ticklish?

ok i must confess to feeling a chink in the armor of happiness that i have been championing of late. maybe it’s more like a tickling at the heel, right near the achilles tendon, reminding me of a point of vulnerability. my predictions of a hot night at minna were in fact realized. lots of people in less clothing out there brushing bare skin against bare skin. physically flirting until someone can’t stand it anymore, and spontaneous make-out sessions break out on the dance floor. and of course “the piston”. the two new 15″, self-powered 500w mackie subs blasting out only frequencies below 120 Hz, sitting right next to the 1200w driven 18″ cabinets we already had. (i think i have the cutoff frequency a bit higher on those guys, around 180 Hz or so). basically everyone is standing inside a giant vibrator.
it’s something that i never used to fully understand or appreciate about dance music. i have been a “singer-songwriter”, based very much on the apollonian side of the apollo/dyonisius dichotomy posited by nietszche in “the birth of tragedy” (until happy-hour, of course, when it was dionysus ’til you drop……) i’ve always made songs that were more intellectually fulfilling than sheer primal feeling. and i think that i was unfairly prejudiced against the pure sexual energy of dance music, the repetitiveness of the beat, the lack of intelligent lyrics to create a synergy of emotional and cerebral theme.
dance music is pure carnal expression when done right. it’s about getting the frequencies and the vibrations into a harmonic pendulous sweet spot, setting up a rhythm and then not letting up until everyone is sweaty and screaming and spent. holding the crowd in hypnotic sway so deep that when you drop the beat they shriek out for the pulsation to resume. that kind of thick sexual tension is what sells the liquor. but it is sometimes a little bittersweet to leave that environment alone.

tonight, there was a girl at the bar, and we kept making eye contact. smiles, flirting, fun. i was drinking my st. paulina in the corner behind the bar, where i usually stand on wednesdays, taking it all in. who knows, maybe she was trying to flirt a free round out of me. that is a fairly common ego play for girls, to bat eyelashes until the people behind the bar start pouring freebies. and of course, my ego wants only to think that she’s interested in me, not the weapons of mass intoxication at my disposal. in any case, there was some very real, palpable flirtation for a while.

later in the evening, after sitting in the office for a while on the computer, i returned to my spot and saw her again. passionately making out with some dude who i immediately dislike. taller than me. more handsome. right then she opens her eyes, and they meet mine. there is a moment of recognition. i feel my eyebrows arch in a shrug of “c’est la vie”, and a “maybe next time” smile cross my lips. she acknowledges it, then closes her eyes again and pulls the guy’s hips against hers.

i grab my bag and head back to berkeley by myself.

see what i mean about it being slightly dissatisfying?