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MADE FOR DANCING
by Charles Bell
I. The Awakening
Leaving the bar and approaching Joe's car -- we saw the damage. They
had keyed the word: "WHITEY" into his 'Vette. I could see a group of
black men, maybe four or five, near the entrance of the parking lot
walking into the street. I tugged at Joe's sleeve and motioned in the
direction of the black men. I could see the rage on Joe's face, and
he, without any hesitation, took off after the men. I was scared for
Joe. I couldn't understand why he had to try to fight them . . . .
Natalie interrupted: "What the hell does this have to do with your
cat?"
Carl, not showing his annoyance with Natalie's interruption, said,
"You were the one who once told me there is always some significance
to dreams, right?"
Natalie just sat back further into her chair. The ceiling fan
directly above her whispered then sputtered then whispered again.
"Geesh! You have a habit of using my own words against me."
"Let me get to it then," Carl said with some annoyance. "The best
part was that, as he ran towards them, he turned into my father, in
full naval officer's uniform, gloves and all."
"Gimme a break. It's a dream all right. That ol' father problem again."
"Father problem? No... forget it. He did the karate bit against them,
but all I could think is that he was going to be killed, and I couldn't
understand why he had to take off after them like that."
The fan continued its alternating whispers and sputters. The
unairconditioned hotel restaurant was empty save for Carl and Natalie.
Both were sweating in the hot, humid air. The flies gathered about the
partially consumed breakfast meals. Natalie's face began to show her
impatience.
"The only reason I remember the dream was because Binkley woke me up.
He was purring and meowing and pawing at my stomach like I had left him
for days. This was hours before we normally get up. It made no sense he
should carry on that way."
"Maybe you talked in your sleep," Natalie suggested.
"Maybe." Carl's voice trailed off pensively. "You have to keep him
while I go back to the States."
"What?" Natalie sat back up in her chair.
"I'm going back, probably for good."
"I'm not making the connection. You have a dream, Binkley wakes you
up and you decide to go back to the States."
"It's hard to explain. The dream has a reason to it which I can't
sort out. I can't explain."
"Dreams don't have reasons; they may have meaning; there's a
difference," Natalie started her matronly voice.
"OK my dear friend of Sappho, what's the difference?"
"So I *know* you are serious. When you go from `Hey, dyke-meister'
to `Latalie Lesbian' to just plain serious `sapphist,' you mean
business. Hey, dreams are in your mind, and that is where they belong.
You can't act on a dream. All they are, are your fears and all sorts of
crap built up. When you act on a dream you really are acting on your
fears." Natalie paused to study Carl's face.
"You can't go." Her voice struck not an elegant caesura but rather
a stuttering discontinuity. "Besides . . . it'll be awfully boring
around this intellectually bankrupt island if you go."
"My fears . . . ." Carl paused. "Yeah. Well, that's it then."
"That's it? That's what?"
"Something's going to happen and I fear it."
"Your dream does not tell you something is going to happen, just
that you fear something is going to happen -- I guess."
"Hey guys," a man, rushing into the dining room flustered and a bit
angry, barked, "Either you get into the kitchen and clean up or get
some other work done around here, okay?"
Natalie and Carl looked at each other for a moment. Natalie offered
some very rude advice to the man in the form of a hand gesture and
concluded: "I guess we're off to the beach."
"Sounds good," Carl responded, in a direction pointed towards
neither Natalie or their intruder. "Ian forgets who the *real* landlord
is sometimes."
"Oh sheesh! Do your thing, her thing, whatever . . . ." Ian walked
briskly into the kitchen.
Natalie and Carl got up. "Ian just wants to be the one who gives you
that baby, you know," Carl began. "You have to go back to the States
for that, so maybe I can have a place for you to stay then."
Natalie did not respond until they had already reached the beach, a
mere thirty-second walk from the dining room. "Yeah, well, another nice
day in bloody hot paradise." Natalie extended her right arm out to the
horizon, palm of her hand facing up. The glassy smooth water of the
Caribbean reflected a blue-white light off Natalie's arm. "Where's my hat?
Did I leave it at the Turtle Inn last night? Ian's too Mediterranean
looking. He's supposed to be Scottish and something, but I want a nice
W.A.S.P. boy like you -- to look like Mary and not some Jew like me.
'Know what I mean?"
"No," Carl shook his head, "You really are too weird for me. So you'll
pop out a baby right here, wait a decent interval and then present the
little bundle of joy to Mary as a kind of prenuptial bonus prize?"
"Well, I can't annoy her with a newborn."
They both simultaneously plopped themselves down on the beach. Carl
shook his head again. "This has to be done scientifically and all that.
Are we supposed to just *do* it?"
"You mean like normal human beings."
"We're not normal"
"Well, everything functions." Natalie paused. "Doesn't it?"
"What? Me? Yeah!" Carl said in a half-joking manner. "How did we get
onto your issues? This isn't about you; it's all about me. I'm leaving
as soon as that stupid mailboat comes around."
"All about you? Well then, for once, tell me *about* you. Your dream
tells me about abandonment issues. Your father....? And Joe? He wasn't
a father figure to you. From what you *have* said about him, it was the
other way around."
"Joe wasn't a father figure." Carl started but paused. "They had
the same birthdays, though, which I thought was interesting." Carl
paused again. "My father died in the Vietnam war . . . . No that isn't
true. He left for the war, but, you know -- I will never understand my
mother for lying to me all that time -- he died in Pensacola of an
aneurysm while eating tapioca pudding. He never even left the country.
What he did was leave my mother and me. My aunt waited ten years to
tell me this. I always thought of him as some hero, but my last thought
of him before he disappeared was I wished I had another father. This all
sounds incredibly stupid -- like some corny movie. I don't remember much
about him at all, except I was mad at him, and then was proud of him once
he was dead."
Taken by surprise with Carl's candor, "Oh. I see," was all that Natalie
could say.
"This dream . . ." Carl continued, "filled me with the same . . .
dread . . . or whatever . . . as I felt when I found out my father had
left. Abandonment issues? Yeah. Very clinical sounding."
"And Joe? How does he fit in?"
"I'm the one who left the country," Carl avoided the question. "I
came here to write poetry -- not to get involved in all this hotel
business. Ian was supposed to get everything working. I was just
supposed to provide the land and some of the capital. He's hopeless.
He's got that wonderful charm and all those `people skills', but he
doesn't know how to handle money.
That's the life for me now. Money, money, money. This isn't *my*
dream; it's Ian's -- and my mother's, not mine. What kind of idiot
could think we'd be able to compete with an institution on this island
like the Green Turtle Inn or, now, Club Med. I needed to remove dealing
with money," he paused, "-- and people -- from my life. How can I do
anything creative? I've had nothing but distractions. You're even a
distraction."
"That has been my goal in life -- to be a distraction. Take Binkley
with you," Natalie commanded, "If I really wanted to take care of pussy
I wouldn't have left Miami."
* * *
II. The Return
During his four years on the island Carl never had a sleepless
night. At first, of course, getting used to the humid nights without
benefit of airconditioning, he had trouble getting to sleep, but he never
returned to his previous two-year pattern of waking up a mere four hours
after falling asleep and rarely being able to get back to sleep. During
this night before his return to West Palm Beach, he hardly slept at all.
He would not sleep on the mailboat to Grand Turk, nor on the plane trip
with his friend and co-conspirator in South Florida frivolity, Al. Al was
a good pilot somewhere between his second and fifth beer, assuming his
commemoration of all things jolly, good and real (or really jolly good)
the night before had not taken too heavy a toll.
Stepping from the plane into the long airconditioned ramp to the
airport terminal Carl felt, smelt and heard that which Florida had
become to him. That morning he had left an island that was reminiscent
of the old Florida to him -- but with a British accent -- the Florida
of his youth; and returned to the new Florida --- now with a Yankee
accent --- an airconditioned, hectic place filled with people with pale
skin and jet black hair, with the air smelling of a hint of expended
jet fuel, and with the jetset sounds of urban contemporary music.
Walking briskly, as was his manner, from the airport Carl thought
that walking the distance from the airport along Belvedere to Bruce's
house was not going to be difficult. Even so, within minutes, he hitched
a ride almost as far as the interchange with I95.
On the route to Bruce's house, in the old neighborhood of his early
twenties, Carl walked by the bar that was in his dream. This bar was in
reality the source of some great times for Joe and him, and then later
Bruce, Al, and a few of their friends. He had left this bar many times in
the wee hours of the morning and always without confrontation with anyone.
Further along his walk, he thwarted temptation to have a frank, but
polite, discussion with a man at the intersection that formed the
expressway interchange holding a sign: "WILL WORK FOR FOOD" scrawled
upon it. The lowliest Mexican beggar would appear to have more dignity
than this scruffy rapscallion whose only work would involve reaching for
the cash handed out to him from drivers waiting for the light to change.
There is always a right way and several wrong ways to do something. To
stand at an intersection obtaining a handout through an act of blatant
misrepresentation is reprehensible; to travel several hundred miles gratis
by depending upon the kindness of strangers (and a friend or two) is far
more elegant approach to life's little inequities because of its classy
appeal to honesty.
Seven years ago Bruce painted his 1926 pseudo-Spanish style house a
bright pink. He xero-scaped the front yard and put a pool in the back
yard. Today the house looked its age again, with mildew eating at the
faded exterior and the homemade wooden awnings warped. It was a
particularly sad scene for Carl as he and the rest of the gang had
helped spruce the place up.
When Bruce answered the door Carl was equally saddened by Bruce's
tired look and aging appearance. Bruce greeted Carl with a politeness
reserved for in-laws.
Carl was not surprised by Bruce's coldness. He was only disheartened
by it, for he was there to find out about Joe.
Bruce spoke to Carl's feet while he remained at the door uninviting:
"Joe's been at St. Mary's for the past month."
* * *
III. The Reunion
Carl entered Joe's hospital room as quietly as into a church. Joe faced
the window opposite from the entrance. His hair weave was gone from his
head, and he was very, very thin. Carl focused on the *Hot Spots* magazine
sitting on the bedside table: "Going to check the bar scene, Joe?"
Joe slowly turned his head towards Carl: "Huh? Carl? . . . What?"
Carl pointed to the magazine on the table. "*Hot Spots*?"
Joe started to chuckle but could only manage a cough and a sigh:
"Bruce's idea of psychosomatic optimism."
Carl walked to the bedside but still kept his distance.
"Too hot in the islands, no doubt?" Joe said matter-of-factly turning
his head directly towards Carl but not really seeing him.
Carl expressed with surprise: "You know where I've been?"
"I lost track of you for maybe three months... St. Thomas, briefly,
and then off to Providenciales. Four years." Joe turned his head in the
opposite direction back towards the window. "Your mom was forever going
on and on about the `lot on Provo.' You did something with it?"
"Not me exactly . . . it's a long story."
"Well? I've got plenty of time," Joe tried to giggle.
"Joe . . ." Carl moved to the side of the bed to take Joe's hand but
hesitated and just stood looking down.
Joe turned towards Carl, but Carl, by turning his face away, prevented
Joe from looking at him. Joe said to the floor, "That last cocktail is at
Bruce's, though he's probably thrown it out. Remember?"
"Yeah," Carl mumbled. He stepped back a little from the bed.
"Our little suicide pact . . . ." Joe lifted his arm to touch Carl,
but Carl was too far away and Joe was too weak to stretch his reach.
"Only six months before you left. That was a fun obsession for a while.
The end would come to us simultaneously . . . holding hands . . .
dreaming Kevorkian dreams."
"Joe . . . ." Carl briefly took Joe's hand into his but laid it back
down.
"Of course . . ." Joe added, "You first."
"Heh," Carl understood the joke but could not laugh. "I'm a coward.
That's all there is to it." Carl could not believe he was living this
corny movie.
"You're human. People are cowards. " Joe could only whisper. "You are
also the perpetual dancer. You invite me to the floor sometimes, but
mostly you'd dance alone."
"You're confusing me." Carl hesitated. "You are the one who thought he
had to `keep on moving.' I am the one who is slow and steady.
"You left," Joe simply said.
"I felt it was time I accomplish something."
"What can I say? I don't think that's . . . that's . . . the truth.
But, you are you." Carl's voice was fading to less than a whisper. He
reached again for Carl's hand, and Carl gave it to him. Joe squeezed
Carl's hand weakly.
It was Joe's time to leave.
Carl stepped into a dance hall without music. His life seemed a
dream without hope -- his love, a loneliness without meaning.
# # #
Copyright 1993 Charles Bell
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Charles is a writer who hails from Florida.
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