The Porpoise

She danced like a porpoise and her skin was rubbery and smooth and hard and wet like a porpoise's. She took my hand and pulled me out to the floor where she danced twice as fast as everyone else, throwing her head back, wiggling her legs, putting her hands in her hair in a move that looked like it had been choreographed for a six year old by her mother during rehearsals for Star Search.

I was delighted by her style and tried to take her hand but our rhythms were too different and the puzzle pieces of our knees and thighs and crotches would not fit together.

I leaned in. "You dance like a maniac," I said, "I like it."

I did like it, but I was apologetically uninterested in her.

My own style of dancing is a hybrid of Michael Jackson bopping around to "Rockin' Robin" and Bruce Springsteen clodhopping like Frankenstein in the "Dancing in the Dark" video. I can't dance without snapping my fingers or clapping my hands or thumping the bassline against my chest. I usually end up alone on the floor at the end of the night, cutting back and forth through the crowd like a shark looking for the last beautiful wounded girl.

At the end of the night the porpoise girl pulled me out to the front of the club where it was quiet.

"Since I'm probably never going to see you again," she said, sounding like the preamble to the declaration of a crush. I scrambled to figure out how I would gently put her down. "...I just want you to know that you can feel free to contact me if you ever want to get coffee or anything."

"Oh yeah, definitely, definitely, sure," I was relieved. She had been in one of my classes and I was very fond of her as a person, I just didn't want to have to be cruel. I don't think anybody does.