"A little help here? I can't tell which parts of me aren't blue."
My hands are, my arms, most of my legs. My face is red and yellow, even to the insides of my ears. I stand in the white light and cover my hands from the bowl of inky food coloring before me, running them up my chest to my throat, rivulets of indigo curling around my breasts.
Quiet the way you are, your hands reaching around me to dip into the bowl. I watch, half fascinated by your palms turning blue, half distracted by your breath on my neck. Then your hands are at the small of my back, gliding up, painting me. You're taking longer about it than strictly necessary, and I'm not going to find the will to make you hurry.
When you're finished and I'm completely blue from head to foot, I hang the painted cloth over me, front and back. There's no connecting piece, and so I've a long strip of exposed blue skin from my shoulder all the way down. It's cold outside, so I tie a cord around my waist to close the garment somewhat. I turn for your approval.
"What do you think? I look like Dreamland to you?"
A crooked smile from you. "You do. If you still want to go we should do it now, before I'm forced to ruin all your work."
Outside the wind is blowing, working its chilly fingers in all the holes in my clothes as cleverly as you do. I pull the cloth tighter around me and try to avoid rocks—I'm barefoot, after all, in spite of your and everyone else's advice.
Fourth Avenue, when we get there, is already packed with people for two blocks in either direction—some three thousand is the usual attendance at this party. Where we've come onto it, aside from a huge assortment of costumed locals, there's a collection of drummers warming up, which is wonderful—right where I wanted to be. I take your hand and lead you into the crowd—I don't want to lose you, and after all I'm still not quite sure how much you really want to be here, and how much you're doing it to indulge me and see me in my revealing costume. I guess in the end it doesn't matter—I'm glad you're here.
The drums start, and I'm ready to walk, to run, ready to dance. Flutes, drums, maracas, tambourines—everyone in our immediate area has found something to make noise with. I'm given a child's rattle by a nearby mother, and I shake it, though I feel my heart should be loud enough... I'm sure you, at least, can hear it. My favorite day of the year, my favorite celebration, and I'm humming, twitching, aching to move, feeling intensely in my body the way I sometimes do when I'm dancing, and sometimes when I'm drunk. Intoxicating, indeed, this night's beauty and your gaze on me like a hand.
Under the overpass at the end of Fourth, near the parade's destination, and I feel like I'm entering Abbadon, people on either side dressed in white death's-head masks with torches, leading us down. The dissolution of death seems almost erotic to me tonight, I'm not afraid of it...coming apart to be put back together in another order, incorporating fragments from all around—from you, from the rest of the dancers, from the music, from the wind. I'm warm inside with excitement, but my outside is cold, so I twine my arm around yours and walk closer, communicating my thrill to you by osmosis.
We come up out of the tunnel into the field where the performance is getting under way. All the people ahead of us are here now, which means there's room about to breathe but not much else. We're able to get closer to the stage, though, and the crush is even greater up there. You're behind me, still holding my hand, and I can practically chew on the shoulder of the girl in front of me, should it take my fancy.
Flam Chen is onstage and doing what they do best: dancing and burning things. Great white stilt-walkers strut about, making circuitous arches over the whirling dancers below, who swing balls of fire on the ends of chains in patterns that linger in my eyes. Before long my front is blazing with heat and my back is cold, with a line of confused skin along either side of me, which a certain wicked man behind me now begins to trace with his fingertips.
I lean back against you, the bass of the music vibrating my breastbone in sync with my heartbeat, and yours, as I feel it near my left shoulder. Your fingers are giving me shivers to go with the goosebumps I already had. But the crowd is like a New York subway—even as you tilt your head and kiss my neck, even as you make my knees weak, I couldn't fall down if I wanted to. Trapped between you and the fire.
A new song begins, a song I know. It's Massive Attack, Protection, and it's well-known to me and to every other member of the audience, I think. The kind of people who are here to see this show tonight are the kind of people who know this song, have danced to this song. The heavy bass begins and the crowd seems to sway as a unit, dancing as best they can in such confined conditions.
The blazing light onstage makes our place very dark, as you continue tickling my sides and kissing my neck below my left ear. I reach up and tangle my fingers in your hair, leaning my head back against your shoulder, but still watching the show through hooded eyes.
