When you are with an extraordinary person, you soon realize that extraordinary things are going to happen. And keep happening. That is when the fear begins. That is when it really begins.
I remember the first time we went dancing. I gave her an ultimatum: you either meet me at the Five Spot (no not there) on Friday around 9 pm or you don’t meet me at all, ever again.
“I don’t dance,” she says. I tell her that she will learn on the job. I think she’s being timid.
On the surface, there is not a lot of difference between a timid and a restrained person. One gets sense they are holding back. And Jane is always holding back.
9:15 at the Five Spot. No sign of Jane. Fuck. Where is she? Fuck.
I turn around. Jane is wearing a type of belt I never seen before, years later I learn it’s called a cummerbund. She is dressed inna suit, or suited to her dress as I tell her nervously.
I’ve never seen her so alive before in this room with me. The green around her is dissipated and I see reds blues and pinks. The music, all these years later and I can’t remember what was playing when she started to dance.
But I’m still fixated on the belt, the cummerbund, and I am formulating a question but before I can say anything she says, “you wanna dance?” in a low and unexpected way in my left ear that startles me and sets my stomach off and I say, “yeah,” kinda flatly to play it off cool and
Oh. My. God. His arms and well…his arms for starters. I can tell you everything you want to know by his arms alone. He is my perfect gentleman when we start dancing. My Orlando. Formal. It is so unexpected. Every dance and variation. She knows all the lead moves.
I expect wild antisocial beginnings from Jane for some reason, it fits her thing. But everyone is trying on new things, and she is no different.
Neither am I and we aren’t ashamed of it neither, like I see people do now out of a sense of morality I guess, but I see it more as bad sense of humor. Some hats don’t fit but they’re worth the laugh.
But no, Jane’s mother put her through the motions until she just couldn’t anymore, until the road won out like it always does.
That night at the Five Spot. It was like she was all up in flames and only through the steps, only through the constant movement and the changes could they be extinguished.
She is swinging me. Jane is daring and twirls me out in front of her, we are just an inch apart. I feel her eyes on my back.
I need a drink. Whiskey sour. A pause. I’m dizzy and I tell her to mingle and dance while I wait for it to pass.
Then I see that green light over her again and she is the Jane who I met at the beginning. Lights out shows over go home.
AJR
Aida Rends 