Before The Plague

We danced all night, stumbled from one outrageous scene to the next, called in that instance not just to each otherbutto the universe at large, watching the sunrise over the limpid beauties of the harbour, and were proud, hey destined, there on the dance floor. He never thought he would grow old, or older He never thought there would be an end to the brilliant discoveries, to the turning faces as he walked into a room, to the infinite longing that was all part of the doom laden air. I don't know what you're normally like, the man said, and drunk, as he always was at that hour of the morning in those long lost days, he had a moment of clarity that he could remember all these years later.

The tensions had shifted, between the hunted and the hunter and the boys cruising each other. Sex was so easy, so instant, so fast and if not exactly meaningless so far from being tied to any sense of permanence or commitment or even affection, that now they virtually humped on the dance floor, swivelling their hips, bending over in an endless come on. Even the old ones, and there were so few old ones, they had all been wiped out by the plague, but even the old ones seemed to get all the attention they needed, through walls, through dark corners, in late night grapplings.

The smell of cigarettes permeated his clothes. He was sick of staying home late. He couldn't sleep in the fetid heat which continued to grip the city, which continued to make him sweat. The soundtrack of Brokeback Mountain played in his head, the poignant notes, and everyone he watched seemed multi-layered, as if they were only brief representations of this time and place; and other stories, their entire stories, could be told here. He watched some young queen, hanging out with the trannies, doing his bit on the dance floor and he felt like saying: you will drink for another 20 years. You will become fat and lonely and remember this, perhaps even this night, as your good times. He had always loved them, the multiple postures, the intrigue, the feeling of the infinite washing through the room, the splintered light in the dawn, the collapsing buildings calling him back to a primeval state from whence he had come, from where they had all come. At work, greeted like a long lost friend, he pretended to be normal; but in his head, in his ceaseless searching, in the long restless sleepless nights, he was only just beginning to find any sense of normalicy at all. If only he had been so sane, if only he had stopped to enjoy himself, all those years ago.