The Heartbeat Of The Club
20250619
Prompt from PrideOnThePage
Music pounds in my ears and soul and limbs. In this moment I don’t care how ‘dorky’ I look or even whether the whole club is watching me and laughing into their drinks. I have a stomach full of my mother’s pea soup, my father’s rye bread, and a lil too much tequila. That heady potion drives me to embrace the rhythm and let it pull me from my seat.
I stomp until the memories of this hard week beg for mercy beneath my feet. I sway until the clinging sadness gives up and falls away. I punch the air until my frustration is splattered across the ceiling like invisible neon paint.
I’m laughing at nothing. Shouting “Unst unst unst!” in time with the room’s collective heartbeat as it throbs against my skin. There are actual lyrics but I’m far beyond words. This is utterly unladylike and, for perhaps the first time in my life, I honestly don’t give a damn. It’s just me, shiny new combat boots playing twister with the swirling rainbow lights, drunk on my own silly joy.
Then someone floats into my orbit. I almost choke up, lose the magic, but the way they’re grinning madly into my eyes tells me they’re laughing with me.
Part of my brain, still glued in the rules of the world outside these hallowed doors, questions “Man or woman?”. Thankfully the tequila is far wiser, and replies “They are HOT AF and SMILING AT US, do not bother me with your trivia”.
So I laugh and stomp and whoop with my mysterious them fatale, our bodies swaying back and forth, never quite touching, never pulling apart.
Sadly even a bellyful of spirits and family love can’t drive me forever; my whoops turn to gasps, my movements hampered by the stitch forming in my side. Dammit, I don’t want this to end I want it to-
They move close. Their arm slides around my shoulder and a nudge sends me falling no not falling they’ve done one of those ballroom dips and I’m staring up at them as the lights swirl around us. Their eyes are hooded, their perfect brows slightly raised, a puckish smirk dancing about their violently purple lips. A clear, wordless “Yes?”
I wrap my arms around them and kiss like I want us to swap lipsticks. When I come up for air I dizzily note that their was non-smear. Sensible. But mine was not and now we both have bubblegum pink smeared across our cheeks. Whoops.
“I-I’ve got wipes.” I stammer, tugging on their hand, and they laugh and let me drag them to my bag.
We wipe ourselves clean. They let me borrow their lipstick, a very different kind of kiss. Then it’s their turn to tug my hand, towards the bar.
“I’m parched. Let’s get a jug of something and find proper seats.”
The heartbeat of the club pounds in my throat and ears and where our fingers press together. My soul sings.
“S-sounds good.”
Prompt was “Pulse”.
Leeron, almost from the beginning, I thought—this is how youth feels. You’ve touched that rhythm too, I can feel it, even though it’s been almost thirty years since it pulsed through me like that. That giddy blur of boots, kisses, steam, sweat, and music too loud for words. You caught that moment exactly where it lives—between movement and mischief, held by nothing except the beat and someone else’s grin. You let it. That’s the kind of story that stays charged long after the lights go back up.