Guardians and Angels | Chapter Two (Part 5)

“I thought you said it was the end?”

“Is there ever really an end, Christopher?” he said, shifting through albums on his bed, searching for something. He always knew how to make me pause with his answers… which were usually questions.

No, not pause.

He knew how to make me “stop”

With words, with looks, with motions. With his image, his reflection and his shadow. His voice and his thoughts. He was my red light that somehow made everything go right. He knew how to stop me in my tracks.

Not tonight, though. Tonight he was making me go. Go to our first dance of the year and he was more excited than I had ever seen him. We were in his room, sunset spilling upon us, boombox perched on his dresser like a gargoyle peering down, leering at us.

“C’mon, Christopher, this is my favorite song right now,” he blurted out. “I’m practicing my moves”

His moves?….

Viper-like his arm slashed out hitting the play button, that smirk on his face, the golden California rays flowing behind him from a western sunset, a bronzed statue waiting for some kind of fury.

The gargoyle boombox exploded like a neutron bomb, a sonic whirlwind of polished synths, booming bass, and a slick sliding hi-hat. His room became a basement club somewhere in a big city, gritty and sleek at the same time, a cave of echoes.

Pssssssst! Aaaaahhhh! Chhhhhhh!

PUSH IT!.. PUSH IT!

Pssssssst! Aaaaahhhh! Chhhhhhh!

PUSH IT!... PUSH IT!

PUSH IT!… REAL GOOD!!!

His head stayed pinned in the air, his body began pumping in all directions at once. If there was a rhythm it was hidden deep beneath my ability to see. His arms flashed one way, his legs whipped another, his hips pumping, his abs crunching. That smirk on his face opening to a smile, a lighthouse in the sunset.

He was dancing… in a way.

He was wearing sweatpants with white socks and my eyes caught shifting and bulging patterns bouncing upon his motions. He pulled his white t-shirt over his head, hips galloping as he found the beat of the bass finally, his abs elongating and then clenching, his back arching, his t-shirt off.

How is he shaped like that? How does he…. Ripple?

“Yo, yo, yo baby pop!” (“yeah you!”)

Salt N Pepa shouted at us, antagonizing us to join in NOW! His favorite song “Push It” now playing as loud as the boombox would scream. The walls vibrating around us.

The voices from the stereo were female; aggressive, authoritarian; they knew what they wanted and they wanted it now. He was matching their tone with his fervor, a soldier under their orders, pumping in lockstep to their bellowing beats. His shirt was now swirling overhead… a breeze filled with his scent (vanilla?) was tickling my face. Abs crunching… Hips pumping…

He rode the beat like he was bouncing on his jet ski, the baseline was his wake. He looked at me with the biggest of smiles, his hair wild in the light as if he had been electrocuted by vibrations.

“We’re going to dance tonight, Christopher!” he said, too ecstatic for my taste. I had never danced before and was not excited. I was more nervous than anything.

“Come here and gimme a kiss!!!” the drill sergeants demanded forcefully as the cutting and scratching layers of the song chittered around us.

Chhh, chhh, chhh,

Chhhh, chhh, chhh

Suddenly, I couldn’t see anything, his t-shirt flung over my face, blinding me and muffling the sound of the room. In that moment he was upon me. Behind me, but also upon me, wrapped around me like the heavy robes they drape over a boxer’s shoulders in a sweaty corner. His body cloaked my body. The magnetic pull between us snapping us into place, an electric shock smacking out loudly as his fingers touched my fingers... Zzzztttch!

“Pssssssst! Aaaaahhhh! Chhhhhhh!

PUSH IT!...

PUSH IT!!!

The voices barked relentlessly. Taskmasters shoving out their tasks with no regrets. The sounds of bass & treble whirling around us, a dog pound of snarls, sounds with teeth, gnawing and scratching, yearning for us to relent.

Oh how I wanted to relent.