Fusion: when two souls meet

A woman touches her black velvet dress while drinking, sipping something-ruby-lovely from a chilling glass. A man touches her through her velvet dress, thinking of the warm, lovely feeling if their bodies pressed together. Both are dressed to impress, impressed into a crowd of mostly well-dressed, and they are intent on impressing (with hopes of further, more familiarly pressing) each other. First she, then he, sees the next couple coming in. Now they both are intent on looking unimpressed while looking directly at them. She looks way too young, the man is thinking. He looks way too old for her, the woman is thinking. Neither continues staring very long, because staring is admitting to pretending to care that one is looking. Conversation carries on, attended by swarms of circulating trays of fruit-flavorings in glasses swirling with fermented sugar. A tray, born by a body wearing a worker's dress and expression, passes, tilting -almost spilling- in the process of offering its nectar to new arrivals. Lightening its load by having two glasses removed, it fades back into the throng brimming with ounces of purpose.

Sipping is good for breaking the icy-stream of conversation momentarily, and for keeping it moving along afterwards. The drinking of this drink together is their first meeting. Warm lips meet a cold glass for their first encounter with exotic fluids. The cold-fire of iced alcohol spills over longing lips, swirling inside a virgin mouth. The strong liquor forces itself on an unwitting tongue during the act of tasting, overpowering freshly-flowering pomegranate juice with the sting of preservation. The first sip -just sipping a sip- is noncommittal, but swallowing after sipping is politely unavoidable, and continuing to keep swallowing after that first smiling-sip is compulsory. The obligation of sipping and swallowing the drink in one's hand is reinforced by repetition. Having said yes once under pressure is ever-after being pressed more strongly to say yes again. It's nodding yes to every other after, despite any future hesitating saying I-don't-know's, I'm-fine-really's, or I'm-not-very-thirsty's. Is giving consent to a meeting, to going to a party, and to drinking what's being offered, going to feel the same after continuing to meet others partying, drinking, and after accepting every suggestive, condescending offer of can-I-get-you-another-one?

Continued drinking, dancing, and leading up to casual questioning, is followed by more drinking then responding to questions while dancing.... eventually wondering how long drinking-dizzying-dancing-slurring meetings will continue.

However, after prolonged drinking-dancing trying to impress faces of pressing crowds, one may be rescued by the equally pressing need-to-pee.

Women jostling to and from the Restroom stalls, clacking heels that can slip on grimy tiles. All dragging their exhaustion through the door, they are exhausted from dealing with her/him/them, panting out of breath from all those he-said-she-saids, and dragging his and hers issues everywhere is exhausting, even for a couple of he-she's in-drag. Talking, pursing lips, looking through purses, making up lips, kissing, making kissyface, making up, making up for, making out, making pretty faces. Faces expressing how frustrating are other faces pressing for a peek at their faces. Snorting, shooting, lighters click-clicking echo on the tiles, lighting up cigarettes. Abuse is trying so hard to look pretty. Pissing, vomiting, bleeding, while all are pretending not to notice and stepping over the whole mess. Teeth clench cigarettes while lips are making pretty faces, making pretty faces pretty, making pretty faces ugly, making up pretty-ugly faces of the crowd in the mirror. Sets of them are pretty (cheap) when dressing up, looking enviously at their betters that are doing more expensive dressing up. Crowding behind and in front of the glass, reflectors and reflections push and shove, heaving those who are heaving out of the way. The stench of too-much perfume dribbles off the ones who've had too much. Inhaling lingering-cleaning scents, smell-choking on hairspray and bile, and retching at the stench of multiple wretches retching. Lifting heads up higher, high above the faces of another's wretchedness. A face is smeared on the floor, vomit-lipstick stains draw lines on her cheeks. Pretty stains being drawn on tiles, drawing figures on the tiles, pretty figures being drawn-up while leaning on tiles, figures leaning on the tiles trying to draw themselves up. Overcrowding, preening, primping. Meeting faces, Comparing faces face-to-face, Competing faces, Slapping faces. Bitching, Crying "Bitch!" Vulgar shouting, trying to claw-the bitch-to-death, and attempts at bitchy-pouting only result in eyes blackened while you wait. Tearing up is overrated and overlooked. Smudges are removed. Putting on, Taking off, Taking-a-hit, Hitting up, Taking too-much, Coming-down, Touching-up, Slipping-up, and Hitting rock bottom. Some of the bawling-brawling spills out into the hall. They haul out the ones sprawling onto the floor; their careless hall-slumping makes room for one more.

Gasping the frightened gasp of thank-god-I'm-out-of-there. Swallowing. Settling nausea upon emerging from confining spaces. Looking for the He that She came in with, hoping He'll be lingering- and that they'll be leaving- by the way that they came in. Thinking in little circles of where-is-He's, where am I's, and how-do-I-get-out-of-here's. While searching for the swinging this-way-out-door, beware of getting lost among strange swingers drinking on the come-dance-with-us floor...

The crowd was busy changing while She was gone. The new faces are less pretty, more gritty, and the dresses now more XXX-pressive than impressive. Moving through the seething, swarming, living forest, trying not to see the twisted trees stripping down to their bare skin. Arms branching out in all directions, stretching, swaying in the sonic breeze. Bedecked with glow-rod rosaries, and strung with shining-jangling-bangles of metal-plating, plastic-beading, and circling bracelet chains, they make-up the in-crowd only by virtue of being part of the show that keeps packing the crowds in.

Hearing a /GOOD/ song playing means masses celebrating, en-mass lyric chanting, bodies lighting-up like Christmas trees, and feeling like a kid at Christmas getting just-what-they-always-wanted. Good is reaching out to touch someone, wanting to feel something good. Touching and wanting to feel someone else's wanting to be touched and wanted. However, grabbing at each-others clothing, and clinging to each other's garb leads to strange entanglements: Feeling too-much, being too-needy, needing to touch, touchy-feeling, feeling all the 'don't-you-touch-me's and 'oh-yes-god-touch-me-please's. Pleading for God to touch them, but finding touchable-gods more pleasing.

Tuning out the rock-pounding music means being pounded by limbs rocking-out in-tune with the music. Suddenly, thrashing dreadlocks come spinning, shooting drops of musky-sweat, spitting as the body turns and breathes, trains of spittle twirling as he spins. His shirt is sticking to his body, his shoes are slipping on the sweated moisture-grime. He falls, rolling back up as he's hitting the ground. Propelled by sweat-soaked inertia and the momentum of dreadlocks falling up even as he was falling down, he leaps up and resumes thrashing to the beat. Drops of sweat are flying off the dreads, as if sweating out the fear and dread brought on-or broken by- break dancing fever. As the fear-of-falling drips off him, he dreads only its stopping, and keeps whipping up a frenzy of dread all around him. Locks hiss suspended in air, lashing round to the beat, and making slapping-on flesh sounds, like whips spurning on slaves in the heat. Thrashing dancing-waves radiate outwards, rippling through the crowd. Rivulets of sweat pours off bodies, collecting on the floor. The music-thrashing-dancing-sweating purges memory, creating an illusion of communal emotional motion, of many thinking and moving as one. Temperature and tempo increase, and bodies thrash-dance faster, forgetting what they're dancing for.

Hearing a /SLOW/ song playing means massive booing, slowing, and the show stopping. The intermission isn't restful, and the reveling fills up the lacking-pulsing-sound-space with loud, ignoring-this-song-noises. Screaming for friends, screaming for drinks, distant sounds of someone hurling up their drinks, screaming for more screaming-sounds for filling empty space, hurling insults high into the air, and most of all cursing that unseen, unseeing, uncaring deity, The DJ, for ever allowing the Good Songs to end.

A bolt of silent-lightning shoots shadows through clouds of thickening air.

An incoming, booming music beat echoes in the sounds of ground that's being pounded by the hoards of stomping feet. Soundwaves crashing over the crowd, crowds over-crowding and crashing into one another, as crushing sounds reverberating underneath the floor. Automatic-changing-color-lighting flashes across churning seas of darkening faces, coming together in waves, cresting, falling, then rising again. Multi-faceted faces are reflecting white-light 's streaming pinpoints, gleaming back and forth at them. Energy waves to the crowd while throwing white-light beams, producing a stop-motion effect that never stops. Too-much sensing, radiating, pulsing, activity is coming coursing through in waves, breaking down boundaries between seeing, being, and feeling. Ever-moving, each in the process of moving, feeling and being moved, moving others, and feeling other beings move, and being moved by them...

Mists of skin perspiring, smoke exhaling, evaporating, unsteady spilling, and dehydrated voices are mingling and condensing on the floor. The vapor glows thickly, growing luminescent as it curls around puddles of crushed glow-sticks spilling their entrails. The pulse-pounding bass, and the fast-pulse of dancing makes glowing-disgusting slime trails writhe, smearing across the floor. The mixture of spilt-liquors is getting sticky underfoot. The mixed atmosphere is getting sticky overhead. It smothers. It is smothering. It stirs the souls of every soul entering the toxic-melting pot. It is the act of Smothering oneself. Of continuing exhaling and inhaling chemicals and waste products: CO2, BO, and evaporating alcoholic fumes mixed with smoking machines are exhausting. It's becoming a gas chamber, filling up with Pherimonalbarbital. There can be no question of anyone leaving now.

Atmospheric pressure, tension, and increasing vibrations come beating down from all directions. Crushing chest compressions brought on by oppressing crowds encroaching, are followed by slipping and falling into a deep respiratory depression. Fainting.

He carried her out into the shimmering, cool night air, and held her head under the stars, gasping for breath.