The Dance

The Dance


Within a few days during my recent journey to California
I passed through several different worlds,
each embodying a certain state of mind, it’s own set of manners,
sense of language and deportment. From the vantage point
of a few days later each of these worlds appears as a dream,
just like dreamtime, in which what happened is already gone,
vaporous, but the consequences of behavior, the intentions set
into place still exist and are moving forward in the same manner
that the day is turning over and soon it will be morning
and then night again. Over and over. And then soon that over
and over is a year, ten years, a decade, a century, an age.
And what of each of these small worlds?

The Abbey is the hip gay club in West Hollywood,
just off Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood.
This urban funky recently expanded warehouse of a club reeks
of high gay attitude and culture. It’s predominately male,
with a few attendant fag hags, some lesbian tables
and a few straight couples who’ve come to see and be seen.

We were early and the traffic was easy, still I felt
self-conscious and out of place. Here in this kingdom
of perfect physical beauty and ambition, in the thump-throb
of the industrial dance music holding all together
in an energetic rhythmic cell, I was conscious of
my not-good-enough clothes, face, stance. Or more than that,
as I walked through the different rooms, all the different
stories I realized I didn’t want anything or need anything
from anyone here—I was a visitor for a moment in time.

In another, younger life I’ve lived for that electric dance
when everything shines and hangs together perfectly
and you want nothing more than to spin on the dance floor
and celebrate your earthliness. Here, and now I’m invisible.

The only thing that would change that is a change in dress,
age and attitude. When my cousin introduces me most
are genuinely friendly. They become human with a name, a story.
Others look right through me, like the high-powered studio
executive who gave a polite nod then fixed his eyes to the wall
behind me. I didn’t have apparent power or connections.
Then the equation is nothing from nothing.

As I walked through, from the black leather boys decorating
the entrance, past the tables of self-conscious diners,
to the huge rooms arranged for drama, each filled
with the evening’s catch, I asked myself who am I
and what am I doing here? It’s the larger question I ask
frequently, wherever I am. I ask it to force myself
to stay aware.

I wanted to dance, for me, dancing is the most natural state
of being. But no rooms were for dancing though people gyrated
to the beat wherever they were: leaning one of several bars,
near the fireplace, or standing in place talking with friends
or potential friends or partners. And the music was too
repetitive, too dead. There was no humanness in it. It was
constructed of prefabricated beats, dedicated to elevating
the pace of the hunt.

I asked myself who I was, and felt my spirit cupped in my belly.
I let it all alone as I walked through the sadness, fear, joy,
sorrow and sheer life gathered there. I wanted nothing
from that place, or anyone there. I was just passing through…


Joy Harjo December 2004