I could feel the sweat forming on my cold, clammy hands.I was so nervous. You were my friend, I know. But I had never danced with a girl before. I'd only danced with a girl in my
imagination, over and over again, holding my pillow in the dim light of my bedroom. But now, two years after my first love, I found myself dancing with you -- a girl who reminded me a lot of her... except
you didn't care what people thought of you and me going around together. After all, you didn't have any friends either -- not
real friends, at least.
Not like you were to me. Not like I was to you.Katie.You were the girl who never quite fit into the upper-middle class gated neighborhood across the freeway from where I lived. And I was the guy who never quite fit into the projects, where your parents forbade you from going to. But you would come by anyway -- you got your license before I did, a few months earlier, right when you turned fifteen. You would come and pick me up, and we'd drive to places the other kids wouldn't go.
There, on our hill by the water storage tank, that night overlooking the city far in the distance, I held your hand.
The first girl's hand I ever held. And I put my other hand awkwardly around the small of your back. You laughed, telling me that my hands were sweaty, and that I had sweat on the brow of my lip. I kept my distance, six inches away from you. And your pretty eyes, like
sapphires reflecting the distant city lights, smiled at me. You bit the corner of your lip, I remember that. To this day, I remember that.
I knew we would never be more than friends. You would never be able to introduce me to your parents, and family was important to me. After all, you had blond hair and blue eyes and fair skin, you were rich; and I was
ethnic, with black hair and brown eyes, and my family was poor. So we retreated from the world, to hang out with each other on our hill, in a place only we knew about where we could talk and be ourselves.
Where, that night, I danced with you for the first time.
"I love this song." You told me, sitting side-by-side on the worn asphalt, leaning against the door of your car. I thought it was funny, a rich girl and a ghetto boy listening to a country-folk ballad overlooking a city.
"It always makes me want to dance." I told you, swaying back and forth and knocking into your shoulder. You laughed, pushing me away. I was drunk. I'd already blazed through one forty of Old English and was working on the second.
"Let's dance." I blurted out, my eyes closed, a second later catching myself. OMG I couldn't believe what I just said.
I started to open my mouth to say that I was just kidding, but you spoke first.
"Ok." You laughed. And you grabbed my hand.
And a thousand sensations rushed through me all at once.
And it's run for the roses
As fast as you can
Your fate is delivered
Your moment's at hand
It's the chance of a lifetime
In a lifetime of chance
And it's high time you joined
In the dance
It's high time you joined
In the dance...
Years of dancing practice in my mind helped. And it didn't.
You weren't a pillow. I tried my made-up Viennese Waltz. That didn't work, I just ended up dragging you around, almost making you trip. So we just stood there, our feet still, and we swayed back and forth. I pushed up a little closer to you. And you nudged up into me. I couldn't see your face anymore, my chin against your ear. But I could feel you smiling.
And I started to sing along softly, trying to replicate a country twang.
"Easy there, Nashville." You smiled.
"Shut up, I know you like it." I teased, drunkenly.
"Mm-hmm." You turned into me a little.
The nervousness was gone. It was just comfortable now. You and me, good friends sharing a moment together, having a dance together. Good friends, in a more innocent time, before our lives became a place of
wrath and of
tears. We had no idea that night what fate would befall us, and what terrible horrors the hand of life would bring to us in the coming years. That night may have been the last night of pure, innocent love either of us would have for the rest of our lives.
That dance, our first dance, may have been the last pure, innocent thing either of would ever do for the rest of our lives.
