REPRINT

If you go to the dance, the dance, this is what you will see. You will see yourself, magnified, multiplied and mapped onto collegiate bodies. You will stroll between pre-parties, saunter around campus in sexual glee, and present yourself at the door of Kagin. Guards will let you pass the entrance, you will be ushered up the stairs, you will dance, you will laugh, gather with your friends on the sidelines, get lost in the crowd, see the cute boy with his shirt off and want to touch him. You will smirk and flirt and hike up your skirt.

I will be there as well, and I leave wispy white feathers and turquoise sequins behind my urgently clomping, six-inch heeled boots. A friend beside me, mussed black wig with chopped bangs on head. My thighs and calves writhe upon angled feet, butt sitting proudly high beneath red patterned polyester. Skin shower-fresh, eyes painted, hair set, my projected fantasy exists as a walking monster of erotic delight.

If you were a Macalester student, on the night of the dance, you would be one of the many who have ravished me with your eyes, never knowing that those who inhabit bodies like mine cannot stand you, that behind close doors they laugh at your strangeness in appearance. How uneasy you are, but how uneasy I am sensing your uneasiness. Kincaid would say an ugly thing, that is what you are when you become a tourist, an ugly, empty thing, a stupid thing, a piece of rubbish pausing here and there to gaze at this and taste that…

Approaching high walls of concrete surrounded by iron gates, slipping in quietly, softly. Others, surprisingly just like us, appear in swarms over masked hills and dark yellow corners of passing avenues. "Let me in you fucking assholes " a queen commands in royal dress, a baby blue fur overcoat, black shiny straps peaking beneath the collar, a headband and hoop earrings. Guards in official uniform puff their chests, turn backs and ignore our painted fingernails clawing against locked glass doors. Whose capacity has been reached? Pushing, cheap-vodka infused misty night air, young bodies against mine, black lips and underarm hair, a commotion of confused violence and catastrophe.

You can imagine the way I feel when I finally arrive in the ballroom, and ask myself: What am I doing here? I try to answer this question among the waves of uniformly sleek and shoulder-baring creatures, searching and finding the lone souls like myself, ones who have spent many dances trying to convert you, who have been more disappointed after every dance, more irritated. I feel the eyes turned upon me, in my exposed skin and false eyelashes, accentuated toned legs and sculpted eyebrows, and return the gaze to the bodies wrapped in mini-skirts tank tops slips no bra bra stuffed all bras stuffed. Elbows pound knees jerk hands grab tongues lick breasts fall hair plasters backs bend thighs pulse, greasy lips liquid eyes sweat rolls down on neck, clammy palms and fogged windows, deep pulsating crests of sound against my ears.

In this dance, you may wonder why it is I only feel comfortable on stage, on top of an amp. I too am an outsider, fulfilling your fantasy in spotlight, encouraged and celebrated, suspended. Four and half feet above the masses I observe, I critically stare with my indifferent expression the half-turned lips floating my way, the awkward bones in ill-fitting bodices, the sheer black tights sucking in flesh of a distant other. If you only know how I smile to myself when you accept me, when you pride yourself on excavating space in a place that is not yours. I see small flocks painfully humor each other with competing politics: long white slips that have yellowed with age, the occasional tie, endless male nipples. I want to forget. My hips sway, uncontrolled torso and rocking small of the back, my legs turn and twirl and topple and uphold my collapsing and expanding figure. Arms extended, pointing at no one. A young man unleashes his digital camera upon my fragile frame.

Go ahead if you must, I insist; I can portray your projected fantasy on my body. Just for that split second when the shutter releases I will exist outside of time and space, freeing my body to travel across countries to your brother in Philadelphia and friends back home in rural Wisconsin—college was the best time of my life. I can slither and stomp and hiss and laugh and hold my head high amidst the drowning of your presence. But I ask you: Why the stuffed bras, the unfinished project of your statement, the expression you make with the way you let me pass without hindrance? Why do you act surprised when I grab your exposed butt cheeks in leather chaps? Is it for your own shame or your friends?

Where are my babies that penetrate my knowledge with their own? My babies, I fear, have been left mid-stream, a luncheon on the river-bank perhaps, an afternoon swim, sweet water gliding over smooth features. Once or twice I float by a baby of mine, and I watch as he, too, struggles, gasping for air. But the current takes him away too quickly, and once again I am left with only memory, scented sweat melding with my own on chest. Laughing and splashing, I am lost in remembering; I am in-between a chorus that lacks a conductor, my voice exists on paper, yearning for a desire which does not give.