where I wore dark colors most of the time. I have always enjoyed the music, however, even if I’ve drifted away from that recently.
It started off slowly. Very slowly, in fact. I only really know a couple peolple down here in Cville, so I felt a lot like an outsider at first; I stood rooted in my own spot off the edge of the dancefloor, vaguely keeping time to the music for the first set or two.
I can never dance unless I have a few drinks in me. “Coordination juice” I call it. I was bored with my lonely spot, so I went up to the bar for a captain coke. Two more, and I was out there on the floor.
One of the few people I know down here was DJing tonight, so I requested a song I always felt would cause multiple deaths in a mosh pit if that were ever to happen. I never thought I’d be dancing to it (though I had always hoped to someday), but there I was. (Apologies to whoever it was I landed on when I jumped in the air to land at the end of one of the vocoded “switchback” transitions.) It was glorrrrrious.
I danced like I’ve never danced before tonight. It didn’t matter. I just moved, bobbing along to the beat when there was one, moving fluidly inbetween when there wasn’t. I don’t know how my life is going to turn out; I don’t know if I’ll ever truly be happy, but for a little while I was the life of my own party. I don’t care who noticed or who didn’t.
Case in point, after the captain cokes, I swtiched to Corona with lime, my ‘new’ favorite drink as of several months ago. I was resting up for a bit while I was gearing up for my next appearance on the dancefloor, and when I finished the second one, I arced it into a nearby trashcan. Normally I’m quite unwilling to draw any kind of attention to myself, but the centripital force of that arc as I swung the bottle into the trash felt good, the resulting crash of the breaking glass no less so; I was already halfway to the dancefloor as the glass shattered into a million pieces.
Right now I’m sweaty. I’ve cooled off, and my drenched clothes are kinda cold now. I’m still kinda buzzed. Tomorrow I’m going to hurt. Physically, cerebrally. But it doesn’t matter. I danced tonight; I expressed myself to the end of the world, and I’m still here to tell the tale.
It was a good night.