Not—A Dancer: A story by Vasia Bakogianni Thinkbabymusic Collective

Not—A Dancer

She arrays all the data ponderingWhy does he think I am a dancer?  Bedtime. Beside her K, sound asleep, leeched by persistent bugs that fight the good fight for longevity. She, agitated, tossing and turning, trying to gather something icy, turn to the calmness of surrender.

Condemned to a static representation of a black square, framed beneath her heavy eyelids. The square outshines the plea for kindness, brings on this other thing. Which is ok, she has been good friends with this feeling.

She’s summoned it time and again. Nighttime, a couple years ago. Car ride, a call to anyone available. A friend suggests raiding his uninhabited home village. They hit the road at 10 pm. Put acid trap on, drink from the same can.

He tells the tales with his glasses slipping down his nose. She wedges them back on and minutes later they right click to ‘sort by’, while in the midst of ground exploration. Charcoal slips in.

An entourage for the erratic want for answers, which is consuming, a want that’s always right but not available via its own practice. But she can’t say anything, can she? This trespassing curls up in her tonight, fumbles through bricks and rusty fences like an apparition. She cannot shrug this square off as she cannot help opening the door.

Back on the wheel, way home. Saying “Get out”.

“What? Here? Middle of nowhere?” Saying “Go away, get out of this fucking car!”

Kicking the boy out. Met with resistance.

“What’s wrong with you??!?!?”

Fighting him back. Shoving again and stepping on the gas. Slamming the door shut. Cascading through the night. Tearing it open while something else is being cooked up, a new birth embroidered on the stars.

The voice of winter echoes vacancy. The rustling of dead leaves is the sound of wheels, the wheels of trolleys. She has a list of names attracted to this feeling but they’re names chalked on the blackboard that this square is. Its trail writes repulsion.

And as repulsion tugs the black square back in, the opaque frame rolls into the oven drawing the lines of its stifling perimeter on its own. Wedges its glasses with its ruler limbs, swaddles itself into a cocoon.

Were she a dancer, congruence would rule. Without ripple formations. Black squares would be just squatting and she’d jump over them. Cause this is how ‘dancers’ are, agile, prone to rejoice in unobstructed action, endowed with their adulated pastel beauty.

But she, well, she is not a dancer.

Published: Thinkbabymusic online
Words: Vasia Bakogianni
Photography © eT