Lockdown Day 19: Friday 10th April, 2020
Blue jean baby, she was a ballerina in evening’s auditorium, a tiny dancer in the heaving street, enchanting the restless queue outside the Apollo, exotic and sensuous and strange, alien to the grey September Glasgow night.
Fey chestnut hair blowing in the wind as she pirouetted down Renfield street, loose satin curls clinging in close embrace to the patchouli-scented delicacy of her eloquent body, hugging tight almost to her waist, in harmony with syncopated love beads, looped leather thong ankh and silk purple scarf. Swaying this way then that in the sleek spring breeze, there was something in the way she danced, disharmony, movements not quite together, staccato moments that seemed somehow disparate, adaggio disconnects. She was there. She was gone. Primal ballerina, a chaos child existing across fractional dimensions, all swirls, curls and furls. An acid sunburst of tie-dyed intent exploding on the dormant canvas wash of straight-line nineteen seventy-five. She was of this world then lost in her head to a disconcerting choreography of some fractious reality no-one else was party to.
She was a dream come true, the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL. I never imagined anyone so exotic yet reassuringly familiar, erotic and entrancing, so intensely delicate. She spirited my breath away as she giggled softly, twirled gently and played endlessly with her hair or beads or the whipping suede tassels of her patchwork bag. She was alight, a firefly life in the gloom, sweet child of flame, never still, never at rest, never settled on the same spot for more than a second, never wasting the mayfly moment. She danced on, a fractal andante, spiralling through the vagrant halls of time and waiting for no man, waving to stoned friends passing in a rusted Volkswagen Beetle, thrusting her hands on slender hips in pantomime anger at their wolf-whistles and catcalls, rummaging in her bag theatrically for nothing in particular, checking her perfection reflection in the coloured glass fragments of an ornate Indian pocket mirror, haranguing some Jesus freaks genuflecting in a doorway on the other side of the street, a tiny dancer in my head. I couldn’t imagine her ever sitting still, letting the world turn under her feet, watching the world pass her by. She was the primal energy that rocked my world.
I was reborn in that sunshine supernova and the world was never the same again.
I recognised some of her friends – BJ, Caroline, Charlene, Ronnie and Anna, Jake and Maggie. Friends, friends of friends, school buddies and not so buddy-buddy. But the queue outside was long, going nowhere fast and I was still waiting for Dave. There was no way I was risking losing my place by wandering up there, it wasn’t every day a Beatle came to town. Security was extra tight for this gig, close-marshalling the line circled round the block and beyond. Occasional police fought to clear the street to allow the buses, cars and taxis free passage down the hill. The neanderthals were scraping their knuckles in number around the doors tonight, Homo-not-quite-erectus devolved to work the door, an ugly squad of flat-nosed six-footers. Hundreds milled chaotically around the scene chasing down invisible touts, desperately baying for a ticket, praying for a ticket, paying way over the odds for a ticket, whatever the deal, no matter the cost. All the usual freeways in were manned, no chance of cracking open the firedoors and sneaking in, no hope of shinning up the drainpipe in the gritty lane, no prospect of a mate dropping tickets out the toilet window or one of a group exiting with all the stubs and a whole new pack trooping into the auditorium. You’d need wings to get in through one of the upper storey windows or the roof. Security was tighter than my druncle Iain’s trouser waistband after Christmas dinner.
It hadn’t been easy to get tickets but I’d lucked into a couple, so there I was, alone in the queue, Dave late as usual. He’d turn up just as I reached the door if true to form. But who cared? Hair was long and memories were short, music was loud and time was ours to play with, to cast aside as we wished, life was sweet and acid was cheap. It was the best of all possible worlds. I fantasised about my tiny ballerina atop the music box of my hippy, trippy youth, she was unbelievable …
“Mmmmmmmmm. Look at you looking at me.” she purred.
Hazel brown eyes twinkled at me mischievously, sparkling inches from my face. I was speechless. Lost in silent reverie, paying scant attention to the reality of my dream dancer in the dark as she waltzed down the line, I hadn’t noticed as she paused before me.
“You are gorgeous, far too cute for a boy. Just look at those bright chocolate eyes.”
She winked at the couple of Deadheads toking up behind me, as if they were all up to speed on some secret joke while I was a page behind scrabbling to catch up. She pirouetted around me in a mist of patchouli dreams, paused and grabbed my wrists.
“I could melt in those eyes. I gaze in them and feel myself slip-sliding away. They sparkle like the frosted sky on an ice diamond night, a crystal horizon disappearing into forever, no barriers, no borders, no beginnings, no end. Can I close your eyes to everything but me?
Come on,” she curtsied, “dance with me.”
Embarrassed beyond teenage-boy belief, I couldn’t utter a single word. My tongue glued itself to my teeth in the Gobi desert of my mouth, my freewheeling brain slipped out of gear. When she stroked her hand through my hair it was all I could do to keep my knees from buckling. Time stood still forever.
“And your hair. I’d die for hair like yours. Long dark silk draped over your shoulders. So straight, so soft, a velvet waterfall of dark liquid chocolate cascading down your back like satin.”
She coiled around me, studying my face intently as she twirled, halting before me, so close, inches again from my eyes, her piercing gaze focused child-like on the window of my spirit, searching for the night in my soul. I waited, frozen in anticipation for her next hypnotic strike.
“You’re far too beautiful to be a boy. Your features are too fine, your honey lips too sweet, those chocolate eyes too dangerous, that dinky little button nose… well maybe not so little.”
She winked again. The heads laughed. This time I risked a smile. If I was going to be dissected for fun by a hippy goddess there was little I could do to stop it short of running away. And I didn’t trust my legs at that point. Anyway, when I narrated this unlikely passion play to Dave, stage whispers and murmured asides would play no part, I would be an acid Adonis to this heaven sent angel.
“And a smile to light the world. I hope there’s no more like you at home, that wouldn’t be fair on the rest of us.”
She drew my palm unhurriedly across her smooth cheek.
“And your hands, so gentle, skin as soft as a baby’s. It’s not fair. You’re gorgeous and you don’t even know it. You’re not even trying and I’d sell my soul for you. Take me now.”
She clasped my outstretched hand upwards while imprinting her cabbalistic charms with silken fingers across my palm, my wrist and forearm, my cheek.
I turned the other one, finally unhooking my barbed tongue to stutter, “What…who… I mean … I mean OK, I mean I think I mean … What?
I winced at my embarrassment, instantly wishing I’d kept my mouth shut.
She stared straight into my soul, forgiving me the sins of the world, “Hmm. I heard you could be shy. I was hoping more for the weird I was also promised.”
The darkling dancer was calling me weird. Confusion regained control, “Sorry, I don’t know you, do I?”
Her smile sparkled lightly through the night air, “No, but I know you Trick. And I caught you watching me closely so I know you want to know me. Dance with me. Dance with your Angel.”
“I’ll lose my place in the queue.” Loser! I couldn’t believe I’d said that.
“Ah, but you’d win a place in my heart. Don’t be so uptight. Seize the moment. You wouldn’t break an angel’s heart would you? Dance with me.”
The smile on my face grew wider as I switched gear from teenage angst to youthful bravado, “You’re wrecked. Beautiful, but wrecked.”
She stared strangely wistfully into my eyes, “You don’t know how true that is, gorgeous. You’ve no idea.
I’ll see you later. Save the last waltz for me. You owe me a dance.”
With that she was gone, twirling back to her friends, in and out the crowdsnake, lost in a swirling ocean of hair and beads, sweet smoke and that patchouli-scented mayhem that never quite coalesced fully in the real world, as the queue surged forward, the moment lost forever. My knees finally crumpled and I grabbed hold of the Deadhead behind me, latching onto the once creamy fur fringing his much lived-in afghan coat. I steadied myself and apologised to his look of bemused respect. I was lost forever. She had me at ‘Mmmmmmmmm’.
There and then, I was hers to change, to shape, raw clay to mould into the exotica of life, to infuse with the new, the exciting and the interesting.