Bathroom Monologue: She Danced

She danced like no one I’ve ever seen. She made me a fan of ballet inside of one minute. You ever stick your hand out the window of a car and wave it up and down in tune to the breeze? Like it’s a wing in the breeze, or part of an invisible current? You ever done that when you’re tired and your defenses are down, and you find that feeling becomes more important than steering the car? No, you’d never admit it, but I do that. And watching that princess bound and dip like she didn’t have a backbone, it was like watching another person perform the feeling I get in my hand. She wasn’t lithe, but the way she moved would have made a girl made out of wires jealous. It was the only real elegance I’ve ever seen, and so sensitive to the way the music was going that I never would have believed she was improvising, and I never could have believed anything else. I knew right then on the edge of my chair that this was the woman I was going to marry.

It’s a lucky thing I fell in love with her at first sight, too, because Goddamn, she was a bitch. Snuck into the reception early intending to gush at her and discovered the princess chewing out the horn section for being a quarter-beat off. Tried to bring her a glass of bubbly and she blew past me, bumped the glass and spilled it all down the side of my jacket. Didn’t even look back.

Few minutes later I sidled up next to her and she handed me a glass of bubbly. I thought it was an apology. Ten minutes later she turned, looked surprised I was still there and set to chewing me out. Thought I was staff and intended me to take her stale drink to the kitchen, not sip it and listen to the conversation.

That I didn’t smack her across the hall is evidence of love at first sight, or at least extremely patient lust. She was the kind of woman you had to hate, because even with her lips curled and her words condescending, she was beautiful. Normal woman, even a pageant queen, looks like a vulgar animal when pissed off. I guess she’d been in a tiff so often that beauty had settled down and conformed over her angry features as well as the serene ones. The ones she had when she danced.

I tried to weasel into her conversations, but my ignorance of the fine arts served me poorly. I was verbally spanked on the history of dance, and then on the history of sculpture. My attempt to make amends with another flute of bubbly was met with a tirade on the glass not being chilled enough. Overheard her saying she didn’t want to talk to any more of the girls, so when I saw a couple approaching I warned them – but warned them in earshot and was rebuffed and poked in the chest until I was pressed up against the wall. Banging into the wall did something in my head, though, and I ripped off my jacket, still wet with her stale drink, and tossed it in her face.

Even then, I wasn’t really mad. I just wanted to see how mad she’d get at a legitimate provocation. The reaction? Adorably furious. Chewed me out so harsh her flunkies retreated, and the rest of the night when she got tiffed over something she'd seek me out and blame it on me, or at least send me a glare across the floor, like I was an investor in everything that got under her skin. No doubt in my mind that’s how I landed the first date.