Cardboard Bogart's Dance

Long ago and far away in a land without much in the way of magic there lived a boy, and this boy was tall, gawky, and not much to look at unless you liked looking at figures whose ribs you could count through their clothes. He was so frail as to be presumed consumptive by many, with a constant injury or malady that rendered him almost immune from gym class, or at least from the class part, not the gymnos part, where everyone stripped and mocked those that looked different, he looked different, nothing to be ashamed of, mind you, just not something readily seen in those parts at that time referring to those parts that were seen and what they had over them that was oft removed from the others, but not from him. He rather liked it, and would grow to love it, but that's nothing to do with the tea, or the rest of this story. It being the thing to do, he asked a girl he knew about a dance he knew she was going to anyway, and because this girl was a dear friend, and probably had some pity on this figure of ours, she said yes, but due to lupus (I've never understood those jokes about lupus, it's really a very serious disease, and when someone you've known for ages has it, it kind of bums you out to see people making light of it) she was invalided out at the last possible moment. He'd already gotten his tie on, his freshly ironed shirt, long tuxedo tailored for his frame. It made him look like Jack the Ripper, he thought, and he liked that very much. Not that he liked Jack or his Ripping, but he did enjoy the kind of old fashioned look the whole thing had to it, and later on in the years to come would discover Steampunk, goggles, cravats, and chesterfields. No date couldn't be that bad, right? To the Midwinter formal? Sure, it'd be fine. There were lots of people going single...just put this corsage on ice then, for now, I guess, he thought. So he went to meet the rest of the group at a local Indian place that has since been closed by the board of health, and was twenty minutes early. He was something of a regular at the place, and even in his fine trappings, the staff recognized him and brought him a cup of Masala tea with milk. The tea helped ease the almost crunching loneliness he was feeling, sitting at a table for twelve alone, in the center, like Christ before the Last Supper just wondering when the hell everyone was going to show up, because, come on, really, they were the ones who set the time, and they should Dad be damned be on time. Well, they weren't. Not that he was going to be late for anything other than a crucifixion, but it was his own, and he always made an effort to be as rigorously punctual in all things. Especially sex, but that would occur years later, not tonight, not for about seven hundred and some tonights after this particular night, but when it did...well, it was amazing, and he was punctual and a faultless gentleman. But right now, he was punctual, a faultless gentleman, and without any kind of dancing partner. This made him sad, not depressed (as was his usual state), but just rather glum about the whole affair, really. As it turned out, he rather disliked half the people he was meeting for dinner, or they disliked him and he liked them out of a mistaken sense of thinking someone is your friend because they say one or two nice things about you, yeah, that sort of thing, when they turn out to think you are a creep and otherwise generally unsightly...but sure, they'll keep you around for writing papers, helping on big projects, and that sort of thing. Assholes, in short, but he'd take a while to realize that. Not because he was slow so much as because he wanted to believe he truly had some friends in high school. He did, in fact, but only a few of them were going to this dance, and they all had dates, even if a few of them were at this table with him...he hated a few of their dates, in part because they were their dates rather than himself, but he tried not to let his hatred flow through him palpably; it seemed bad form, all things considered. Samantha sat opposite of him, smiling in a way that he would later realize was indicative either of disinterest, dislike, or just interior disquiet, he was never sure which of those things, but at the time he thought it was a smile of interest, so he talked, awkwardly, in that way people seated across from one another at dinner parties will, and tried to not stare at her breasts too much. Not that there was all that much to stare at, no grand rack of legend has held for instance by his almost date, not flat chested by any stretch, just...breasts, he just rather liked staring and was, shall we remind the reader, recently turned eighteen, single, and full of impulses that told him not only to stare but also to caress, he resisted these impulses, though they were probably obvious to the keen observer, which Samantha happened to be. Dinner ended, mercifully, with a round of tea, the same tea he had been drinking all night. It made him feel buoyant, almost light on his feet, caffeinated in a new and exciting way, like, dare he say it, dancing. And so when the group trouped into cars and eventually made it to the dance with suits straightened and dress adjusted like they definitely hadn't been pulled down or up (for those lucky few) in the backseats of a hundred different cars by eager partners (or just packed conditions, some of the cars resembling glittered and glammed Famine ships, jammed full of O'Malleys, O'Briens, Fallons, Robinsons, Smiths, and more exotic names like Kellenburg and Osowski, names that came over later, but all ended up here, in these packed, fevered vans heading towards a packed, fevered hall in the center of a city that was, for a night, packed with fevered, drunk, stoned, horny, and sweaty students, all in their best finery. And so he danced, when he made it there, in his new boots of polished black leather, with a sort of demonic frenzy that must of lent credence to those stories he heard that people had told later about him really being some sort of maniac. He just rather felt like dancing, and sometimes, in a spirit that was not entirely his, grabbed a nearby girl who seemed lonely and twirled her once or twice before moving on...he was very good at twirling people, you see, thanks to his long arms and generally rangy build, but not at the whole combined footwork part of dancing, usually dancing alone, in either a drunken or perfectly sober state, to celebrate existence. And this, he realized, was existence, and must be celebrated, if not in the grinding fashion of his peers (whom he envied and despised and envied more), then as he could, with a circle of friends who had somehow materialized around him, all rather short, and some rather darker than he, brown and olive skinned and tanned in ways his Hibernian hues would never be, making him feel almost like Lurch or some gigantic totem amid revelers, a Maypole, even, and that amused him as they whirled around, leaving him sometimes at the center to accidentally photograph things that were really meant in innocence but in fact were...not innocent when the pictures were developed, and he understood some of the looks of distaste certain people (female, all) gave to him over the weeks to follow. A very old friend, older even in time of knowing than the friend who'd been his date before being struck ill, had somehow misplaced her date (a clod a year older than the rest of us who was just weird and later joined the Benedictines, becoming Friar Augustine or Ambrose or something equally pompous and not at all suited to the fanatical vein he carried long before he joined the Holy Orders and became one of those who pray rather than those who work or those who fight.), and seemed saddened by this, so we danced together, unawkwardly, in that way that friends who've been friends forever and almost siblings and never really more than friends even though one of them wouldn't have said no to that it just didn't seem right for the question to ever be asked and so it simply never was, and they danced, and when that dance was over he whirled around the outskirts of the knot of lithe and writhing bodies to find a cardboard cutout of Humphrey Bogart...and, doing the only thing that could be done with such a find, reached his arm around this stoic and too too solid Sam Spade and snapped a picture with his disposable camera, thanking Bogey as he did so, and mourning that there wasn't a similar cardboard cutout of Bacall that he could have made off with for...purposes of decoration, because Bacall was and will always remain a silver screen crush for him. He photographed a scowling teacher, dancing with a sobbing senior who had recently been split from her boyfriend (during the dance) due to something or other, and smiled in returning this scowl, whereupon the teacher shook off his usual bulldog expression and winked, eye twinkling with glee he never though existed within those learned, taciturn depths with whom he one day hoped to share a drink. That drink never materialized, as that teacher dropped dead of a heart attack one morning, about two months after our hero graduated, leaving him only to mourn, sigh, and try to start college one mentor down. His new mentor would turn out to actually know the previous mentor quite well, having taught with him in the 70s, and grinned when he mentioned him. After the dance, the group split up, and he managed, somehow, to conjure a ride home, or maybe he didn't conjure it as it just kind of materialized there and someone said 'Come on, Our Hero, we'll take you home before we...' and it was implied that they would be going to some sort of mystic after dance place for solemnities of a Midsummer nature, and he envied them. In hindsight, everything worked out beautifully...even if he didn't know it yet, they worked out so beautifully that he is writing this all down next to the woman of his dreams and is overjoyed that in the morning he will wake up with her in his arms and not give a damn that it's raining because he has love and that, you see, is more valuable than anything--even tea, even fine suits, even hats, even photographs of fine suits, hats, and a cardboard Bogart in a draw, forgotten almost until they were unearthed a few months ago in preparation for moving into their first apartment, it was a step from home for them, from the home they knew, from the city they knew, to graduate school for her, and studies relating to graduate school for him, and love, love makes all this possible, and so there is this tea as kind of a result, but kind of has nothing to do with tea...but kind of everything, too. And he knows they will live, happily ever after, or at least he truly hopes that, and will try to make it possible as much as anyone can try such things. And he has muttonchops now, and they look marvelous, even if Bogart never sported them.