The room is hot. Steamy. The heat of all those bodies thrusting and grinding to the thunder beat of the music rises and condenses, forming a fog of sweat and pheromones. The cloud settles over the club, making the air thick and nearly cloying, coating the windows with fat droplets of moisture which run down the glass in tiny streams, the distilled essence of the evening. I have been standing here for half an hour by now, on the outskirts of the crowd, watching the dancers, envying the grace of all those sleek, perfumed creatures whose bodies tremble and shiver like reflected sunlight. They seem like hallucinations to me, like projections of a fevered imagination.
I came here with no one, wearing as little clothing as decency allows and heels so tall that by the end of the night it'll feel like I've been wearing iron hobbles. Men look at me every now and again, their eyes sliding from gleaming red shoes to the froth of blonde curls surrounding my face, lingering on the landmarks in between. I try to smile at them, my lips slick with gloss, red, pouting, practically begging to be put to a better use. They walk over to me, smiling in that secret satisfied way men have when they think they're about to discover a shortcut to the land of intercourse and I try not to shudder away from them. They buy me a drink; we talk for ten, maybe twenty minutes. After awhile they leave. They don't come back. I drink my drink. I like them rough; I want to taste the sharp, mind-numbing tang of the alcohol, feel the burn as it slides down my throat and into my belly. I prefer the dark liquors, the oak and smoke of whiskey, the exotic, desert wind taste of tequila. I've got three or four drinks in me by now and my buzz is starting to edge over into drunkenness. I feel looser now, less anxious about my surroundings.
The feeling of being hemmed in by hundreds of warm bodies sometimes frightens me, makes me feel short of breath, but after coming here every weekend for months on end, the fear has for the most part left me. The first time I came here I had to leave only a few minutes later, shocked by the onslaught of masculine interest I had received. That first time was only a whim, coming to the club, but I realized afterwards, driving home with my heart still hammering in my chest, that this was something I had to force myself to get used to. Normal people went to clubs. Normal people enjoyed going to clubs. Normal people did not spend every day of the week secluded in their apartment reading or just staring out the window, wondering what was going on outside. I would force myself to be normal. So Every Friday night I dress up in my skimpiest outfits (not that I have very many of them) and, feeling as if I have already been stripped half-naked, I go to the club and force myself to talk to men. This has been going on for months by now, and I think I've become pretty good at scaring them away within twenty minutes or so.
Someone touches my arm lightly and I jump, almost tripping over my own feet. Fingers dust over my skin, tracing the point of my elbow briefly before settling lightly on my forearm. My skin tingles where the fingers touched me, as if I had just been brushed with a bundle of live wires, and I wonder whether the sensation is physical or just in my head. He cups my elbow in his palm. "Are you thirsty?" he asks, and now I look into his face. He's cute. Probably too cute for his own good judging by the way he carries himself. A man like this is not used to rejection, especially from women who look like I do tonight. The way he touches me is not too invasive, but just familiar enough to indicate a knowledge of exactly what it is that girls like me are supposed to want to do with boys like him. My first instinct is to jerk my arm away, but I restrain myself. I let him touch me.
"Yes," I say. My throat is dry and the words come out almost as a croak. He smiles at me and I look into his eyes. They are dark hazel, a light brown shot through with green. I realize that this one is dangerous, but not in a predatory sort of way. I could easily lose myself in eyes like that.
"I've seen you here before," he says. His voice is pitched low but even so, I can hear it over the pulsing of the music. It's a deep voice, slightly rough as if he had either just been smoking or screaming. I smell no smoke on him. Only clean skin, the faint musk of cologne, and the barest hint of whiskey on his breath.
"I come here a lot." I say. I keep snatching little darting glances at him. He never seems to be looking anywhere but at my face, so our eyes are always meeting. Every time it happens, I feel a jolt in my belly. It makes it hard for me to concentrate.
"Could I buy you a drink?" It's barely a question.
He's already leading me to the bar when I say,
"Yes."
He makes his way easily through the crowd, who seem unconsciously to move aside for him. His hand lingers on my elbow, pulling me along in his wake. I'm surprised that I feel no desire to shake loose of him. He approaches the bar and the red-haired woman working behind it gives him her immediate attention. "Yes sir?" she asks.
"Two of the Chivas Regal, on the rocks," he says,
"The good kind please." I watch as the bartender reaches not behind the bar but beneath it, pulling out a gleaming wooden chest and setting it down in front of us. Out of it comes a squat brown bottle, its label so gilded and ornate that I can't even tell what the letters on it are. She pours a generous measure of the whiskey into each glass before handing them both to the man beside me. He begins to walk towards a bunch of high tables towards the left of the bar, a sort of annex divided from the rest of the club by a dozen potted palm trees. I follow him. He sits down at one of the high tables and I sit across from him. He hands me my drink and I raise it to my lips, taking a long, slow sip. It is the best whiskey I have ever tasted, smooth as velvet but burning with astonishing violence on its way down to the stomach. I feel drunker almost immediately. My body feels elastic, and everything is bathed in a warm whiskey-colored glow. The music pulses in my ears like a heartbeat. I wait for him to say something, but he just sips his drink and stares at me over the rim of his glass.
I say, "Do you come here often?" It's an inanity I know, but it's all I can think of to say.
"Yes, you could say that." He takes a few sips of his drink. Then he says, "You've been coming here every weekend night for the past month, but I've never seen you dance. Why is that?"
I have no idea how to respond. I wonder who he is, what he does for a living, but I won't ask him either of those things. They don't really matter do they? At least, not tonight. I wonder how to answer his question. "I guess I've never really felt like anyone wanted to dance with me," I say. It's not the truth. Plenty of men have asked me to dance. I've just never had the courage to say yes.
"You could dance with any man here," he says, gesturing with his glass at the crush of people just beyond the potted tree line. He continues to look at me and his gaze is hot, making my clothes, what little there is of them, feel suddenly too tight, stifling. I take a drink and the sensation of the ice-chilled whiskey first cooling my mouth and then burning its way down my dry throat makes me shiver. He notices.
"Are you alright?" he asks.
"Yes," I say.
"It's very hot in here, isn't it?"
"Yes." I stare at the tabletop.
