Do You Remember When We Used To Sing?

Come on, dude, move it!”  The man in the filthy shirt says while sloshing beer around him, soaking the street.  He looks like he’s standing on a see saw, both swinging and swaying, yet none of his movements are in any sort of rhythm to the music exploding from the background.  His eyes and hands are red, and the redness is slowly infecting his nose and face.  He says again, this time with more emphasis, “Move it!”

Ben is suddenly pushed out of the filthy man’s way by Derrick, a large dollop of brew is deposited on his shoulder for his trouble.  Derrick slams a clear plastic cup into Ben’s hand and uses the newly free hand to give the drunk the finger, then drags Ben, once again, through the crowd.  Derrick smells his shirt.

“Fucking alky--Mom’s never going to believe I wasn’t drinking now!”  Derrick yells over the music and crowd to Ben, then takes a large swig of the other beer he was carrying.  Ben sips his, and then hears Derrick again.  “Fucking drink it.  It’s not coffee, Puss.”  Ben takes a larger drink, feeling a little bit of sting in his cheeks.

The crowd is filled with old faces--of course, when you’re sixteen, most every one is old.  The festival and music has been going on all day, but most of them arrived in the dark, and now, with street lights glowing in the haze above them, they dance and chatter and drink and laugh, the worries of the day done.

“Hell yeah.  There’s Donna.  Told you she’d be here!”  Derrick is giddy.  He’s been waiting all day to run into Donna.  He downs the rest of his beer and slams the cup next to him.  “I’m going to go over.  You coming?”

Ben shakes his head no.  Then says, “Go on.  Get you some.”  Derrick laughs.

“You fucking right I am.”  Derrick slaps Ben on his back, then surfs the wave of party goers, making his way over to skinny blonde Donna in the pink shirt.  Ben watches a minute to see them talk.  Donna laughs then starts dancing with Derrick--Derrick and Donna, what a couple.

Ben finishes his beer then tosses the cup to the street.  Suddenly, he’s hit from six different sides by the attendees, bouncing around as if he was in one of those inflatable jumpers before he finally gets his footing.  He shakes his head.  His senses jump--the smells, the amalgamation of cigarettes, beer, fried foods, and perfume overwhelm his nose.  The sounds of music and chatter feed his ears.  The taste of the summer night and the sweat pouring from him dance over his tongue.  And the sight, the best and worst of them all was the sight of it.  Couples, duos, pairs everywhere.  Ben can’t help but look at them, and look at his own singular nature.  His own ‘oneness’.

As the song ends, Ben finds himself in the middle of the crowd.  He applauds with the mob.  The singer of the band on stage looks out at them.

“Let’s play some party music, what do you say?”  He says, and Ben watches the throng of old people clap and whoop.  Middle aged?  Executives?  Ben can’t help but to wonder.  They all seem so old to him, but they’re living like they’re twenty one right now, which, to Ben, makes them look even older.  Flecks of gray protruding out in the men’s hair, the neon sign pointing lines on the women’s faces, drawing from the corners of their lipsticked mouths to the sides of their thin noses.

But, they’re together, and he’s not.

Will he be like that?  Will he be paired up at some point?  Sixteen years, and the closest thing he ever came to a girlfriend was when Laurie Dwyer made out with him for twenty minutes on the bus home from a football game last year.  Next day, she didn’t even speak to him.  Almost as if she was writing it out of history--making it so it never happened.  But everyone finds someone, don’t they?  Everyone eventually loves someone, and that someone loves them back, right?

“Let’s get this party kicked up a notch!”  The singer yells, and points to the crowd.  They respond.  Ben cares nothing about kicking it up a notch.

Ben turns, and runs into her.  That girl.  The one from his English class.  First row, third desk.  Curly black hair, plump face.  Blue, blue, blue eyes.  Fat lips.  Curvy figure.  And she’s there, smiling.  Cara.

“Hey!”  She says, smiling.  She touches his arm.  Ben notices her looks--a tight lime green tee shirt and short white shorts.  She’s beautiful.  He smiles.

“Hey.”  He responds.  He wants to say something to her, something witty and smart and wonderful and cool.  But he can’t.  Nothing comes to him.

Then the music starts.  It’s that song, the one where everyone sings “Sha na na na na na” during the chorus, the one about being young and then older, recalling the girl from back in the day.  The memory of young love, with a catchy hook.  “Brown Eyed Girl”.  Cara looks at him.

“Let’s dance!”  She says, and grabs his hand, and then they are.  She sways with the song, bopping her head up and down, moving her hips as she does.

He’s embarrassed; he doesn’t know how to dance well.  He sticks to small movements.  Nothing too wild and crazy, nothing to draw attention to himself.  But, he watches her; smiling, moving with the tune, bouncing.  His smile grows.

Does she like him?  She’s smiling, and dancing, and touching him--she takes his hands and moves a bit closer to him.  He sings softly with the song, and she does the same.  He should do something--pull her closer, whisper in her ear.  Tell her how wonderful she looks, how beautiful and perfect and young she is, and how, already, he could never forget this night.  How just this dance had written itself on his brain in one of those important and improbable ways little moments do, moments that shouldn’t mean anything but wind up meaning the entire world.

The final chorus comes, and she falls into his right side, his arm hugging her waist as she raises a hand and shouts with the crowd.  It’s the “Sha na na na na na” part, and Ben can’t help himself either.  He sings it loud with the rest, and laughs afterwards, because singing aloud with a crowd is the last thing Ben would ever do.  But here he is, doing just that.  And he hears Cara laughing too.

The song ends, the applause is terrible and terrific.  Ben feels Cara pull away just a bit, leaving a small space in-between them, but a gap that, to Ben, felt like it was miles across.  Her full cheeks are red from the sudden explosion of energy, her eyes twinkle in the street lights.

Ben should kiss her. He knows this.  Its a few centimeters of air.  Just lean a bit in, and he’d be there.  Lip to lip.  And she holds a few seconds right there, hinting to him that she’s waiting for him to make his move.

Just lean in.  All he’s got to do.

Just lean in.

The girls come and surround her.  Her friends.  Suddenly the moment’s gone.  The friends.  They are pulling her away, talking about going over to someplace else.  The moment’s gone away, and Ben can’t get it back.  Cara laughs and tells them she will and tells them to hold on.  She breaks free for just a moment to wave at Ben.

“See ya Monday!”  She yells.  “Thanks for the dance.”  She smiles, somehow, more.

She’s gone, lost in a sea of young girl limbs and curls and giggles.  Ben stops smiling.

Time moves forward.  A few hours later. Driving home, Derrick sits next to him, talking about Donna.  How she’s just a tease.

“Fuck, man, I was over there for like an hour, but the minute I say let’s go somewhere, she’s all like, ‘I don’t know’ and ‘I just want to dance.’  Fuck her.”  Derrick says, resting his head on the back of the seat.  Ben grunts an affirmation.

Ben thinks about why he didn’t kiss Cara, and how, on Monday, she’ll sit in her seat (first row, third desk), and he’ll look at her.  How she’ll smile, and how, despite knowing that he should, he won’t talk to her.  Because if a few inches was too much space, two rows of desks is an impossible chasm.

But he knows, for years to come, every time he hears that song, he’ll think about those few minutes, about the smell of vanilla from her perfume, and the curl in her hair.  The blue, blue, blue eyes.  And he’ll hate himself for it.

“So, who was that you were dancing with?  Wasn’t that Cara Hamilton?”  Derrick asks, punching Ben in the arm.  “Fuckin’ A, man.  Look at you.”  Ben laughs and nods.  But says nothing.  Derrick smells his arm. 

“Fucking Mom will NEVER believe I wasn’t drinking.”

THE END