Years ago (though I feel this must have happened decades or ages ago), when I was younger and more restless, I wrote this piece over a very bad hangover....
I woke up this morning with a terrible headache and a very bad breath. I got home at around three this morning and the few hours of sleep were making me too dizzy. Nonetheless, I had to get up and start the day despite my protesting eyes.
Last night’s show at the club was really incredible. There were the usual dances of the ladies, but one particular performance stole the night. Two couples danced with the candles – the men glistened with oil and sweat, and the ladies almost stripped and bare. They swayed to the rhythm of a hungry music, their orgiastic dance done on the floor or on the poles, red and colorful lights blinking and flickering with their pulses, and the candles melting and dripping on their flesh. While on the other side of the stage, another lady was dancing under a shower. The audience was transfixed, and if the music were turned low, everybody’s labored breathing would be heard. The show was not something I always see on the other nights. It was great and it “affected” me. Aside from the physical effect it naturally did, it brought me some kind of sadness – sadness for those people who have to “dance” for a living, and sadness for myself.
For countless times and at various places, I hang out with my friends over endless talks and beer. I always love and enjoy their companies, and I’m grateful to them. Yet, doing this more often than it should be makes me feel my life is disoriented, or aimless, or whatever terminology that suits it. It is as if my life has no center, that I am like a rotten piece of log adrift on an endless sea. I don’t feel my life is wasted at all. I only want my self and my life to be pulled together; I want something that will complete me, something like a gravity that will keep me whole. Those dancers on the stage, they revolve around the pole, swaying and teasing. I could only hope then that soon, I would move and dance my life around a pole.
At past two o’clock, when the club was almost closing up, we decided to go home and I dropped a friend somewhere. At 80 – 100 kph, I rode home. I love my motorcycle; it has not failed me yet. And driving drunk was a different high. The streets were deserted and the night wind cut through my jacket. It was exhilarating. I felt I myself was a gravity. Speed plus alcohol must be then equal to gravity. LOL
I know this is not good. I don’t want to be doing this again but I enjoyed it. Being always out at night is not good either, but still, I enjoy it. The dancers on the stage, though they dance around the poles, they never remain there. They always roam around the stage – they never really stayed on the center. And I fear that I never really want to be attracted to a gravity. I fear my world would stand still when I find the reason to remain in the center. I love my life now. Yet, the other part of my heart hopes for a gravity that will complete me, an irresistible gravity, a gravity that is strong enough to hold me forever.
