Spellbound in Close Tight Spaces

I was spellbound. I stood, immersing myself in close, tight spaces with a watered-down drink in one hand. The room was imbued with otherworldly energy, like stark beams of light spawning from four walls and zigzagging around each other. It was indubitably dark, but the spotlight on stage reflected a lambent glow on my clear plastic cup.

I caught myself, amid my mental affairs, pouring my attention into him so much so that the room grew eerily silent. The muffled sound of my heart racing, breath orbiting, replaced these extrinsic qualities. His voice, guttural and heart-twisting, held the room. His ethereal presence was quiet and unassuming, as if he were even there at all. He left an indelible print, something you could not see coming. I could walk away now with something to hold me over.

The magnitude of the sounds and overwhelming sensations of touch from bodies rubbing against one another comforted me. I could not separate one sensation from the other, and they stayed joined like that for the remainder of the evening. There were brief exchanges of glances and apologies from the left and right, from sneakers carving into ankles and heels stepping on toes. No one minded. For once, it was a conversation. I hardly felt any tenderness, feeling so alive.

I looked at people with sorrowful delight. I knew that by tomorrow, they would look different. They would step out of their brownstone apartments with a different hair color and cover their tattoos. Some would even adopt a new language overnight. We would go from being strangers to kindred spirits to passersby brushing shoulders on the sidewalk. We would retreat to being right or wrong, parting from this collective consciousness.

I continued to sway. The crowd swallowed itself like quicksand.

He sang some precious words I read six years ago on my living room carpet. He writhed between pitches with his eyes shut tightly and his bangs curtained over his forehead. He was otherness. My eyes projected him across from me. He sang his tracks differently, but this time more powerfully.

I have neither adored nor loved anyone from another place. It was as though I’d returned from a funeral on a dismal day and had met him for the first time.