story # 1

Dance

by bob gottlieb

copyright © 1991-2012 Bob Gottlieb, all rights reserved.

I was pulled up short by about twenty screaming distorted faces on enraged, angry people.  I regained my equilibrium in the doorway by grabbing onto the frame as I looked across the potholed and ever so wide street toward my truck, which had been my destination.  The acrimony and invective they were hurling at me was enough to stop runaway horses in their tracks.  I had never faced such self-righteous unadulterated moral loathing before.  I had to get to my truck, and blocking the way was this wall embedded with jagged shards of a religion of hatred and capped with rolls of moral superiority disguised as piety, erected by this mass of screaming people.  “Sinners!”   "Devil worshipers, Satan is just salivating over you tonight."  Closed, unaccepting, bigoted religious people I find annoying, much like a gnat that is persistently buzzing around your ear.  This though, was a gang of thugs in their late teens and early 20's who had, before their religious conversion, been down on their luck street people, drug addicts and drunks. Now reformed and filled to overflowing with the self-righteous zeal to change the world that was typical of anyone who has just found a new way to live.  The conceit of the newly converted, combined with the fervor of the young to go out and convert the heathens of the universe being an explosive mixture when directed in their religious mission.  Tonight they chose to stand outside this South side ballroom hurling invective indiscriminately at all who exited.  I thought religions preached tolerance and love, not hate and divisiveness.

More pertinent to me at this juncture, I thought I would piss in my pants, my bladder was almost at the point of rebelling against authority because of the delay.   When I had opened the door to the rest room I was assaulted by the odor.  No, vile stench is the more appropriate phrase.  The floor looked like the mouth of the Mississippi at the peak of flood stage, complete with the floating sediment that eventually becomes deposited in the form of the muck that has to be dredged from the channels yearly.  I refused to stand in a line in this nauseating river and subject my dancing boots to its abuse, much less my nose and eyes.  I would just use the out of doors redolent with its dark and quiet, which I preferred anyway, had been my thought as I had finished surveying the noxious remains of what they called the rest room, and started for the outdoors.

The day had been typical of the 3 or 4 days in the year that they call spring in Tucson.  Most people that were from different sectors of the country would call it a summer day, but they hadn't experienced summer as it exists in the Sonoran Desert.  The day did have the saving grace, for those not used to our heat, of being dry, and for those of us who knew more than our visiting brethren it was a day to be celebrated for being appreciably cooler than one of our summer days.  This helped fuel the festive feeling of the crowd at the concert, which seemed to warm to the feeling that pervaded the hall, raising the temperature to still greater heights.  They were further exhorted to this revelry by the driving dance beat of Zachary Richard and his Cajun dance band.  Most of the more than capacity crowd had danced, drank, and smiled through two sets of music, and the rest rooms as indicated were showing the wear of an exuberant and drinking group of happy people.  The band was on break and it was time to change my soaking wet shirt in for a dry one, and I had decided to lose the beer that was slowing me down at the same time. Originally that had seemed a simple plan.  However the above-described conditions of the rest rooms had dictated a change in plans.  Then came the screams to "find Jesus you sinners!" that had pulled me to a sliding stop as I hurriedly exited the front door on my urgent mission of peace for the bladder.    Just for the record I have never denied that I have sinned, and I defend my right to do so if it's done without harming anyone.   My truck was behind the savage horde and I was in front of it with a beseeching bladder.  Under the cover of the darkness I decided to brave the surging maelstrom. I made a large circle to get behind the howling assemblage from their off side.  Well, the throng seemed not to notice me as they were intent at concentrating their proselytizing upon the multitude of "sinners" that stood at the door. This group had swelled in number and now was throwing an occasional holler back at the ‘preachers’  to "get lost," and various other platitudes that people fling at each other to prove their superiority.  I assumed in the verbal warfare no one noticed me, and I was able to arrive at my tailgate in peace.   It was dark and cool and much quieter back here.  It was almost peaceful.  I figured no one else would venture forth, and I could have privacy.  This created what I would call almost ideal conditions for relieving myself, and letting my body unwind from all the dancing.   A gentle breeze was also drying the sweat from my wet shirt.  It felt good to stand there and just drift off as my personal river flowed off into the sandy parking lot.

These idyllic moments have a habit of fading most of the time.  This one ended rather abruptly with a pair of feet.  These feet were connected to a pair of legs that walked up to my stream, and then into it.  They had the temerity to walk right into the waterfall and arrest its soothing rhythm As I watched the recycled beer run over the shoes breaking into smaller rivulets I had this feeling I should look up.  As eyes went up the legs towards the face I heard the mouth associated with the legs standing where my waterfall was cascading ask, “Brother, have you been saved?”

My eyes came to rest on the face of this intruder and I heard myself say, “I have, but I don’t believe your shoes and pants will survive the baptism.”  My stream abruptly stopped at this point, not by choice, but due I assume to this rude interruption of my reverie, or perhaps due to modesty.  He just stood there looking at me, and then looked down slow realization dawning in his mind.  I tidied up and put things back in their proper place.  Deciding that the night still had some dancing left in it, and I still had some good times to live, and best of all Zachary Richard still had some songs to give us this night, I returned to the ballroom.   Besides that I was quaking with laughter at the experience and I wanted to share the "poetic justice" of the moment.  Long live music and all the joys it brings.

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