Straitlaced, or The Ballad of My Butt

It snowed yesterday, and I, swathed in black cashmere sat at my window holding a steaming mug of hot chocolate, singing along to 'On my Own' from Les Miserables. It's a good song, an appropriate song minus the gender confusion. Ah, torment. Ah, unrequited, unlabelled love. I was looking at another weekend of melancholy obsessiveness, more sweeping of the floor, more laundry that could have waited another day. But Butters, Bebe, T-Tweak, Princess RbB (Rubber-band Ball- long story!) and Fate had slightly different plans...

When I was younger, I rather enjoyed dancing. This wasn't your polite shuffling around a little bit with a partner, it was a no-holds-barred, all-bets-off kind of deal: my feet would create a whirlpool on the floor, as people would step back to allow me and my pick for the evening (usually my gorgeous Hermia) dance our way to that peak from whereon the only thing one can look forward to is soaking one's feet in warm water, slightly scented with citrus. As radically revelrous this sounds, it was hardly instantaneous. It took me a while to get primed, certain factors (which I shan't mention here) needed to be figured in, then, and only then would it begin, and how!

As the years began to add to the rather mirthful set of digits my boisterousness held so dear, I daintily placed my flailing feet into the fairly tight dress-shoes of stillness, my vigourously pulsating torso was ensconced in a veritable chain mail of respectability, the jerking of my neck was arrested by the rather smart necktie of "what would people think?". Oh the connotations of adulthood: eighteen at last! Let's stop the party, take on more courses than others, and whinge unendingly about how hateful everything is...all the way to college! Ick. Like my man Richard II, I took to the part so well, I ended up becoming one of those barren creatures baying away at the moon for love, life and liberty. As a role, it offers an actor quite a challenge. As a lifestyle, now how do I put this? Oh, yeah! It sucks ass.

Last night, the girls, that is, the ever-inventive Bebe and the cool Princess RbB decided to take it upon themselves to give Butters and T-Tweak new hairstyles. The snob that I am, I had excused myself a while ago since I could not bring myself to watch the movie that was on. Now, I love T-Tweak to death, but his taste in films makes me want to purge. I imagine he feels the same way about my rhapsodizing over 'Revolutionary Road'...and I wonder why people don't like me sometimes!

So as I basked in the sparse and temporary feel of my room, reconsidering my self-exile, my whore-phone came alive with it's texting tone sounding rather ebullient: it was Bebe asking to me come on by and "see the boys' hair." The scene that unfolded before me, as the door opened, involved a rather pleased looking T-Tweak sitting on a chair with big, BIG 80's hair, as Princess RbB worked more mousse into his mane. Butters, who was hiding behind the door, took me by complete surprise. At first, his hair was trendily mussed-up, and he looked very chic, despite the slightly perplexed, crooked grin on his face...Bebe and Princess RbB lovingly teased those spikes to a staid 'Mad Men'-esque style which, coupled with a pair of Roberto Cavalli spectacles, made Butters look like a Gucci model. Clearly, I didn't want to be left behind, and the Princess, in all her creativity, gave me Liberty Spikes, or at least two, and I was Hellboy! We shot an ad-campaign then: very A&F inspired, with a few lifted shirts, and a few exposed necks...

The déjà vu I experienced was startlingly similar to my last trip down the rabbit hole, because events just happened to flow into one another. One moment we were upon a couch posing trashily, and in the next there was music playing, and Bebe and T-Tweak were dancing. That's when I felt it! O God, it was so potent! I felt that little rush that began in my feet, and slowly began to work its way up. Like a blue vine of electricity, the frisson began to wrap itself around my legs, my pelvis, my waist, my torso...initiating an unshackling of sorts. I used to do this! I used to burst into a song-and-dance routine at random before. O God, it seemed as if an aeon had passed since I had gotten filthy on the dance floor, with no regard for Reputation.

As I expressed my wish to join in the festivities, it was as if this whole array had arranged itself before me: Princess RbB was full of instructions, Bebe would have me train my back against a wall, Butters snaked his fist against my spine imitating exactly what needed to be done, T-Tweak was full of demonstrations...it was, in a word, breathtaking!

As I began to follow along, the air around me seemed to whisper this whiplash,

(Closer)

My back arched...

(Closer...)

My waist moved...

(Closer...)

My hips swung...

(Closer...)

My torso undulated...

(Closer...)

And then something broke, as cathartic as cathartic can be: MY BUTT POPPED.

(And I just can't pull myself away, under a spell I can't break, I just can't stop, I just can't stop...)

T-Tweak looked at me with a kind of parental pride, which shattered the moment he gave me a congratulatory high-five, and joined me in creating the Cyclone I was so hell-bent determined on single-hippedly starting!

I remember how once, when I was visiting Hamlet, I had had an extended conversation with a fellow over-achiever whom I shall christen The Archduchess. This vibrant, beautiful, and quick-witted creature belongs to a rather illustrious seat of learning, and when I asked her about stress and how she deals with it (clearly, The Archduchess is not as morose a being as I am), her response came to me in The Native Tongue: "Arrey yaar, dance pe chance maar le!" (Dude, give dance a chance!). I loved it! I never tried it, but I loved it. And now, under the funky auspices of T-Tweak, I gave dance the chance it so greatly deserves, and I feel sentient again. So what if my brain can work its way through the circuitous pathways of the immune system? I can pop my butt! And I don't have to choose one or the other. Yes, constant reader, there is a lesson here: whenever you find yourself receding into the bewilderness, shut the door to your room, and give dance a chance. Heck, my room is the most exclusive club this town has ever seen...

Times like these make me wonder if my abstruse codex of pretensions and elaborate formalities (which, I imagine, oftentimes, border on the farcical) is really a requirement. Butters has it down: that fine balance between the Proper and the Fun. I thirst for it, that feeling of being complete, adequate and completely adequate.

Ah but the philosophizing is getting on my nerves by just a tinge, so I shall stop. The POINT is that I like my butt again, now that it has popped forth from the stays of facade, and I have T-Tweak to thank for allowing me to rediscover the joy that that fantastic contour on my being can bring. He's one sexy Gemini, that guy is! And he has brought it to my attention, that I, with all my drama and affectations, am, inherently, one too!

Until the next time,
GossipGuy!