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[Explicit content ahead, obviously]
VI.
James Smith had been coming to the Shark Club every night since he moved to Vegas when he was fourteen. He was always searching for something, but never found it. Yet he kept coming back. It wasn’t the garish neon lights, the wall to wall sweaty, drunk people. It was because he knew he’s find...her. Also, James is black.
And then she appeared like a vision, the girl dancing like she had a taser up her ass. Like each limb was being struck by lightning at the same time. She held her arms wide, the crowds parting to give her space. Sweaty blond hair, a dress made out of tissues, and that look of ecstasy. Whoever she was, she had heat.
“She can dance, huh?” said the bouncer to him. It was an actual question he wanted the answer to.
“She thinks she can,” James said, afraid that a woman was a better dancer than him and possibly hurt his little fragile feelings. “I’m gonna dance with her,” his dick decides.
“You can’t do that, you’re working. T.C.’s gonna have your ass.” T.C. was his casual lover.
“T.C.’s playing craps at the Riviera.” he said.
Unnamed bouncer shrugs and leaves. No one ever saw him again after that night. The case is still unsolved.
James pushed through the crowd to get to this gyrating goddess. She had heat!
He approaches her like it’s a 50’s prom. “Do you want to dance?”
“I am dancing,” she replies. She was already dancing.
“Would you like to dance with me?” James said, not getting Nomi’s joke.
“Are you good?” asked Nomi, not having to raise her voice over the deafening level of the club.
“Yeah, I’m good,” said James, annoyed that this woman that he was bothering dare question him.
“I'm going to get a drink,” said Molly, taking her leave. She knew when she was being a clit blocker.
James to begin what he calls dancing, although any move of the body is dancing, to be fair. His movements are choppy, defiant, and don’t seem to follow the beat of the song. It doesn’t have to, it’s avant garde. Nomi tries to copy his moves, and after a while she gets it and they do a synchronized dance, with influences from martial arts, the mac-arena, and Anne Renking.
“You can dance,” Nomi finally admits.
“I don’t lie,” said James, always hating when someone, especially a woman, claims he is lying. Then he remembered his copy of The Game he recently read. “You can’t,” he tells her, in what is called “negging.”
“Then what am I doin’?” She is slightly out of breath. Dancing is work!
“You’re teasin’ my dick,” he said, to the woman he approached and demanded she dance for him. “You got potential though, I could teach you.”
“I’m teasin your dick?” she asks.
“Yea,” he tells her. Did he stutter the first time?
Suddenly, Nomi kneed him in the groin. Hard. “I’m not teasin’ now, am I?” Oh great, thought James. A feminist.
James falls to the ground, knocking into another couple, who hits into someone else, what those in the club business call “instant dominoing.”
“Be cool,” he tells the couple. Citing the title of his favorite movie. “I’m a bouncer.”
“You be cool!” said the guy he knocked over.
Suddenly, it was pandemonium. “She started it!” someone yelled, and Nomi got pulled into the fight. But Nomi was a fighter. She fought back, kicking and scratching. Was dancing and fighting really any different?
Nomi couldn’t say for sure.
VI.
The night she spent in the local jail was not Nomi’s first rodeo. In fact, she had spent many a night in rodeo jail for...oh never mind. That was the past. She had been thrown into a cell with some other tough women, many of whom were black, although not that there is anything wrong with that. She had a black roommate and just danced with a black guy, after alk. In the morning, an officer came to the cell. “Who’s Malone?” Nomi quickly got up, ready to be out of here. Jail is no fun. None at all.
When she left the jail, the sunlight jarred. Her hair was frizzy and her makeup was running but man, it was good to be free. It was like her whole life was a jail and her dancing was freedom.
James was there waiting for her, but Nomi paid him no mind.
“I bailed you out girl, doesn’t that get me a cup of coffee?” he demanded, still unclear about how to interact with and respect women. “All I did was teach you how to dance.” This meant Nomi owed him sex.
“I don’t need nobody to teach me how to dance!” she replied.
“That’s ‘cause you’re a badass. You got your arm straight out sayin’ ‘Back off, motherfuckers!’” he told her.
“Okay, you got that down. Back off motherfucker!” she retorted.
Nomi walked out into the harsh sunlight, James following close behind. “My dick hurts!” he whined. “My head hurts! You got my fired from my fucking job!”
“Well, shit happens, you know?” Nomi said.
“’Shit happens?’ What? That’s all I get from you? Fuckin’ wisdom? That’s it?”
“That’s it, you get wisdom.”
“Guess what? You ain’t a pain in the head and a pain in the dick- you’re a pain in the ass, too.”
“Life sucks, you know?”
“’Life sucks,’ ‘shit happens,’ - where do you get this stuff, man? Offa tee-shirts?”
Nomi turned to the sound of a horn honking. It was Molly, there to pick her up.
“All I want is a cup of coffee” said James, suddenly sincere. He had a caffeine addiction. It was ruining his life.
“Yea?”
“Yea.”
Molly swing the car around and opened the door for Molly. “Gotta quarter?” Nomi asked her.
Molly indeed have a quarter. Nomi picked it up and flipped it to James, as if she had been rehearsing this moment. “Buy yourself a cup.” Molly peels off, both girls cackling.
In the car, Molly told Nomi, “Al’s apeshit- he says if you miss another night....wait, how’d you get out?...I had to round up the cash.”
“Him,” she said, referring to James, who had not yet introduced himself by name.
“How come?”
“’Cause I kicked him in the nuts.”
“He liked it?”
“He must’ve.”
The women laughed at their own witty repartee.