senseless self-indulgent fiction

“Sings like an ANGEL!” reads the flyer. The letters stand perhaps an inch tall, stylized. They are unremarkable in a world of flyers, of stylized letters.

I am not the type who does this. I want to make that clear –– I am not the type. But I knew him once. I knew him a long time ago.

“But he DANCES. . .”

His picture is artfully altered on the advertisement, which I have stowed in my purse. Embarrassing, the whole thing, that I go to such a length to see him again –– and why? He is a creature from my past, not even a shadow.

“. . . like the DEVIL.”

His picture is a silhouette, the lines of his collarbone and cheeks lit gently, almost imperceptibly. They painted his eyes with dry wine, velvet-red, but I remember their true colors. I wrote poems to those eyes, made love to those eyes and to the soul behind them.

I dressed appropriately, which is to say I dressed inappropriately –– how else was I supposed to get in, past the bouncer with his hungry dark face? –– and the heels hurt, and my legs are too pale as they slide against the slit in the chocolate-brown velvet, but this does not matter. I look at the hungry dark face, and I see myself reflected there, hungry, eyes painted dark. A girl can paint anything she wants on a face like mine, and I’ve painted the image of tango and sex, of tonight.

He smiles, the bouncer, and bows me in. His gaze follows me, and it feels worse than hands on my ass. I am filthy, worse than the whores who come here to meet new men. I am a liar, behind my painted face.

I pull my jacket tight over my chest, too pale against the chocolate-brown velvet, and I enter the Lux. This was a bad idea, but I am here already. I am not the type. I want to make that clear.

The band is playing a light tune, in major, to welcome people in before the main event. (He is the main event. He sings like an angel, but dances like the Devil. His songs will not be in major.) I sit near the front and cross my legs, bare in the lowlight. I could cover them up, but I don’t. That’s not who I am tonight.

I order a dry wine, a merciless shiraz, and warm the glass in my hand as I wait. The wait is long. I do not want to take off the jacket, but I have to. Appearances are important. The gazes fall on my bare back, too pale. The tattoo adds color, but not the color they’re looking for.

Slowly, the crowd’s voice dims in anticipation, and the lights dim, and the spotlights shine before me. The curtain is drawn –– velvet. Always velvet. Tango is a bare-skin kind of music, but when bare skin is not an option, second-skin velvet will do.

When the curtains open, he is there, clad all in white –– outrageous, perfect, maddening white! –– and I take my first sip of shiraz before setting the glass on the table. I am afraid of shattering it. I am afraid of dropping it. I am already shaking.

His face is in shadow, but he looks up, and I see them. They cannot see them, I know, but I am close, and I remember. I wrote poems to those eyes.

One poem went like this:

nuclear winter begins with explosion:
with heat that melts willpower
with force that rocks the soul
with an all-consuming fire that fades
desolate, cold
to gray.

Those who have not studied his eyes dub them green or perhaps hazel. They are not. They are atomic bombs tucked into tiny spheres, and they were mine once.

As I sit watching, Michael sings for the crowd.

His voice is different, and I remember when he could not dance anything but a waltz or a simple swing. Between then and now, he has grown taller, his shoulders broader, and his ever-graceful lines ripple with muscle that was not there before. He used to be awkward, in an endearing kind of way, the way he couldn’t wrap his mind around his own body, around tango and sex. I loved him for it.

I do not love him now, but I love to watch him dance, and I love to hear him sing.