:: Nightminds ::

Friday night; the hours are dressed with a curious energy. CM is still wearing her grief like a corrosive code-of-arms; she talks of death with cheerful glee, and the tough-talking vibrancy I have known and loved her for seems to be drying up faster than our red wine.

12.05; the jazz band takes a bow. 'Well girls,' CM says, looking at P and myself with that familiar trace of maternal fondness, 'you babies go on at it, I'm going home.'

We see her off in a cab. 'Be good,' she says listlessly, wagging a finger of customary caution at us. 'Be good to the boys.'

'Maybe you should join us,' P suggests, opening the door of the cab with candid reluctance. Her long tresses are silk and seduction on her skin, gleaming and mocha-moist even in the dim lights of the hotel lobby.

'Get your hand off my cab,' CM says pleasantly. 'Love you both but I just need to crash.' I hug her quickly, knowing that logic is completely useless at this point; in her linear locomotion of misery, escape is the quickest point to her destination.

The cab drives off in a siren of dust and diesel. 'Boat Quay?' P asks. I don't care enough to defy and she doesn't care enough to decide, so within fifteen minutes we are inside the shadowy shrine of music and alcohol, of men looking at women looking at men, of skin and sex and satisfaction gleaned off empty beer bottles.

Placid and poised, P asks for a corner table. She sips her red wine while I swirl the plastic sweetness of vodka and lime in my little glass. The music wails, a blatant banshee, and the club jostles with the glamourous nightcrawlers shaking and shrieking their hours away. Smoke and mirrors, I think―flashes of colour surging into the smoky penumbra in time to the rhythm rocking out of the DJ console. When can I ever lose myself, like you and you, to the doomed anthem of youth? Why should I and why shouldn't I―how many more drinks do I need to down before I can drown my incessant questions?

'I used to be like that,' P says, chewing smartly on a handful of almonds. She nods towards the dance floor. I look―and there are bodies curving against bodies, disjointed by the beat of the trance tracks, infused with the hedonistic high that would be alien and ugly anywhere else. Faces blur into faces; neon lights bleed from the spinning strobes, their technicolour brilliance spilling onto the floor below. The modern tribute to tribalism, almost, with the DJ as the village god. And what is my pagan prayer?

'Yeah, those were the days, when I had too much time and stupidity,' P continues, rolling her eyes expressively. I grin at her. P is almost thirty and loving it as best as she can, packing her casual wisdom and effervescent energy into her pert little frame. She's a slapdash nymphet of fun and firm loyalty; in her honest humour I've found a friendship that endures beyond business necessity.

'Now? What do you think of life now?' I ask, draining my glass, as two tall blokes lingered around our table with feeble hopefulness. Boys and the cookie jar. And are we not from the cookie-cutter cliché! (I think and smile inwardly!)

P shrugs easily. 'I get depressed if I think about the whole "where am I going, who am I going to end up with" schtick...you know? You can't help to ask all these questions but you have no bloody answers. Maybe that's why I buy into the whole see a psychic deal.'

'But wouldn't that be―aren't you afraid―of self-fulfilling prophecies?' Ha―who are you kidding, Jean: isn't life a series of well-orchestrated self-fulfilling prophecies anyway?

'I take it all with a pinch of salt. But everything is so uncertain these days, I need that little bit of hope. Don't you?'

'Like magaritas eh. Best with a pinch of salt on the side.' We laugh companionably and we resume our voyeuristic interest in the crowd. P is too jaded to dance and I'm too awkward, but eventually we are drawn―like moths to mad fire―into the infectious cadence. For a moment, as we join the strangers made familiar by the proximity of pleasure, we become ageless and free and immortal. The minutes―previously so tightly welded to our private problems and various miseries―are now idle and unhampered.

Dance, baby, dance. Shake and grind your hips, fling your head back and laugh, run your fingers through your hair. Throw your hands up, scream!

But know that when the DJ spins his last, and when the lights break open for the club's closing, you'll be back in the same quicksand of your raging realities. We're all looking for an escape. We all need that silver of distraction, the exigent lifeline, so that we can dance to a rhythm other than the routine circadian that gives us life, but does not always help us live.

Dance, then―before your swansong season sinks.