Friday, September 30, 2005

you can recognize the heroes from the lines on their face

I had to do five pages of practice 'creative non-fiction' writing for my class last Tuesday, so I went into my blog and picked out the bit I wrote after my last visit to New City Suburbs, figuring it would be easier to work it out to a longer length than to start completely from fresh. Here is what I ended up with:

The Whole Night Inside Me
One thing that remains certain when nothing else does: I love the goth bar. Wholly. Wantonly. Willingly. Never again will I question the intricacies and the tablatures of this subculture… the dyed hair, stark makeup, ebony nail polish and that lust for the melancholy darkness. For, in the midst of these people who look so different than myself, I find I love.
I love the women with their thick curtains of black hair, their heavy black lashes, and their pale ripe flesh wrapped in elaborate, ribbon-ed corsetry; I am felled by the haughty swing of those confident hips and the sexy half-smiles painting their lips cherry red. I love the men with their black buckled pants and tight shirts lining lean bodies, their unrestrained ecstatic motion, the way they close their eyes - wild - reckless - when they dance; I am held in rapture by their unselfconscious sweat.
I love the music. From the speakers: a thrilling mix of songs and anthems that come in as many varied flavours as the people heaving themselves around and against me. Where once I was a stationary mass of skin and floating bones, now I am no longer myself. I am a pendulum, pitching my body side to side in an even rhythm. I am a buoy rocking in angry ocean waves, bobbing for breath in a wash of feverish flotsam. I’m a whore, my crux meeting violent thrusts that take me against a rough industrial wall. And coming from behind me, a man who looks just like Perry Farrell grins cheekily as he smoothes through my inner circle, his feet never touching the floor.
I love the building, it’s dark walls and the lone barred cage holding tightly it’s eager go-go dancing captive. The tiny women’s washroom, whose individual stalls incomprehensibly loose two or three females at a time, are littered with wads of paper towels and friendly conversations with kind and bleary-eyed strangers. The sticky, cluttered bar where a handsome man with a long sleek ponytail snaking down his back plays with his ‘adults only’ chemistry set: the “King of What’s Your Poison”. This last visit I notice things I failed to notice my drunken first time -- the bloodied zombie "corpse" dressed in a tattered, splattered wedding gown hung suspended from the ceiling; the blue and green fairy lights circling around the main bar, assuming a rebel personality far different than that of those strings of lights garlanding the branches of a family Christmas tree; the face of the DJ in semi-darkness behind his eloquent technology. Did you hear me? Give me music.
I love the crowd. The men and women -- mostly men -- sitting and standing in the immediate areas surrounding the dance floor, not dancing, eyes trained on the near-naked woman gyrating her 98% nude body against the slightly wary form of her female friend. The man dressed entirely in the garb of a medieval warrior, complete with breastplate, chain mail, and long mane of blonde hair, striding purposefully past the clustering oglers, his own eyes intent on the bar. Another scantily clad woman, this one buttered into a white plastic nurse’s uniform, who, as I watch in curiosity, presses against her beau and wraps her languorous limbs around his obliging body. I marvel at the messy slip of her tongue into his mouth.
I love the incarnation of sexuality here. In any other of this city’s dens of iniquity, sex blunders like a drunken relative through the tables at a nephew’s wedding reception -- usually expected, sometimes rejected, and almost always clumsy and callous. Here, I imagine the heavily palpable erotic undertones manifested in the form of a lanky ribald libertine with clear wide eyes and beautifully androgynous features, who moves like a calm before the storm through the writhing mass of humanity and runs a sharp fingernail down a bare arm, purses wet lips into the crease of a palm, licks at sweat beading on a dancer’s damp neck, leans into a woman touching chest to breast. Woman and woman, woman and man, man and woman, man and man. Anything goes, and only the timid go home alone to nurse the delicious ache in their loins.
I love the freedom, the expression, the vital sense of being that pulses at the core of this place. We’re not lacquered perfection, not shiny ice and all that glitters, not silent judgement or calm acquiescence. We are wild embraces, lustful laughs, sweet liquor smell, raw sentiment, and anxious passion. We are hard core life. Give me music. Give me nothing watered down.

2 Comments:

At 7:40 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Natalie.

I found your blog through the link that Joshua has posted on his page. I really like it!

I will not try to write anything witty or deep in this comment (like I usually try to do). The reason: compared to how you write, it will come off like the prose of a first grader.

I really enjoy your style of writing, and see why you are studying this field. Keep blogging, I love reading.

Oh, and now that I've already read your whole thing and posted a comment, I hope it's ok that I AM reading it. *fingers crossed*

Welcome to the blogosphere. Keep writing. And, do you like Gwen Stefani? Just wondering,

Kent.

 
At 3:13 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

In response to holly's message: one man's trash is another man's treasure.

Or in this case one woman's...

Good Night.

 

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